Servant Leadership: The Humble Leader - Featuring Suzanne Harman Munson

Pity Party Over

Historian Suzanne Harman Munson discusses her book Jefferson's Godfather: The Man Behind the Man, revealing the significance of servant leadership exemplified by George Wythe, a lesser-known Founding Father.

Throughout the conversation, Suzanne offers valuable insights essential for navigating contemporary challenges, emphasizing the importance of individual impact, critical thinking, kindness, and humility.

Listen to this episode of Pity Party over and discover how servant leadership and humility can transform lives on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: You essentially got into writing and history after you retired? Did I get that right?

Suzanne Munson: That's correct. Uh, I didn't have time to write books when I was working. And, um, I had a lot of responsibilities at home as well, raising children and so on. After my husband died and after I retired, I went on kind of a journey in a lot of different directions, and I've written books in different genres.

Stephen Matini: Why do you think you chose writing and you chose history of all possible directions?

Suzanne Munson: Well, my parents loved history, particularly my father. He would go to bed reading history. Well, he was interested in the Civil War, and he would read detailed accounts of the battles, which not my cup of tea by any means, but we always told stories of our ancestors who came to this country and why they came. So I've always been interested in history, but I, I majored in English, which was very helpful to me as the writer.

Stephen Matini: Writer. And your family goes back generations?

Suzanne Munson: Yes. They go back to the earliest days of the United States.

Stephen Matini: As far as the Founding Fathers, one of your interests is the Founding Fathers. Did you investigate, did you study them all or specific ones, because you focus specifically on Jefferson, but did you have any interest in one of the other ones?

Suzanne Munson: Well, yes, I have. I'm reading, um, pretty big book about, um, Benjamin Franklin now who really deserves more credit for helping us win the Revolutionary War. I really like following John Adams and Abigail Adams. But the two Founding Fathers that I focus on in my writing are Thomas Jefferson and his wonderful mentor George with, who is called the forgotten founding father, because hardly anybody knows anything about him today.

And I uncovered him and some reading and I said, why don't we know more about this man who was very instrumental in the early success of this country? And his story needs to be told in the 21st century. And I wanted to tell it, but I couldn't because I was working.

But as soon as I decided to, uh, to leave the office world, I said light bulb went off. And I said, well, I can finally do this book. But it took about five years to write that book because for some reason I couldn't focus at home. So I would go away to various retreats, writers retreats, spiritual retreats for 48 hours at a time or a week at a time, and really focus intensely on it.

Stephen Matini: The process of writing. It's a spiritual experience, and you spend so much time within yourself. What have you learned about yourself when you started digging into this, this whole world or writing?

Suzanne Munson: I sort of think of myself as a light giver. You know, the things that I'm learning, I like to share with other people, the integrity of this founding father. I think that we need greater integrity in our government. I've given more than three dozen lectures and online interviews about integrity and government that are need for, for that. Now.

Also, after my husband died 10 years ago, I, uh, went on a spiritual journey to find out where he went and what he was doing, if that was knowable, and where we all go and what we do after we leave our physical form. So that was a separate journey. So I was really on two journeys. I was on a traditional journey, uh, with the traditional history, and then I was on a metaphysical journey trying to learn more about the afterlife. So two parallel journeys. And I've written books in both of those genres.

Stephen Matini: Was it clear from the very beginning what you were looking for, or were you just aimed by curiosity and openness?

Suzanne Munson: Well, with the first book that I wrote, which is called Jefferson's Godfather, uh, that was the biography of George with, it was very clear that I wanted to tell his story, that I felt his story was needed today in the 21st century. Now, my latest book, which is called of Loss and love, a Journey of the Heart that took 10 years to write the book has a happy ending. I did actually do the modern thing. I went online at the encouragement of friends and found my current husband. So it's a memoir of, of my three years between my husband's death and my marriage.

Stephen Matini: What is the solace that you received from history?

Suzanne Munson: Well, I'm very much inspired by what our Founding Fathers did to create the United States of America. Uh, they were very brave men. They were inspired. I believe what they did was unheard of in the history of the world. Now, we had a Roman Republic, briefly. We had a Greek democracy briefly. They went away fairly quickly.

