CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MENTORING IS CIRCULAR
The early 1980s brought two great thought leaders and two great friends into my life. In 1981, when I was CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA I met the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker. His philosophy and his work had played a critical part in my development as a leader from those beginning years in the mountains of western Pennsylvania.
In May, 1970, the first day I walked into the offices of the Talus Rock Girl Scout Council, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as its new CEO, under my arm were copies of The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker for each staff member. I had never met Peter Drucker, but had every book and film he had ever done. I just knew his philosophy was exactly right for our Girl Scout Council, its board and staff, thousands of girls, and their leaders.
In four years to support a powerful, contemporary program for girls, we had developed a girl- and program-focused circular management system. It worked so well that the central Pennsylvania Penn Laurel Girl Scout Council, York and Lancaster area, called and I went. That remarkable board and staff adopted the same mission-focused, values-based circular management system with the same success.
Then eighteen months later, Girl Scouts of the USA, the national organization, the largest organizations for girls and women in the world called looking for a new CEO. I agreed to come to New York to meet with the search committee and a few days later they offered me the position and I accepted. I was the first CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA to come from the field in sixty seven years. So, July 4, 1976, my husband, John, and I arrived in New York.
Everything I had learned, experienced on the ground in two local Girl Scout Councils I carried with me. Circular management, managing for the mission, managing for innovation, managing for diversity worked in a powerful way. In just five years, 1976–1981 those 700,000+ inspired and inspiring Girl Scout volunteers and staff had transformed this largest organization for girls and women in the world, over three million members sharing a Promise. Harvard Business School Faculty wrote a case study of the transformation of the Girl Scouts of the USA used in business schools all over the world.
In 1981, we met Peter Drucker and he studied us, on the ground, gave us two or three days of his time for the next eight years and pronounced the Girl Scouts as “the best managed organization in the country”—in all three sectors.
In 1982, my second greatest leader and my second greatest friend came into my life, and this time not anyone I had ever even heard of, or read about. A handsome young man walked into my office at Girl Scout National Headquarters, and said, “I am Marshall Goldsmith. I have developed a new program, a 360-degree Feedback tool and I want to give it to you and the Girl Scouts, and work with you in its use.” He showed me the 360-degree tool, I was intrigued, and the day ended with a plan.
Marshall would work directly with my management team, and me, and then we would move it across the National staff, and local Girl Scout council staff. We did and Marshall’s contribution to Girl Scouting made a positive difference.
In 1981–1982, Peter Drucker and Marshall Goldsmith became two of our strongest, most generous supporters. Eight years later, at the end of my thirteen-year tenure, Girl Scouts of the USA had achieved the highest membership, the greatest diversity, and the greatest cohesion in our history.
And in late 1989, as I was leaving Girl Scouts of the USA, at the wonderful staff celebration of my thirteen exuberant years with “the greatest organization in the world,” both Peter and Marshall were there, speaking, celebrating with almost five hundred Girl Scout executives from all over the country.
Six weeks after I left the Girl Scouts of the USA, on January 31, 1990, the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management was born, and I found myself the president and CEO of the smallest organization in the country—with no money, no staff, and in offices that were a gift of Mutual of America Life Insurance Company. And who was the first board member to be invited to serve with Peter? Marshall Goldsmith, of course. And he serves to this day on the Drucker (now Leader to Leader) Institute board.
All of this is simply the backdrop for the article on coaching Marshall invited me to write. I am going to take a different track, and write about coaching’s companion—mentoring.
While companies are investing in the growth, effectiveness, in the performance of their people through coaches and coaching, and no one is a greater coach than Marshall Goldsmith in our country or globally, there is another powerful force, running on parallel tracks—mentoring.
For a long time, I have personally engaged in mentoring several young women and continue to do so. These are my formal commitments. However, frequently, I am introduced before a speech as the introducer’s “mentor.” Although, we do not have a formal relationship, it is obvious the Drucker Foundation/Leader to Leader Institute’s twenty-seven books in thirty languages, Leader to Leader Journal, and our global webinars all connect in a way that engages leaders in a personal way, and “mentor” becomes part of the language.
