Three Takeaways From My Lunch With The Great Frances Hesselbein
I had lunch with Frances Hesselbein last week. An absolutely amazing experience. Just to remind you, Frances was the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976 – 1990 and awarded our nation's highest civilian honor – the Presidential Medal of Freedom – in 1998. She was a protégé of Peter F. Drucker – the father of modern management science – and the founder of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, which has been renamed The Hesselbein Forum in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Drucker called Frances the greatest leader he had ever known. I could go on and on (like… she was the first woman featured on the cover of Business Week magazine or… the first woman and non-West Point graduate to serve as Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point)…
…You probably should know that she was born in 1916 and is now a very young 102 years old. She still shows up regularly to work at her Park Avenue, New York City offices – released a best-selling book in 2018 – and has lunch with people like me. Here are three takeaways from my time with Frances last week:
1. She sees a bright bright future.
During our lunch, she asked me what I saw for my life in five years. After I answered, I asked her the same question. She smiled broadly and said “I see a bright, bright future.” This woman – born before the U.S. entered the First World War – is relentlessly positive and relentlessly focused on the future. One can only imagine the horrific world events she has witnessed over the last century and all of the personal challenges she has endured. She is not a young kid who doesn't yet know how difficult life and leadership can often be. And yet she sees a bright bright future.
In our three hours together she did not utter a negative word about anything. Not one. In my new book The Hospitable Leader I write about how the hopeful happy state of a hospitable leader creates conditions that cause their sphere of influence to feel like a feast to their followers and everyone around them. The bright bright future outlook and attitude of a leader like Frances exudes hope and hope brings happiness. A hopeful person is a happy person because they always believe for the best. Emotions – both positive and negative – are contagious. Especially the emotions of a leader. I feel more positive about the future because I spent time with a hopeful and happy leader. I want the people I interact with to feel that way when they spend time with me. And they should, because I see a bright bright future.
2. She lives fully in the present.
At some point, as Frances and I sat talking in her office after our lunch, I looked at my watch and said that it was time for me to leave because I didn't want our time together to impede on the rest of her schedule that day. She looked at me, and with utter sincerity said, “I have nothing more important on my schedule today then spending this time with you.” As I sat looking at the walls of her office lined with mementos of her relationships with generations of U.S. Presidents and many other significant leaders and famous people. I doubted my own importance. But she didn't. And it wouldn't have mattered if it was me or anyone reading these words. If you were sitting with Frances you would be the most important person in the world to her in that moment.
It is an amazing thing when a leader is focused on creating a bright future and yet is fully engaged in what is important in every moment. Or “who” is important in every moment. I struggle to not rush through the moment – and people – to get to a bright future. But if we pay attention we learn that every present moment is bright and inextricably connected to the bright future we hope for.
3. She is still passionate about inclusion and diversity.
As I finally began to leave her office, Frances insisted on showing me something incredibly significant to her. It was a photo of the staff of a Girl Scout camp she had led in Pennsylvania in 1951. She pointed out three African-American women who were on the camp staff. She called their names and explained their roles. One of these “remarkable people” – as Frances referred to them – was the camp director and Frances’ best friend. Frances told me that in 1951 she was not yet able to take any of these women to eat with her in a restaurant because of the tragedy of segregation. Remember this was a decade before Dr. King led the movement for civil rights that changed everything. But in 1951 Frances was already recruiting a diversity of leaders to any enterprise she was leading. When she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, then President Bill Clinton called her a “pioneer for women, volunteerism, diversity and opportunity.” As she stood there last week and described to me her deep passion around including these women on her camp staff in 1951, I better understood why she was and is a diversity pioneer.
In The Hospitable Leader I wrote that “The Hospitable Leader creates environments of welcome where moral leadership can more effectively influence an ever-expanding diversity of people.” I believe that as leaders we should not only care about exercising influence but influencing an ever-expanding diversity of people. All God's children. And Frances reminded me again how passionately intentional we must be to experience success in this.
Frances Hesselbein may be the most hospitable leader I know. She creates environments of welcome where anyone and everyone can be influenced to good and beautiful things.
And oh… she happens to be one of the long list of incredible endorsers of The Hospital Leader. If you haven't yet picked up copies for you and your team I hope you will now and that you will join with me in learning how to lead a little bit more hospitably. Like my friend; the great Frances Hesselbein.
…check out Frances and I in her office https://www.instagram.com/p/B3aceT2AfcM/