And so what these individuals wanted to do was totally revolutionary, not just on the battlefield, but in the battlefield of ideas. And that was to give power to the people and to create a democratic republic for the first time ever in history, that people were free from kings and queens and popes and aristocracy.

Well, the hope was that we would have a meritocracy, that only the best people would rise to be leaders, and that the people would choose those leaders, choose them periodically, and if they weren't satisfactory, bo vote them out of office without killing them throughout the history of mankind, you had to kill somebody to get rid of him if he was in power.

And so the peaceful transition of power was very, very strong ideal of these Founding Fathers. That's why they would've been appalled at what happened on January 6th. That would've been their worst nightmare. So this is a time when we need to visit the ideals of these Founding Fathers.

And what happened in America in the late 18th century, what we came up with a government by the people of the people, for the people and our constitution that spread all across the world. Our constitution was, um, adopted by many, many, many countries after that took a while.

And democracy is still an ideal, a worldwide ideal. It's not in place in, uh, most countries, uh, to the extent that we'd like to have it in place, but it's still an ideal. People still are searching for freedom. They want their freedom.

Stephen Matini: I believe that democracy is a huge responsibility for all of us. Some of the worst nightmares in history, were democratically elected. If the Founding Founders came back today, what would you say they would say about democracy and what is the right approach for all of us in terms of, you know, living this responsibility?

Suzanne Munson: This is outlined in my book called The metaphysical Thomas Jefferson, what Thomas Jefferson might say today about our government, our higher education, our news, media, religion, the use of military foreign policy, all those institutions. And I believe what he would say is that we as a people have become apathetic.

We've allowed our freedoms to be taken away gradually, like the frog in the kettle of water as it heats up what is said in that book, the metaphysical Thomas Jefferson. What he might say if he were observing us today, is that he would crave most of all critical thinking. He didn't use these terms, but TikTok, Facebook, all those social media things where we're totally absorbed by ourselves and our little circle of friends and what they think of us, and we're not paying much attention to what our government officials are doing. Jefferson, above all wanted an educated popula populace and wanted, um, universal education for everyone, rich and poor.

That was a revolutionary concept at the time. Only the, um, wealthy, they were educated. And so he would want critical thinking. Uh, he would want us to demand integrity of our, uh, leaders. He would want the leaders in Washington to form circles of integrity. Not all representatives in Washington are corrupt or deal in self-dealing, but enough of them are. But some of them really are striving to be good public servants. And we have one here in Virginia, Abigail Berger, who is admired for being a true public servant.

And so there are some like her who were fairly new to the game and haven't gotten corrupted and haven't really started feathering their nests with all the large s that's available. So I think he would want leaders in government to form circles of integrity so that there's a mass of individuals and not just a handful who want the best for the people and not just for themselves or for special interests for the powerful.

So some of this is going on. I, I think sometimes things have to get so bad that, uh, you know, people will say enough of this, which we've hit the bottom here, and we, we need to do things differently. We need better leaders. And so the hope is that more people of integrity will offer themselves for a public office. It's not easy. It's a dirty business.

There's a lot of dirt thrown around, and it would be nice if that weren't necessary, weren't considered necessary. We do need more leaders with integrity, interest for the public rather than pure self-interest and ego ego's gone wild right now in, in some quarters in Washington. And what's right for the people is secondary. Another thing that he would be very concerned about is freedom of the press. Of course, that's in our first amendment, and we do have more freedom of the press than most countries have, but our press is declining.

Uh, our newspapers don't have the staffs that they did 10 years ago to do investigative reporting and TV stations. And they've all kind of acquiesced to these feel-good stories or covering murders and accidents and things like that. And there's not enough coverage of what's going on in our government. And you could make that interesting. It doesn't have to be dull, but the decline of investigative reporting would be of great concern to our Founding Fathers, because you can't have a government without clarification, without people knowing what's really going on behind the scenes. Because if we don't know those things, it's an open door to corruption.

