by Nigel Paine

Frances Hesselbein died on the 11th of December last year, a month after her 107th birthday. She is best known as the Former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA and President and CEO of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership forum, but those two lines do not do justice to her remarkable achievements over a long life. She continued to work until her death, and she gave her last presentation to PennCLO doctoral students at the age of 104! And there, she held her audience spell bound for an hour.

Her lasting legacy is her commitment to, and lived experience of, servant leadership and leading with purpose. Her unshakable belief was that leadership was about ‘how to be' rather than ‘how to do’.  From her work, there developed a deep and enduring friendship with Peter Drucker who referred to her as the ‘best CEO in America' and the 'most capable person to lead General Motors' at various times. It is a rare leadership quality that translates from the Girl Scouts to General Motors! Almost to prove this, she became the first woman, as well as the first head of a not for profit, to be put on the cover of Newsweek Magazine in March 1990 at the age of 75.

She is much better known in the USA than outside, but I think that the values and ethos she embodied will live on, and be seen as increasingly important, rather than forgotten as the years pass. She was global in vision and global in outlook. Her special qualities were recognized by President Clinton when she was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (America’s greatest civilian honor) in 1998.

She took up a role as the first female, and first civilian chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point College at the modest age of 93, where she taught for two years. Her message of compassion, her belief in diversity and holistic leadership, resonated as powerfully there, as it had done in the Girl Scouts of America. She continued to visit West Point regularly until the pandemic prevented her from travelling.

She made a huge impression on everyone she met, and her funeral in the town where she grew up - Johnstown Pennsylvania- was attended by a huge crowd of people who had been touched by Frances' compassion and brilliance. The varied eulogies that were delivered were a testament to her enduring power and impact.  She changed lives:  whether she was speaking to young African American females, corporate CEOs or 5-star Generals.

She believed that leadership was important and powerful, and the best leaders enabled others to become their best selves. Her, motto was:  'to serve is to live'. Her vision of leadership was always about others: about diversity and respect and taking action to make the world a better place. Our life is our work, she claimed; and our work is love made visible. She set a high moral bar!

At the Memorial Service for Frances, in Johnstown PA, Col. Diane Ryan related the story of Frances' encounter with Madeleine Albright when she was President Clinton's Secretary of State (1997-2001). Albright had gathered a group of influential business and military leaders together for lunch. She asked them to help her better understand the reasons for the decline in democratic institutions in the United States. Everyone spoke apart from Diane Ryan, and when asked her view she quoted her mentor and said that Frances’ view was that the decline in democratic institutions was related to the lack of civility in society. Albright responded by saying it was the most profound comment she had heard that afternoon.

That struck me as a profound observation. A lack of civility is based on intolerance; taking an ideological stance rather than listening and attempting to understand. It is about driving your views forward in order to obliterate someone else’s or pushing yourself in order to eliminate others. So many organisations almost celebrate incivility as a hall mark of decisive behavior, and reward those who take difficult decisions without compassion. It leads to unnecessary conflict and confrontation and an enduring and corrosive belief that my success can only come when someone else is made to fail. Singular views are driven into an organization and anyone who might take a contrarian perspective is eliminated as a potential threat. It is about confrontation not cooperation, defeat rather than compromise.

Frances was a careful listener, who gave her full focus to whoever she was with. She tried to understand other perspectives even if her values drove her in an opposite direction. She stood up and spoke with grace and understanding.  She saw people as life-size (another comment at her Memorial Service) and brought diverse groups of people together to work on problems. Diversity was at the core of her belief, alongside compassion. We should all be grateful for her life and work and long may it influence and endure. A world in and outside work, with more compassion, more respect and increasing diversity is one I would vote for.