Remembering Frances Hesselbein

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Rita McGrath/Thought Sparks

Remembering Frances Hesselbein Hesselbein, born in 1915, passed away at the age of 107 in 2022.

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When leadership coach and major award winner Marshall Goldsmith describes you as the greatest leader he has ever met, that’s saying something. Frances Hesselbein was one of the last of a generation that included Peter Drucker, a group of influential thought leaders who created much of what we know as great leadership today.

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I first met Frances Hesselbein some years ago, before she passed her 100th birthday. While she was well beyond Octogenarian status even then, I vividly remember her downing glasses of champagne and teasing the CEO’s gathered around her at a dinner hosted by well-known executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith I had no idea who she was. Perhaps you don’t, either. Some background follows...

- Rita McGrath

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Career highlights When she was a young woman, women were not encouraged to be ambitious, and she was laughed at for some of her more outrageous ideas – that she could possibly be a pilot, for example.

She grew up in Johnstown, PA, a town well known for the disastrous 1889 Johnstown flood, and perhaps less well known for its role in establishing one of the most significant modern non-profits, the American Red Cross. Her father died when she was 17, and she needed to go to work to support her family. She held a variety of jobs thought suitable for women of the time, and in due course married John Hesselbein, whose family owned the local newspaper the Johnstown Tribune. They had one son, also named John...

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Frances was a frequent staple guest at leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith’s table. Marshall, also a huge student and collaborator of Peter Drucker’s always maintained that

Meetings and Projects

Hesselbein was the best leader he had ever met- by a wide margin.

I got to know a bit more about Hesselbein in a Fireside Chat (my very first!) with Sally Helgesen, a companion of hers.

Frances was being touted as capable of running General Motors (a big accolade for a nonprofit leader at the time!).

Sally talked about some of the remarkable lessons Frances left with her, which inspired Sally’s own book The Web of Inclusion.

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As Sally Helgesen’s wonderful story about Frances concludes, service was her

An epitaph

passion and her calling and she wasn’t going to let anyone forget that. At a book party for Marshall (at the Four Seasons, no less) that I attended as well, Sally recounts a conversation about a newly retired executive dodging Frances, lest he be pressed into volunteer service!

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