And here in my town, we need to analyze just at the local level, who's getting the contracts for the, you know, multimillion dollar deals here. Are they cronies? Was there open bidding for these big dollar items? Those things need to be open, and they're being hidden, not just here, but all over. So cronyism will run rampant if you don't expose it. That's just one, one aspect of government, not to speak of just out and out corruption.

Stephen Matini: In your experience, in your studies, researching and writing about the Founding Founders, you mentioned the word integrity many times. And to me, when I think about the moment in history was one of those exceptional time, like, you know, Florence doing Renaissance somehow for whatever the reason, there were this huge concentration of amazing people why that happened. Who knows? But it's really bizarre to think about it. Why do you think integrity seemed to be such a distinctive feature of these, these amazing people who laid the foundation for us? And today we struggle with integrity.

Suzanne Munson: In my book, Jefferson's Godfather, which is a biography of his mentor George, with, I make the case that about the power of one, the ability of just one individual for, uh, great, good or a great evil. And in his case, he had a lot to do with the early success of this country because he trained not only Thomas Jefferson, but Chief Justice John Marshall, the revered statesman, Henry Clay and 200 other future leaders in government, and also in the court system to very important agencies for the success of a country.

And so he had an enormous influence. And because he had such great integrity himself, uh, he was a role model for the servant leader. He influenced either directly or indirectly, all five of our first five presidents. He was a friend of each of them, or a role model for each of them. And that was the first, oh, three decades of this country, very consequential, three decades.

I think that their sense of integrity, he was a big part of that because he had so much of it himself. I attribute a lot of that to George West's Quaker background. Most of his contemporaries were of the Anglican faith, and they were very arrogant. People in Virginia, particularly Virginians at that time, were known to be arrogant. The aristocracy, uh, because they fashioned themselves, uh, after the House of Lords in, uh, England, large landowners, and they did not oppose slavery. They accepted that as a way of life. He was outta step with his contemporaries. He was ardently opposed to slavery.

And I attribute that to one of his Quaker ancestors who came to this country a hundred years before and preached about the evils of slavery and taught that the Bible did make references to this stealing being one, stealing another person's life. So I, I think he had a big influence.

A lot of his students never freed their slaves, but he made them feel very guilty about it. And then he just was a very honest person. Contemporary of his said. Well, he was the only honest lawyer I ever knew. He made a good living. But he could have made much bigger living if he had accepted liars and cheats as clients. But he would never defend a, uh, a liar and a cheat. Everyone had to have a good case if he were to accept it and be more or less on the right, or if they weren't on the right, be repentant for their sins.

So the Founding Fathers had a wonderful opportunity to change history for the better. George Beth being one of the revered leaders at the time, his legacy has been lost to time, but he was enormously influential at, in his day, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Constitution leader in the Continental Congress, speaker of the House of Delegates in Virginia. Those were the early days when everything was new and fresh and we were reinventing the, our world.

Hundreds of years later, we have what we have in Washington because big money has been allowed in as a mighty power in our government, and it's very easy to feather one's nest. So there's really more temptations now, I think, uh, than there were at the beginning of the country. Eventually corruption did and self-dealing did creep in, and partisanship did emerge fairly early. George with was not part of that, but it emerged very much so during Jefferson's time.

Stephen Matini: When you say servant leadership, so servant leadership is something that we hear a lot these days. It's also the many leadership programs that had their name. What would it be? Your own definition of servant leadership?

Suzanne Munson: Putting the public's interest before your own, or at least having a balance, just not being totally self-interested and not letting your ego run wild as we see right now in Washington. Now in writing this book, uh, my first book called Jefferson's Godfather, the Man Behind the Man, I can come up with at least seven leadership qualities that George with this founding father had and that he shared as a role model, as a servant leader for others.

Number one, a strong ethical foundation, the only honest lawyer I ever knew.

Number two, mentorship, the ability to mentor generously. He influenced the futures of approximately 200 future state and national leaders.

Number three, advisorship, if that's a word, uh, couldn't come up with a better word, but George with advised those in higher authority. He was a role model for the colonial governors of Virginia who needed advice about how to interact with this unruly group over here.

He did influence the first five American Founding Fathers, either directly or indirectly.

