Frances Hesselbein has headed Peter Drucker’s Leader to Leader Institute for 21 years. Before that, she turned around the Girl Scouts of the USA. Now she shares her lessons in leadership.

FORTUNE — Frances Hesselbein received a call to head Girl Scout Troop 17 in Johnstown, Pa., in her early twenties. Married, with an 8-year-old boy, she felt unequipped to manage a gaggle of 10-year-old girls. But she led the troop for eight years and eventually moved to the state level in York, Pa. There she implemented management guru Peter Drucker’s philosophies — which she had stumbled upon while browsing Johnstown’s Cambria Free Library. Her success caught the attention of the national Girl Scouts organization, and Hesselbein became its CEO. In her 13 years with the group, she led a turnaround and worked directly with Drucker, who recruited her to run his Leader to Leader Institute (then called the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management) in 1990. Hesselbein, 96, yes, 96 years old, has outlived her mentor but remains CEO of the institute, which will be renamed the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute in early 2012. The author of an autobiography published in February, My Life in Leadership, she shares her lessons withColleen Leahey.

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