Engage with Honor: Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability

by Lee Ellis

Honor and accountability are linked together as a formula for great leadership, and a healthy mindset of accountability can inspire every team and organization to achieve a higher level of performance. The key is engaging with courage, commitment, and caring concern as opposed to motivation by fear, intimidation, and self-preservation. From his early experiences as an Air Force jet fighter pilot and POW in the prison camps of Vietnam to an award-winning author, presenter, and leadership consultant, Lee Ellis shares his concerns about the lack of accountability in our culture and how you can apply a positive, proven accountability model to get better results as a leader. Engage with Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability will unify your team so that you can focus on celebration rather than confrontation by sharing - - Why a lack of accountability leads to confusion and chaos.
- Gripping personal leadership experiences from the Vietnam POW camps.
- A proven model for creating a positive accountability culture.
- Tips and practical tools to apply what you've learned.

2017 Award Winner! 11th Annual Indie Excellence Book Awards

Engage with Honor Winner - Leadership Category
Engage with Honor Finalist - Cover Design Non-Fiction

2017 Award Winner! Reader Views Reviewers Choice Award

Engage with Honor First Place - Business/Sales/Economics Category

2017 Award Finalist! International Book Awards

Engage with Honor Finalist - Management & Leadership Category

2016 Award Finalist! Best Book Awards

Engage with Honor Finalist - Management & Leadership Category
Engage with Honor Finalist - Best Cover Non-Fiction

Genres: Leadership

234 pages, Hardcover

Published September 7, 2016

Reviews

[James Cogbill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for a leadership class I'm teaching to freshmen Cadets. This was in addition to his previous book, Leading with Honor, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Overall, I find myself in strong agreement with Ellis' framework for "Courageous Accountability." I love that "character" is the foundation or base of his model. Like Ellis, I have found that character--or values--is the most important component of leadership and lifetime happiness and fulfillment in general. I always like to tell my Cadets that in Army Doctrine, "character" is the first leader attribute, and it's first for a reason--because it's the most important. As Ellis notes on page 67, it is the "foundation for trust--which is the currency of leadership." Army doctrine calls "trust" the "bedrock of the Army profession." I enjoyed his focus on mission, vision, values, and standards. Communication is the glue that holds everything together. A couple questions I'd have for Ellis, though, concern his discussion of "clarity." The way he describes the need for clarity seems like it could lend itself to micromanagement. One of the key elements of effective Army leadership that emerged in the last 20 years is the concept of "mission command," which calls for empowering subordinate leaders to accomplish the mission with disciplined initiative, bounded by the commander's intent. Some of the clarity Ellis describes--ensuring subordinates know exactly how to do something seems to go against this. Also, it goes against the concept espoused by Captain L. David Marquet in Turn the Ship Around. The other question I have is about aligning subordinates with their talent areas to help them excel. While I agree with this, I think it's also important to put subordinates in certain situations where they are not as comfortable to help them expand their horizons, develop, and grow. Lastly, I like the strong focus on accountability, which in many ways equates to providing meaningful and candid feedback--both positive and negative (or celebrating and confronting as Ellis refers to it). Feedback is a gift, or as Ellis describes it, "the breakfast of champions." Overall, this is another great leadership book by Ellis, useful in the military, the civilian world, and life in general.

[Kimberly DuBrul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amongst other things- reading these extreme stories puts our every day lives and challenges into perspective!! They have a course you can bring your team through around this book- I’m just finishing with a corporate leadership team- it’s a great way to strengthen courage, accountability, mission, vision and values.

[Pdaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on leadership and the most important elements. Courage, accountability, character. Really good stories, quotes, and reflective questions throughout.

[Reader Views · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by Josh Cramer for Reader Views (11/16)

If you are looking for a book to kick your butt (in a nice way) when it comes to your accountability to yourself and others, you must read “Engage with Honor” by Lee Ellis. A prisoner of war during Vietnam, Ellis gained a perspective for understanding our daily lives in a way that few others understand—if you truly want to be successful in both your professional and personal life, you must live a life of accountability. This is a life that requires impeccable character to accept responsibility for yourself and your people (whether it be your family at home or your team at work). It requires building a culture of accountability around you, knowing that you also need to be accountable to those above you. It requires collaboration and celebrations (or confrontations if necessary). What Ellis wants you to know is that no matter where you are right now, you can change starting today.

The book is broken into two major sections (with a separate introduction and epilogue). The first section provides the struggles society (and you) face every day in maintaining honor. The second section shows a model (the Courageous Accountability Model) for how you can build a culture that thrives on honor.

Each chapter can be divided into several pieces:

1. A short vignette of Ellis’s time in Vietnam. Each chapter moves chronologically (relatively) from his capture through to the end of the war when he and his fellow POWs were freed.

2. The chapter builds on the leadership concepts that Ellis learned from that experience, whether from what he or someone else did (or didn’t do).

3. Mission Prep. This section provides questions that will help you to apply the concepts from the chapter.

4. Video Clip. Ellis provides a link to a short online video clip where the author discusses the chapter’s main concept (these are worth the price of admission alone! I found these very helpful for reviewing the concepts of each chapter).

5. Foot Stomper. This is a summary of what the chapter was about. At the end of the book, he gathers these together for easy review. This is especially helpful if you are teaching the book to your team.

The absolute best part of the book is found in chapter eleven: Troubleshooting Accountability—Tips and FAQs. This chapter contains seven tips for leaders that will help to apply the concepts from the book. Following this are several really tough questions that Ellis explains using the Courageous Accountability Model. These questions range from questions about workplace gossip to having a team member who shows up consistently late to meetings, to a having a boss who doesn’t buy into the accountability mindset yet, to questions about applying these concepts to family life.

Ultimately, “Engage with Honor” by Lee Ellis is a compelling read and I found myself drawn again and again to the author’s stories about Vietnam. If you have read other books about accountability (The Question Behind the Question or the Oz Principle), there is nothing new here in that regard. What Ellis does differently is show the concepts in another way, and sometimes it takes hearing about a concept from a different voice to really understand it. Victor Frankl illustrates this point well: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” What will your response be?