The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 604: Sharon McMahon - A Masterclass In Making American History Fascinating & Fun (Creator of Sharon Says So)

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com My books: Welcome to Management - https://amzn.to/3XWyZAH  The Pursuit of Excellence - https://amzn.to/4eX9vtP  The Score That Matters - https://amzn.to/3zPub7Z  My guest: After years of serving as a high school government and law teacher, Sharon McMahon took her passion for education to Instagram, where more than a million people rely on her for nonpartisan, fact-based information as "America's Government Teacher." In a time where flashy headlines and false information often take the spotlight, Sharon is a reliable source for truth and logic. Sharon is the author of: The Small and The Mighty – Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement. Notes: What did Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR have in common? The ability to articulate a vision that others wanted to follow. They were great communicators. If you want to lead people, it helps to become a fantastic storyteller. It helps to be able to stand up in front of a group of people and share the vision in an entertaining and informative way. And then execute on that vision. Be a doer. "The best Americans are not the critics, they are the doers. They are the people who went for broke when everyone else yelled to turn back. They are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down." I've never observed anyone, regardless of field, achieve lasting prominence while voicing rancor or focusing much on the failings of others. Create and share, support others, and enjoy. Givers and creators always prevail. - Andrew Huberman Door-to-door sales helps you deal with rejection. It's good for you. When you see a new person at the gym, celebrate them. Help them get acclimated. The Hello Girls -- AT&T -- Pioneer of telephones. They were doing their jobs wearing gasmasks with bombs exploding around them. Echo Chambers – As a leader, what you don't know, can hurt you. Do not surround yourself with "yes men" or "yes women." You need a diversity of viewpoints. You should feel uncomfortable on a regular basis. You should told you're wrong from the people you surround yourself with. If you're not, then you're living in an echo chamber. Also, pay attention to a broad spectrum of media. If you only watch one news channel or read one newspaper, you will probably end up in an echo chamber. Then develop friendships with people who think differently than you. They're not wrong because they think the way they do. Instead of judging them, why not be curious and learn more about their viewpoint. Gouverneur Morris – One of Alexander Hamilton's best friends and one of our founding fathers. He contributed as much or more to the early republic than Ben Franklin or John Adams. He conceived America's great statement of purpose, the one still recited by schoolchildren. He's the author of the Preamble of the new United States Constitution. "The best Americans are not the critics, they are the doers. They are the people who went for broke when everyone else yelled to turn back. They are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down." I have learned that no one reaches their final moments of mortal existence and whispers to their loved ones, "I wish I had gotten in some more sick burns in the comments section on Facebook." Advice: "Be the "can-do" person. Have the best attitude in the room. Be amazing at whatever you choose to do. Be the person that others love to work with."

If you want to have a legacy, you want your kids to remember you for something, you actually have to get out there and do it and not just spend your life on the sidelines, criticizing other people for doing it wrong. What is the key behind the fact now that millions of people are paying very close attention to basically everything you have to say? I think transparency is a huge part of it and helping people feel educated rather than talk down. I think too often we have forgotten what it means to have a mission statement. Part of starting a business is the willingness to fail. People are not so much afraid to fail as they are having other people watch them fail.

Ultimately, history smiles kindly on people who actually did stuff with their lives. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Inside Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week all right.

You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 66866. Now on to tonight's featured leaders. So good. After years of serving as a high school government and law teacher, Sharon McMahon took her passion for education to Instagram where more than a million people rely on her for nonpartisan fact-based information

as America's government teacher. In a time where flashy headlines and false information often take the spotlight, Sharon is a reliable source for truth and logic. She's also the bestselling author of a great new book called The Small and the Mighty, 12 Unsung Americans who changed the course of history from the founding to the civil rights movement. During our conversation, we discuss how selling bookmarks door to door when she was just 10 years old impacted Sharon as a teacher and leader today. Then she shares practical ideas for how to get out of the echo chamber you might be in

and why that will benefit you as a leader. Then Sharon tells stories about Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, and FDR, and what they each had in common, and why it made them such effective leaders. Ladies and gentlemen, this one's so good. Please enjoy my conversation with Sharon McMahon. Let's actually go back. When you were 12 years old, you had a paper route

that required you to wake up before dawn in the frigid winters of northern Minnesota and walk multiple miles, placing the carefully folded daily inside the screen door of subscribers. Can you tell me what did you learn from that job when you were 12 years old? Thanks for finding that tidbit. I love it. You know, that first job that I had, which probably, it's probably illegal today to hire 12 year olds, honestly. They paid me $72 a month as a 12-year-old to do that job, which frankly is still a lot of money for a 12-year-old. Most 12-year-olds don't make $72 a month. But I think one of the biggest takeaways I had in addition to a love of the news, which I still have, a love of how government

and politics work, which I still have, was just stick-tuitiveness. It was persistence. It was just putting one foot in front of the other. Let me tell you, nobody is like, oh, I'm so excited to get out of bed when it's minus 30 and it's dark and it's 4.30 in the morning. That's not something any adult even is excited to sign up for. So it absolutely taught me a sense of persistence that maybe I wouldn't have been able to garner otherwise. I don't know many 12-year-olds who would sign up for that job. Was it your parents?

