To Serve Is to Live
JIM DITTMAR
I met Jim Dittmar when he was directing the Servant Leadership Institute at Geneva College just outside of Pittsburgh. Every year he brought in outstanding speakers who had a heart for servant leadership. Frances Hesselbein was one of the best. I got to know Frances even better through her role at the Drucker Foundation. Despite her amazing accomplishments, she exudes humility. When Marshall Goldsmith interviewed Frances recently and asked her the key to her success, she said it was her blood type—“B positive.” When you read Jim’s essay on this legendary servant leader, you’ll see why that is true. —KB
FRANCES HESSELBEIN1 WAS CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976 to 1990; cofounder in 1990 and CEO of the Peter F. Drucker Leadership Institute (renamed the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute in 2012); recipient in 1998 of the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and one of Fortune magazine’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” in 2015. The complete list of Frances Hesselbein’s accomplishments, awards, and honors would take your breath away. Yet the reason she is so admired, respected, and loved by people from around the world has little to do with the tributes she has received. The reason is all about who she is—as a person and as a leader.
“The awards are not what’s important in life,” says Frances. “You have to have values that are the basis of all you do. You have to live your values. After all, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.”
I have had the privilege of knowing Frances as a friend for nearly fifteen years. During the times that I have visited with her, watched her speak and conduct meetings, observed her interactions with a variety of people, and listened to others speak about her, I have reached the same conclusion as many others: Frances is a humble, energetic leader of influence. She is a masterful change agent whose character resonates integrity, steadfastness, civility, and trustworthiness. In her often quoted mantra, “To serve is to live,” she embodies the qualities that set her apart as an exemplar of servant leadership.
Frances describes her day-to-day life of service this way: “Every day I find a way to make a difference, to help someone, even if I don’t know them. And then at night I ask myself ‘What did I do today that helped someone, some group or organization? In what ways did I make a difference in someone’s life?’ I never fail to ask that question at the end of the day.”
How did Frances Hesselbein develop into the exemplary servant leader she has been for decades—one who serves, values inclusion, breaks down cultural barriers, and works tirelessly for the greater good? What happened early in her life that had such a formative influence on her character and behavior? In answer to these questions, what follows is a portion of her story that is about humble beginnings, life-shaping experiences, rich familial influence, and walking through opened doors.
Frances grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in the Johnstown Junior College, University of Pittsburgh. She later married John Hesselbein and they had a son, also named John.
Frances’s hometown experiences were a crucial source of personal development: “As I look back, everything I learned in Johnstown prepared me for my life in leadership. Growing up and going to school with children whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had come to Johnstown from all over the world to work in the coal mines and steel mills gave me exposure to and an appreciation for a rich diversity of cultures.”
The journey that eventually led to Frances becoming the CEO of the Girl Scouts USA was a circuitous route—one that began in a way that she never imagined would lead to the organization’s top role. In 1960, Girl Scout Troop 17—thirty 10-year-old girls who met in the basement of the Second Presbyterian Church—was disbanding. Their leader had left to become a missionary and no one had stepped forward to replace her. Frances was invited to be their volunteer leader. She declined the offer several times before finally agreeing to “do it for six weeks, until we find a real leader,” she thought. What was to be a six-week commitment continued until all of the girls had graduated from high school, six years later.
In 1970, Frances was asked to become the executive director of the Talus Rock Girl Scout Council and she accepted. In 1974, she agreed to take the same position with the Penn Laurel Council in eastern Pennsylvania.
Other doors of leadership opportunities in Johnstown also opened to Frances. In 1970, Frances was appointed the chairman of the Johnstown United Way campaign, the first time a woman had held the position in Johnstown or the United States. Responsible for leading its most important fundraising effort of the entire year, Frances immediately gathered a coalition of labor union and steel mill executives to help secure its success. Together, they mobilized the region to raise the highest per capita level of financial giving of any United Way campaign in the nation.
Besides these experiences in Johnstown, Frances’s family was very influential in helping shape her character and her perspective on life and leadership. Of her father, Frances states: “His example of writing and storytelling, his sense of history and our heritage, and his love of family and service walk around me. I think of him every day and am grateful to a soldier, ‘an officer of great character and courage,’ who adored his children; understood the power of love, language, and example; and tried to prepare Trudy, John, and me for a life well lived—a life of service.”
Another example of significant influence, which Frances calls her “defining moment in life,” came when she was visiting her grandmother, Mama Wicks, who lived in South Fork, Pennsylvania. Frances was very close to her grandparents and spent considerable time in their home while growing up. In Mama Wicks’s home, two beautiful Chinese vases stood on a shelf above a large pipe organ. Frances was very fond of these vases and often she would ask her Grandmother Wicks if she could play with them or simply touch them. Each time her grandmother would say no. During one visit, when Frances was eight years old, she again pleaded that she be allowed to play with the vases. Her grandmother took her aside, sat down with Frances and told her this story:
“Long ago, a Chinese laundryman named Mr. Yee lived alone in a small shed near our home. Each week he picked up your grandfather’s shirts and brought them back in a few days, washed, starched, and ironed perfectly. Mr. Yee wore traditional Chinese dress—a long tunic and a cap with his hair in a queue. Some days your mother and her sisters would come home from school crying that bad boys were chasing Mr. Yee, calling him bad names, and trying to pull his queue.
“One day there was a knock on the kitchen door. When I opened it, there stood Mr. Yee with a large package in his arms. I asked him to come in and sit down, but he just handed me the package, saying, ‘This is for you.’ I opened the package and in it were two beautiful old Chinese vases.