Almost fifteen years ago, a young Coast Guard Lt. Commander came to see me, explained that she had a grant that would enable her to go with me, wherever I would speak, to “shadow me for six months.” She had the funds to do it and live in New York. Tempted as I was, for traveling alone several times a week, and several times a year, abroad, I could use a bright, young, eager leader of the future as a fellow traveler. However, I thought of what would be the right decision, in her best interest. So I said, “As much as I am tempted to say yes, it wouldn’t be fair to you. You would spend most of your time in airports. Instead, do use your grant where it will result in the greatest learning experience. And, if you like, I would be honored to be your mentor.”
Fifteen years later, Commander Carla Grantham, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.) and I have had hundreds of shared travels, conferences, celebrations, and mentoring sessions. And in fifteen years, not one disappointing moment. And her husband and two teenagers are part of my family. With Carla, I learned that mentoring is circular. The mentor learns as much as the one to be mentored, the richest possible experience. And it does not end.
The second adventure in mentoring is totally different. Eleven years ago, speaking on mission, values, and leadership in Shenzhen, China, when my speech was over, among the warm responders coming up to greet me, came a young Chinese couple with their eighteen-year-old daughter. The mother was a journalist, the father, a lawyer. The father said, “This is our daughter, Youchen Lin, and we want you to be her mentor.” They explained why, and I replied, “I would be honored. With e-mail we can easily work together.” I gave them all the ways to reach me, and we parted in a touching, inspiring way. These young Chinese parents wanted a wider world for their only child.
I flew back to New York. End of story. No Youchen Lin e-mail, nothing. Then six months later, a phone call. “Mrs. Hesselbein, this is Youchen Lin. I am in Staten Island, in college, a freshman. I am ready to be mentored.” That was ten years ago. Today, she has a masters degree in auditing, has a very good job, and our mentoring sessions involve dinners, luncheons, her attendance at our conferences, celebrations, gatherings. She calls her parents in China when the event is over and our relationship has new titles—her wish. I am now Youchen Lin’s “Godmother,” she is my “Godchild.” Her family part of mine.
From these two remarkable young women I continue to “mentor” I have learned, indeed, that “mentoring is circular.” When we are mentors, we learn even more than the leaders we are mentoring. And lives are changed, theirs and ours.
I began this, “Mentoring Is Circular,” chapter with warm appreciation of coaching and one of the greatest coaches of our times—Marshall Goldsmith. I believe he is the greatest, and my evaluation, my appreciation of Marshall began in 1982, twenty-nine years ago, with never one disappointing moment. We’ve traveled the world together. I can call him on the telephone and ask, “Marshall, can you go to Poland with me?” His reply, “When do we leave?”
Marshall has redefined “coaching” for our times, and in my life he, Lyda, Kelly, and Bryan have defined love, friendship, and family for me. Wherever I go, whatever I do, Marshall is there. And it is circular.
Frances Hesselbein is the president and CEO of the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management) and its founding president. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America’s highest civilian honor, in 1998, and serves on many nonprofit and private sector corporate boards. She was the Chairman of the National Board of Directors for Volunteers of America from 2002 to 2006 and is the recipient of twenty honorary doctoral degrees. In 2009 the University of Pittsburgh introduced The Hesselbein Global Academy for Student Leadership and Civic Engagement. Among many other awards, Mrs. Hesselbein was inducted into the Enterprising Women Hall of Fame at the Seventh Annual Enterprising Women of the year Awards Celebration and was named a Senior Leader at the United States Military Academy, 2008 National Conference on Ethics in America. Mrs. Hesselbein is editor-in-chief of the award-winning quarterly journal Leader to Leader and coeditor of the Drucker Foundation’s three-volume Future Series. Mrs. Hesselbein is the coeditor of twenty-seven books in thirty languages. And she is the author of Hesselbein on Leadership and the recently published My Life in Leadership (2011).