Latest / Lead With Clarity: Practical Insight for Senior Leaders / Being Before Doing: The Foundation Frances Hesselbein Said Leaders Can't Skip
Transcript
- Blake Holman: Welcome to Lead with Clarity. This is a space for leaders who want to grow without losing themselves in the process. Each episode is a short reflection on leadership, influence, and the inner work that shapes how we show up for others. It's not hype, it's not noise, just clear thinking for the journey of leading well. Today's episode is entitled Being Before Doing: The Foundation Francis Hesselbein said leaders cannot skip. Here we go. There's a question that many leaders never sit with long enough. Not What should I do next? That one gets plenty of attention. Meetings get scheduled around it, consultants get hired for it, entire strategic planning cycles are built to answer it. The question I'm talking about is quieter, and it's harder. Who am I becoming? Francis Hesselbein, one of the most respected organizational leaders of the last century, put it this way. The leader for today and the future will be focused on how to be, how to develop quality, character, mindset. values and courage before coping with the question of what to do. Let's think about that again. Before the question of what to do. She's not dismissing strategy. She's not saying execution doesn't matter. She's saying there's a sequence. And most leaders have it backwards. Here's what I see constantly in the work I do with executives and leadership teams. Leader gets promoted. They're smart. They're capable. They've got their credentials. The track record, the vision. And then they hit a situation the playbook doesn't cover. A team conflict that lives below the surface. A decision where the data points one way and the instinct says another. A moment that requires moral clarity in a politically complicated environment. And the leader who has not done the inner work, the one who has invested entirely in skills and strategy, but almost nothing in character and values, that leader hesitates. Or worse, they default to whatever is easiest in the moment. Not because they're a bad person, because they haven't built the foundation that would hold them steady when everything else is shifting. That's what Hesselbein was pointing to. Not a soft idea, a structural one. The common misread of this principle is to treat it as a pre career task. Do the inner work early, figure out your values, then get on with the real work of leadership. That's not it. The development of character, mindset, and values is not a phase. It's a practice. It's the continuous work that sits underneath every decision you make, every relationship you build, every team you lead. Here's the reframe I want to offer. Think about the best leader you've ever had the privilege of working with or observing. Now think about what made them exceptional. I'd be willing to bet it wasn't primarily their strategic acumen or their technical knowledge, it was something else. It was the sense that they were grounded, that they knew who they were, that their actions aligned with their stated beliefs even when it was costly. That they were not easily knocked off their footing when things got hard. That quality does not come from a methodology. It comes from years of deliberate attention to being, not just doing. And here's why this matters even more in the environment so many lead leaders are navigating right now. The tools are changing fast. Complexity is accelerating. The shelf life of any particular skill or strategy is shorter than it's ever been. In a world like that, the leaders who will endure are not the ones who can access the most information or execute the most efficient process. They're the ones whose judgment can be trusted when the situation is ambiguous, when the data is incomplete, when the human moment requires something that a framework cannot provide. Character is not a soft competency. It is the competitive edge that does not become obsolete. So here's what I'd ask you to carry forward from this episode: not a tactic, but a reflection. When was the last time you invested deliberately in who you are as a leader, not just what you know or what you can do? The leaders who will matter most in the years ahead are those who do both, who bring sharp minds and strong character to the table at the same time. Hesselbein spent a lifetime showing us what that looks like. The question is what we do with the example that she left behind.