What pushed you to do something like that? No, my parents did not push me to do it at all. In fact, they were like, are you sure you want to do this? I had heard that you could make a lot of money as a paper carrier. And I'd seen like an advertisement for it on the bulletin board at the grocery store. And I've always been entrepreneurial. At age 10, I made little bookmarks and covered them in contact paper and went door to door selling my bookmarks and came home over the weekend and had made 50. at age 10. And my mom was like, where did you get $50? So I have always been, that's always been just sort of something that's interested me. How do it? How can I like earn money doing this? So no, I volunteered to do it. And it was not an easy job. It was not as fun as selling bookmarks. I can tell you that much. Well, I'm going to say, though, door to door sales, I think is, is, there's cut code door to sales, there's people who still vacuum cleaners door to door. I've found that people who have done

well in door to door sales, gosh, a high, high percentage of them go on to do well in all different facets of life. So if you think about like you're, I'm curious, what do you think about that? Your willingness to do it, to go, I mean, especially at 10 years old, that seems pretty wild to me. I love it. But what did you learn from that that you think has helped you now to do so? so well as somebody who's a little bit older than 10 years old. Just a little. You know, that's really interesting. I've never thought about, you know, sort of the foundation of door-to-door sales.

But it really, it sets you up for dealing with rejection, which anyone who's been successful in business, any person will tell you you need to be equipped to deal with because you will be rejected. And people who are unable to deal with rejection often fizzle out, right? Like you don't have that perseveration like many people, you know, who are successful might. So there's a willingness to sort of put yourself out there and a willingness to fail involved in, you know, selling anything door to door. I was the Girl Scout that sold all the cookies.

I was, you know, like I had other very strange little business ideas as a child that I tried to sort of pedal door to door that my family still likes to tease me about. some of them more successful than others. But I had a very illustrious door-to-jure career as a young child. Before we started recording, you talked about the fact you're an entrepreneur, you started businesses. And part of starting a business is the willingness to fail, is the willingness for it not to work.

I mean, most people who start businesses, you probably have a string of them and some of them don't work. In fact, you really only need one of them to work for this whole thing to work. I'm curious, when you think back to the businesses you've started, do you have any stories or examples of a time that you thought for sure, okay, this is going to hit, this is going to be great? And then for whatever reason, it did not. And I'm always curious to learn what you learned from an experience like that and how you've implemented what you learned moving forward. You know, I say this in the book, too, that people are not so much afraid to have other people watch or they're not so much afraid to fail. as they are having other people watch them fail. Yeah. It's the judgment of others that stops people from moving forward.

Because we all fail in our own homes all the time. If I was like, no, climb the side of the house, like Spider-Man. You could try and fail. And ultimately, it's just kind of a silly gag, right? It's not that you failed at something per se. It's that somebody watched you fail. And sometimes the stakes are very high. when people are watching you fail.

Sometimes you're losing huge amounts of money. You're impacting your career. So it's the judgment of others that keeps many of us sort of stuck in our immovable place. There was one thing that I tried that I was not very successful at. And I was involved in moving to a new location and had a lot of a lot writing on this location in terms of the build out for my business in terms of the very specific things that I needed in this location. And ultimately, I won't bore you with the whole story. But ultimately, this location ends up being absolutely horrible. It ended up being absolutely horrible. Now, this was not a retail business

where I was dependent on retail traffic or passers by. But there were other things going on in the building, namely a nightclub that opened immediately next door and above me. That was like, ruining what I had going on inside my business. But because I had invested so much time and money, the sunk cost of this location, I just could not bear to essentially, and I only been there for a short while, I could not bear to just say the right answer is to lead this location and to get another one because of all of the time and money. Like, I had enlisted family members, to help me build this out? I had a tremendous amount of personal sacrifice involved in this specific spot. And ultimately what I learned is that it is better to make the right decision sooner

than to wait to make the right decision. If you know that it's the right choice, but you just are being held back by something like, oh, I just asked those, all those people to help me. Oh, I just spent all this money on doing this thing. Often we let the sunk cost hold. us back from doing what we know is right. So if I learned anything from that, and there were a number of things, but one of the top, top lessons is do the right thing faster. The doers are the ones who should be celebrated. In your book, The Small and the Mighty, this is a passage that I think relates to that. You're right, the best Americans are not the critics. They are the doers. They are the people who went for broke when everyone else yelled to turn back. They are

are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down. And I think I love that passage because that's, those are the ones willing to go and do it. The ones who know judgment, they know that judgment will happen from others, especially if they fail and yet they keep going. I mean, that's really the story of America as well. And we're going to get deep into your book. But I just wanted you to elaborate on that element, too. because you're a doer.

