Hesselbein on Leadership (J-B Leader to Leader Institute/PF Drucker Foundation)

The woman BusinessWeek called the "grande dame of American management" shares her vision of leadership

Frances Hesselbein rose from a volunteer troop leader to become CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA. During her tenure Hesselbein transformed the Girl Scouts and created one of the most vibrant and recognized organizations in the world. In the course of her brilliant career, she was recognized by Fortune magazine as the "Best Nonprofit Manager in America" and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now, for the first time, Frances Hesselbein has collected her most incisive and stirring writings on the topic of leadership in one compelling book. The book affirms Hesselbein's specific leadership principles that will give readers the inspiration to go forth and become exemplary leaders. It is also filled with the practical knowledge readers need so they can make a difference every day. These gems of leadership wisdom include Hesselbein's thoughts on innovation, change, diversity, and what it means to be a woman leader. At the heart of the book is Hesselbein's belief that leadership is about character-a question of how to be, not how to do it. Hailed by Warren Bennis, Peter Senge, Jim Collins, Peter Drucker, and others as one of the most innovative and inspired leaders today, Frances Hesselbein gives readers a star to steer by. Hesselbein on Leadership will engage, energize, and motivate readers to do their best and be their best.

Frances Hesselbein (New York, NY) is the Chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and Editor in Chief of Leader to Leader, the premier leadership journal. She is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the coeditor of numerous books on leadership including The Leader of the Future (Jossey-Bass: 0-7879-5204-4) and The Organization of the Future, The Community of the Future (Jossey-Bass: 0-7879-5203-6).

Frances Hesselbein's views on leadership have attracted fans since the one-time Johnstown, Pennsylvania, troop leader became CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA in 1976 and turned that venerable but struggling organization around. Now in Hesselbein on Leadership the current chairman and founding president of the Drucker Foundation has compiled 19 essays that lay out the philosophy she honed during those experiences and in years since--a philosophy that today draws more admirers than ever, such as Jim Collins, who wrote the book's foreword. In a disarmingly simple manner, Hesselbein offers her underlying definition of the topic at hand ("leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it") and spells out nuances and specifics that those atop any private, public or nonprofit organization would do well to absorb. Throughout the book she shows how character determines performance, how a willingness to innovate and a desire to make a difference regularly bring results, and how the best leaders actually turn a vision into the spark needed to ignite their enterprise. There is plenty of pragmatic advice here amidst the theoretical, and in light of Hesselbein's wealth of provocative yet practical insights, the only complaint may be that this collection is a little on the slim side. --Howard Rothman