Servant Leadership: The Humble Leader - Featuring Suzanne Harman Munson
Description
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.
Managerial & Leadership Development
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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 frien
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