“I said, ‘Mr. Yee, these are too valuable, I can’t accept them. Why do you want me to have your beautiful vases?’ He said, ‘Mrs. Wicks, I have been in this town for ten years, and you are the only one who ever called me Mr. Yee. They won’t let me bring my wife and children here, and I miss them too much, so I am going back to China. The vases are all I brought with me. I want you to have them.’ There were tears in his eyes as he said good-bye.”
At the age of eight, that story taught Frances the lesson of respect for all people and became the basis for her commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Another major source of influence for Frances was her friend and mentor, Peter Drucker, whom she first met in 1981. She had been invited by the chancellor of New York University to hear Peter speak. After meeting and speaking with Frances, Peter became deeply involved with the Girl Scouts USA, met its leaders, and shared his management insights with them for the next eight years. For Frances, it marked the beginning of a mentor relationship that lasted until Peter’s death in 2005.
Their regard for one another was mutual. During an interview, Peter was once asked who was the greatest leader he had ever known. His answer? “Frances Hesselbein.” “Oh, you mean in the nonprofit sector,” the interviewer replied. Peter countered, “Frances could manage any company in America.”
After having served as executive director for the Talus Rock and Penn Laurel Girl Scout Councils, in 1976 another door opened for Frances—this time an invitation to interview for the position of CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. Frances describes that experience:
I never would have applied on my own. For 67 years, they had never brought up someone from within the organization. I didn’t want to be interviewed but my husband was marvelous. He said, ‘I’m driving you to New York—it’s the perfect job for you.’ So I went and interviewed, and because I was not interested in the job, I was very open and relaxed. Finally, they asked me, ‘If you did take this job, what would you do?’ I gave them this almost revolutionary, total transformational plan. Two days later, I got the call: Come to New York. It was July 4, 1976, and for the next 13 years, as CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA, I never had a bad day.
So Frances and her Girl Scouts of the USA leadership team set out to make the changes necessary for the organization to thrive well into the future. They applied leadership principles Frances had acquired through her experience learning by doing as a local Girl Scout leader, as well as the lessons of life taught to her by her family and friends and, later, by her mentor, Peter Drucker. Frances and her team worked to establish organizational structures and a culture that encouraged shared authority and decision making, emphasized a spirit of service, and, above all, embraced inclusion.
For Frances, inclusion meant replacing hierarchical, top-down authority with a model of shared governance and decision making that utilized the input of Girl Scout leaders nationwide. Frances called this model Circular Management. It meant finding ways to encourage girls of all races and ethnic backgrounds to become Girl Scouts. It meant making sure that adults in Girl Scouts leadership included members of those same racial and ethnic backgrounds.
To attract such diversity among the Girl Scouts and help girls and leaders in five racial and ethnic groups find themselves in Girl Scouting, Frances adopted a marketing and recruiting approach that spoke respectively to each of these groups. For example, five recruitment posters were created, each one featuring a Girl Scout and her leader who were either African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, or Native American, with a scene and a message that were culturally specific. The effect of this effort was very positive and resulted in doors being opened to girls and leaders that had not been opened before.
Frances also felt that the Girl Scouts of the USA was seriously out of date. When she was appointed CEO in 1976, she realized the program handbooks in use had not been revised since they were originally developed in 1964. To address this concern, she brought together a team of outstanding contemporary writers, researchers, and illustrators to create new program handbooks that were relevant to the young girls of the mid-1970s. These handbooks were heavy in math, science, and technology. And throughout each handbook were illustrations that represented the diversity of girls who were members of local Girl Scout troops.
All of these changes and more transformed the Girl Scouts, whose mission is “To help each girl reach her own highest potential,” into an energized, relevant, inclusive, and growing organization that embraced the future with a hopeful sense that Girl Scouts of the USA could make a real difference in the lives of its troop members. As a result, by 1990, Girl Scouts had grown in number to 2.3 million members with 788,000 adult leaders.
At the last gathering of national Girl Scouts leaders before Frances retired, Peter Drucker was in attendance. As part of her final goodbye to all those in attendance, Frances and Peter were to engage in a dialogue while sitting on the auditorium stage. As they prepared to begin their presentation, Peter said to Frances, “We’ve played a trick on you. I’m going to interview you.” As the interview neared completion, Peter told Frances, “A portrait of you will be hung in the hall of this beautiful facility (the Edith Macy Conference Center in New York). What shall the brass plate on it say?” Frances answered, “I hope it will say that I never broke a promise.” “No,” Peter replied, “It will say, ‘She kept the faith.’”
Frances has indeed kept the faith. She has kept the faith of all those whose influence helped to make her the person she has been throughout her life. She has kept the faith while walking through doors opened to her. And she continues to keep the faith as she lives to serve.
This statement from Frances delightfully captures the themes of her life of service:
Leadership is not a destination; it is a journey. And along the way we find fellow travelers to share the journey. We open doors that tell us where we should be—and then, once we have served, we close those and then we open new doors.
Jim Dittmar is president and CEO of 3Rivers Leadership Institute (www.jimdittmar.com/home), which provides leadership development and training that is transformational. Utilizing insights gained over the past thirty-seven years as a leader, teacher, and trainer of working professionals, Jim creates learning experiences that are exceptional in content and interactive and engaging in process. He is excited about his new book, A Leadership Carol, coauthored with John Stanko.
1. To learn more about Frances Hesselbein, read her autobiography: My Life in Leadership: The Journey and Lessons Learned along the Way (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).