Frances Hesselbein - My Life in Leadership: The Journey and Lessons Learned Along the Way

Copyright 2011 by Frances Hesselbein. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hesselbein, Frances.

My Life in Leadership: The Journey and Lessons Learned Along the Way / Frances Hesselbein; foreword by Jim Collins.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-470-90573-9

1. Hesselbein, Frances. Women chief executive officersUnited StatesBiography. 3. Girl Scouts of the United States of AmericaManagement.

4. Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. 5. Leadership.

I. Title.

HC102.5.H47A3 2011

658.0092dc22

[B] 2010045733

I am deeply grateful to all who have helped me on my journey. Many are noted in the pages that follow, but there are far more who have blessed my life whom I could not recognize in this account (including the countless young people I meet on campuses and academies across the nations, who always give me new energy and new hope). This book is dedicated to all of them, whether named or not, around the world. They are our future.

This book also is dedicated to the men and women in uniform, past, present, and future, whose selfless service has sustained the democracy since the beginning of our country. My father, my husband, my brother, and my son John are part of this sturdy band. They are an inspiration to us all and teach us that service is a privilege, a remarkable opportunity. To serve is to live.

Foreword

In October of 2007, I sat with Frances Hesselbein in an enclosed conference roomno windows, maps on the wall, literally bombproof. We'd come together to spend time with the general officers of the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. At the other end of the table sat the commander, General Lloyd J. Austin III, six-foot-four, a muscular two-hundred-plus pounds, winner of a Silver Star for gallantry in combat, responsible for thirty-five thousand soldiers, the power of the man amplified by his calm and quiet. On either side of Austin sat about a dozen one- and two-star generals, along with some colonels, in Army fatigues, all with on-the-ground experience in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

General Austin had thought hard about this day, part of a final get ready time before his command redeployed to Iraq. This was their third deployment to that country. He wanted something special to inspire his general officers as they left their families once again, in service. His dream: a visit and leadership session from Frances Hesselbein. General Austin called and asked if I would come to Fort Bragg and engage Frances in a conversation with the generals.

General Austin began the meeting, We are so fortunate to have with us one of the great leaders in America, Frances Hesselbein. The Army generals hushed, and I began to ask Frances questions about leadership, based on her experiences leading the Girl Scouts of the USA back to greatness, earning her a spot on the cover of Business Week as America's best manager. Here sat gruff and rumble general officers who'd chosen to jump out of airplanes and lead combat battalions as a career, men who carry personal responsibility for the lives of thousands of young men and women. In business, failed leadership loses money; in the military, failed leadership loses lives.

As Frances talked, the generals sat utterly riveted, for two full hours. Diminutive, no more than five-foot-two, she held a commanding presence like Yoda dispensing wisdom to a gathering of Jedi knights. At the end of her session, the general officers spontaneously shouted Hooah !

It matters not the groupFortune 500 CEOs, philanthropists, college students, social sector leaders, or military general officers in a war zoneFrances has the same effect on people. She inspires and teaches, not just because of what she says, but because of who she is. Leadership, she teaches, begins not with what you do, but with who you are . What are your values? What do you serve? What makes you get up every day and bring positive, go-forward tilt to everything and everyone you touch? She believes to her core the U.S. Army idea of Be - Know - Do. Because we cannot predict what challenges we will face, the most important preparation for leadership lies in developing personal character; you can learn the rest along the way.

In this book, Hesselbein shares her own story, her own life journey into a person of character. She describes the forces that shaped her, including a family that instilled in her the belief that to serve is to live. Like many great leaders, she did not choose her responsibilities. When her father died, she returned home from school and assumed responsibility for the family. Later in life, she led a Girl Scout council in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A couple of members of the local council took her to lunch one day, and one of them said, We've found the perfect leader to be our new executive director of the Talus Rock Girl Scout Council.

Oh, that's wonderful, exclaimed Frances. Who?

You, Frances.

But I am a volunteer, not really prepared for this, she replied.

We think you are the right person, they pressed.