Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Frances Hesselbein

When I choose what I do, I ask, 'Does it make a difference?'

At one time, there was a stereotype that your Girl Scout leader was the mother of a Brownie, but increasingly, we are having young businesswomen and professional women who are not mothers but care about children.

I didn't have a career plan. But what I did was, whenever there was a door open and a new opportunity, I always looked into it and took a chance and walked through the door.

A single person doesn't change an organization, but culture and good people do.

Leadership is not a basket of tricks or strategies or skills that you pull out. Leadership begins with the quality of the person.

Age is irrelevant.

We are increasingly becoming a pluralistic nation.

It is what we do with our lives that counts.

In my life, I don't have roadblocks and obstacles. I might have something you would call a 'challenge.' I throw that out the window, and I call that a wonderful opportunity.

There is just one reason that we are placed on this Earth. That reason is to love and be loved - in that order.

In the future, it will not be the one big message, the one big voice, but millions of us, in our own way, healing, unifying, and experiencing that one defining moment when we recognize that sustaining the democracy is the common bottom line - whoever we are, whatever we do, wherever we are, the call is to sustain the democracy.

We do not know what lies ahead, yet whatever the challenge, leaders will rise, finding the heart, the language, the caring that embraces and sustains.

If you grow up in Germantown, Pennsylvania, as I did, 5:30 means 5:30.

Listening is an art.

Not long after I was married, World War II began. My husband John volunteered for the Navy and was sent to Pensacola for training as a Naval Combat Air Crew photographer. It seemed a strange assignment for a young newspaper editor and writer, already exempt, but off he went, saying goodbye to our 18-month-old Johnny and me.

Move beyond the old assumptions, practices, and language that can be barriers to equal access.

When it comes to communicating change at any time, the mission must be clear, and it must inspire.

When you see a roadblock or challenge as an opportunity, it is amazing how you are already halfway there.

At a young age, I learned from my grandmother that I should respect all people. Her lessons were defining moments in my life and determined the type of leader that I would become.

Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners - language, behavior, and actions - are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.

Good leaders make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

Leadership is a matter of how to be - not how to do it.

The Millennial mindset is one on the pulse of changing technology. They multi-task and enjoy a challenge. They need projects that utilize their knowledge and skills that can connect with their philosophical or deeper interests.

Carry a big basket. In other words, be open to new ideas, different partners, and new practices, and have a willingness to dump out the old and irrelevant to make room for new approaches.

I had read everything Peter Drucker ever wrote.

We see change as a challenge, not as a threat.

An exceptional career is one that provides an opportunity to serve. It is a satisfying career in which you can't wait to get up in the morning to begin! You have a sense of purpose and mission. You know why you do what you do. It is a response to a call to serve. Once we do that, everything flows positively.

Leadership flows from inner character and integrity of ambition, which inspires others to lend themselves to your organization's mission.

I always had this philosophy that only the best is good enough for those who serve girls.

We cannot ensure equal access or build upon our diverse strengths by sitting at our desks.

Simple questions can be profound, and answering them requires us to make stark and honest - and sometimes painful - self-assessments.

The real leader redefines or defines the mission in a very powerful way so that people understand it; it permeates the organization.

There's something exhilarating about being in the mountains and talking about management and the future with Peter Drucker.

I never had any question about the direction we were going in at the Girl Scouts. We shared our mission and research with all levels of leaders from the very beginning - a concept I created, using cups and saucers, called 'circular management.' Everyone was on a team; there were no superiors or subordinates. There was respect for all people.

It takes courage for a leader to identify and confront self-imposed barriers, to put in place the personal strategies required to unleash the energy, innovation, and commitment to self-development.

I adored my grandparents and spent every weekend with Mama and Papa Wicks. They had seven children, so they needed a big house - and it seemed only logical to them to build into their house a pipe organ in a music room with a sixteen-foot ceiling.

Planning defines the particular place you want to be and how you intend to get there. It's a responsibility rather than a technique.

I lost my son in late 2011. He had been totally incapacitated from his neck down for the last eight years of his life, but his mind was alive and brilliant in those years. He even wrote a book, 'Allegheny Mountain,' lying at home in his hospital bed.

I did not want to take a troop. I was the mother of a little boy. I knew nothing about little girls.

Social-sector organizations have to be better managed than for-profit organizations... because they have no margin of error.

One of the management imperatives in the '90s is managing diversity. Whatever the organization, when the constituents of that organization look at the board and management staff, they need to find themselves.

Management is the set of skills that can help get things done. Unfortunately, its practice is too often a bag of manipulative tricks to advance someone's own interests, which creates cynicism.

Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.

If you are building a corporate culture of greatness, you have to define culture on your own terms and with the people you work with.

It is not business, it is not government - it is the social sector that may yet save the society.

Tears belong within the family.

In 1976, I was invited to interview for the CEO position of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.

Girl Scouts helps girls make decisions that are right for them and offer support.

With a growing number of one-parent families in the country, the Girl Scout troop can be an indispensable and powerful positive factor.

I'll meet people and tell them what I do, and their first reaction is usually, 'Oh, I love Thin Mints!' And you know, they are awfully good.

Some corporations are extremely well managed; some nonprofit organizations are. It has nothing to do with the sector. It has to do with quality of management.

I thought I'd never leave Pennsylvania. And I never imagined that I'd one day have the chance to lead the largest organization for girls and women around the world.

I believe that tears should be very private, and no matter what issue or what situation, we should have a very dignified demeanor.

Donors do not reward good intentions.

When people are speaking, they require our undivided attention. We focus on them; we listen very carefully. We listen to the spoken words and the unspoken messages. This means looking directly at the person, eyes connected; we forget we have a watch, just focusing for that moment on that person.

Selling cookies is usually a girl's first exposure to the world of business. She learns how to meet the public, talk about a product, sell the product, and is responsible for collecting money, giving change, and delivering the product. That's quite a business venture for a 7-year-old.

Women are working for part or all of their adult lives now. The possibilities are limitless, but you need to prepare.

Organizations exist to make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. And this is the work of effective leaders.

Leadership is much less about what you do, and much more about who you are. If you view leadership as a bag of manipulative tricks or charismatic behaviors to advance your own personal interest, then people have every right to be cynical. But if your leadership flows first and foremost from inner character and integrity of ambition, then you can justly ask people to lend themselves to your organization and its mission.

Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do it.