Number four, scholarship and preparation. George West did not have much of a formal education. He learned Greek and Latin at the knee of his mother, and then I think the money ran out and he couldn't go to college. And then when he was a legal apprentice to his uncle, he didn't learn much. And so he found that he, if he were to succeed in life, he would have to teach himself. And he became a self-taught scholar preparation. He never went into court unprepared, and he was an excellent lawyer, and he served those in the highest circles in Virginia.

Number five, and this should be probably number one, along with ethics, is, um, emotional intelligence, people skills. Now we know about iq, but EQ is equally important. George With's IQ was probably not as high as Jefferson's.

George with was very smart, but he also had to work hard. Um, he studied and he was prepared. So he had an IQ that was sufficient for leadership, but he also had the eq, the emotional quotient. He was a friend to those in the highest circles as well as to the low born. He freed his slaves as soon as he was legally able to do so. He was a friend of children. They said a a surly dog would wag his tail when George with walked by. Uh, so he had had those both skills. Um, EQ and IQ.

Number six, humanitarian values. Unlike his contemporaries, he reviled slavery. Uh, and, and he was a humanitarian in many other ways. He and the one of the colonial governors started the first hospital for the mentally ill in Williamsburg. It was the first in North America, number seven, although that really shouldn't be seven, but humility.

And he was modest in dress and speech reflecting his Quaker background. The best leaders like I can think of, Mahatma Gandhi is the major figure here. Uh, they were very wise people, but they were very humble in their wisdom. So a case in point with taught Chief Justice, John Marshall, who was one of the most consequential chief justices in American history.

And so when Marshall became Chief Justice, he walked in to meet his, his group in a plain black robe. Well, they were astonished because they had adorned themselves in Irman and red velvet because they wanted to be like the justices in England. He set the example, and I think he got the idea of the plain black robe, the robe of a servant from George with who dressed very modestly.

And I think in some of his role roles as clerk of the house delegates, uh, he probably wore the plain black robe. And so that changed, you know, the whole demeanor of the United States Supreme Court. It gave them a more humble approach to their job. So the only deviation from that that we've seen recently is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who added a little lace collar to her robe. But that can be forgiven. So, uh, those are, there's seven of the qualities that I found in doing research for George with, for the book Jefferson's Godfather,

Stephen Matini: As you were talking then, you said it, the word that kept coming to my head was, um, humble humbleness.

Suzanne Munson: Yes, we all need to learn humility. And it's not the same thing as being humiliated. I've learned that one myself. So we all must try to be servants or helpful to our fellow man in one way or another. That requires a little bit of humility in trying to let go of our ego so much.

Stephen Matini: One thing that helps me tremendously to keep my attitude, uh, humble, hopefully, is the awareness that I will not be here forever. What would you say that could be a first step for someone to learn a more humble perspective?

Suzanne Munson: Sometimes you have to be brought low by adversity or a great tragedy, or just realizing that you have too much ego, you need to knock it down a peg or two. I can't say when, when I started thinking about that, seriously, it was probably, probably after my husband died. I had time to think about myself.

Also, I think we need to realize that our later years can be time for enormous growth. I said when I reached 70, that my seventies were gonna be the best decade of my life, that I was gonna solid fly in my seventies, but I didn't know what I was gonna do, had no idea. Just let things flow. So a certain degree of humility is important there. I ask for guidance. I get little nudges, I think from the other side about nice things to do or good things to do.

I always answer my nudge, nudges, otherwise I'd feel kind of bad about something, you know, even if it's just to call somebody or answer a call from an irritating person or take an irritating person to the doctor, you know, that's pushed my limits a little bit. I try to do a lot of volunteer work. I think that's extremely important in living a fulfilling life.

And so I work with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. I do a lot of work with them, and I teach classes that they have in their recovery program. I teach a class on love and forgiveness. Forgiveness is very important. I teach a la a class on emotional intelligence, and they are hungry for this because in their addiction they become stunned as individuals. If you start drinking and drugging when you're 19, you have arrested development. So a lot of these people are just discovering themselves in sobriety.

So that is, uh, very rewarding for me to try to help these people. And I enter the classroom, uh, with a degree of humbleness, of humility and, uh, try to relate to them on their level. I've had my issues as well, and so I relate to them. But, uh, meaningful volunteer work, even if you're just working in a soup kitchen, you know, labeling soup out, it's better than sitting home watching TV all day.

And a lot of people who retire just go out to the golf course or play bridge. And nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with playing games. We should amuse ourselves. We should have a good time. But you have to balance that with giving to others. And that also includes giving financially if you're able to do so. There's a lot of want in this world. There's refugees all over the world who are literally starving right now.

And so we must give generously if we can afford to, to do that to doctors without Borders and all of the good agencies that are trying to help the helpless. So all of that is part of, you know, living more humbly, trying to get out of your ego, trying to think of other people. And that's really part of the secret to to being happy.

Stephen Matini: Our society seems to emphasize so much a specific moment in time in your, your twenties when you're super young, it is a shame because life is so much more bigger. And what you said as you age, you, you get a different understanding about everything, a different appreciation about everything that you cannot possibly have. You know, when you are, when you're younger. There's something I wanna ask you that you mentioned before when you were talking about leadership and has to do with the notion of freedom. Because the word freedom is super important. And today, freedom. The word freedom is everywhere. Freedom of speech or freedom, this and that. And people get really confused about what freedom it really is. Some people feel it's a license to do or, or say whatever they want. And for me, it's not at all freedom. If anything is accountability, freedom is responsibility. What is your definition of freedom and what is the, the responsibility of, of people if they really want to be free?

Suzanne Munson: Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of hate speech. Certain forms of hate speech are being punished. I mean, media, people are being fired if they do that, but other people are getting by with it on social media and so on. So we need not just a revolution of integrity, but a revolution of kindness, I guess is, is a word I'm thinking of.

We need to be kinder to one another. We need to watch that hateful speech, that judgmental speech. Just because you can say it doesn't mean you should say it. So I think that's one freedom that we, we need to really think about what is harmful speech, harmful writing, harmful speaking? Do we really need to say those things? Do we really need to think those things? Can't we teach ourselves to be more thoughtful, more kind, more considerate? So I'm hoping that we'll have better role models in the future and that a lot of this hate speech will, will go away.

It's very unhealthy and it's caused a lot of us to turn off the news. Not just because of the hate speech, but because it just seems that all the worst kinds of behavior are presented in the news. And what is our local news? Murders, robberies, car wrecks, whatever. After a while, it gets painful. I listened to the news just enough to be well-informed. I used to listen to it morning, noon, and night. 'cause I wanted to be super well informed. But I can't do that anymore. I don't listen to it until evening. And then a small dose of it just to be informed.

Stephen Matini: I feel the same way, , I am informed, but I notice that the more time I spend reading that negative molasses, it doesn't really add any value to my life. So I want to know, of course, what's happening, but I'm more preoccupied about spending my time with you than feeling upset, you know, well, what is the point? You know? But Susan, we talked about so many things and all of them are so important. But out of all the things that we said, is there anything that you deem really important impressions for our listeners to focus on?

Suzanne Munson: Well, this is what Thomas Jefferson would want. And George, with these two Founding Fathers, they would want more critical thinking. We need to watch our head time, what I call head time. And I wrote a reflection about that.

We are what we think, literally, we are what we think. And if we're dwelling in negativity all the time, it's like a, well, particularly if we have a resentment against somebody or several people, that's a boomerang. It comes back to bite us. Try to think positively, try to live positively, live healthy, think healthy, but also be critical thinkers.

Now, I'm very irritated with a lot of my friends who listen to one particular TV channel that tends to slant things and present only one side of an argument that is just wrong. You need to sort through all of the trash and all of the good ideas, and we need to read better books. Get back to reading books or pick better tv. There's, there's some very good things you can look at on tv. Be a critical thinker and try to live. Kindly learn forgiveness

Stephen Matini: And kindness shall be. Susan, thank you so much for spending time with me. I've learned a lot of stuff. I have something to think about this weekend and many days to come. Thank you.

Suzanne Munson: I've enjoyed it. Stephen.