This is what you've been doing since you were very young and you continue to do it to this day, but this willingness to go for it, this willingness to do it as opposed to sit on the sidelines and judge others who have that willingness to do it and the willingness to fail as well.

Yeah, it's become tremendously popular, especially online, to make content that is just criticizing other people's content. Like the hate content, sometimes it's a little milder that but it's like let's take a look at this clip and they roll the clip and they're like let me tell you why this person's an idiot exactly the kind of content i'm talking about where it's just critiquing

somebody else's action somebody else's take on something listen that might get you a bunch of clicks that might get you a few little dopamine hits of that immediate feedback like yeah you're so right man you know like the people who respond in your comments yeah i hate her too it makes you feel like yeah, I am right. And that feels really good in our brains to be right in that moment. But ultimately, history smiles kindly on people who actually did stuff with their lives. History does not smile kind of. Name one opinion writer for the New York Times from any time before now. Name one. You know what I mean? Like, we can't do it. But we do remember the great leaders. We do remember the people who were the faces of the movements.

We do remember the people who had elected office. We do remember the great titans of industry. The people who work for suffrage and civil rights, they are the doers that we remember and that history smiles kindly upon. And so if you want to be remembered for something someday, if you want to have a legacy, you want your kids to remember you for something, you actually have to get out there and do it and not just spend. your life on the sidelines, criticizing other people for doing it wrong. Those are not the people

that any of us are going to remember. We don't remember them now and we're not going to remember them in the future. So good. You retweeted something from Andrew Huberman a few years ago, actually, that is similar to this. I've never observed anyone, regardless of field, achieve lasting prominence while voicing rancor or focusing much. on the failings of others, create and share, support others, and enjoy. Givers and creators always prevail. It's right in line with this. Like, you go do it, go out there and do it.

And sometimes you see people who go out and try something new. And the easy thing is to be like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe they're doing that. Or they're joining a direct sales company. And then you have to pause for a second. I say, hey, they're going out and doing something. It's just like the person maybe who is just getting started in the gym. and they don't look exactly like a person who goes in the gym every day. I love seeing people like that.

I'm like, good for you. Let's go. Like it's time. You want to make a change. You want to do something. You want to get healthier. Yeah, you don't look like all the other people in the gym because maybe you're out of shape. But you're here.

You're here. You're doing it. I think we should celebrate people like that who are willing to step up and get after it, even though it's hard to get started or hard to take a chance or hard to start a business. They're the people that we should be celebrating. Totally. To your point about the person at the gym, in fact, it takes a lot more courage for them to be there than for somebody who's already ripped and already has a brand deal with the shoe company. Do you know what I mean?

It doesn't actually require any courage for that person to show up. They're there to get their workout in and get their ego stroked. And the person who is struggling to even figure out how to put weights on. the, you know, how to put plates on the weight rack. They are the people with the courage in that moment. They are the people who deserve the accolades. And what they will go on to achieve will likely be far more noteworthy than the people who were like, oh my God, look at her. She doesn't even know how to use the machines. They're not, that person, the critic, is not the one who's going somewhere or going to be remembered. And Sharon, let's both put

ourselves in the position of hiring maybe somebody for a leadership role. If you were brought in to consult and advise with a company and they said, Sharon, okay, we want to hire a really effective leader, somebody who's going to make something happen and inspire others, wouldn't you choose the person who's out there selling door to door, who's going to the gym for the first time, who's having the willingness to do it and fail versus the person who's the critic? Like, that's a big, I think from a leadership perspective, I want to hear examples of people like that that are willing to get after it versus the ones who won't. Was that one of the things that would be at the top of your list?

Oh, 100%. It's something that I look for when I'm hiring for my own company is that sort of can-do attitude, that like willingness to try. I don't know how to do it yet, but the emphasis is on yet. I'm going to figure that out. you know, in the words of Marie Forleo, everything is figure outable. If you are willing to actually try. How will you figure anything out from the couch making fun of other people who aren't putting the weights on the weight rack correctly? That is not the person who is actually going to figure anything out.

So I love a can-do attitude. I don't know how to do it yet, but that's a day. tomorrow I might have a different answer for you. I'll figure it out. Yes, the willingness to get after it is something that's really hard to instill. It's hard to, it's harder to teach to people. And if somebody who may not have the exact skill set I'm looking for but brings that to the table, I know I can work with that person.

That person can be taught the specific job skills. It's much more difficult to teach sort of an orientation of the spirit. It's much more difficult to teach somebody an attitude than it is job skills. Yeah, the learn it all versus a know at all. I think those are the ones we're looking for. Okay, I want to get into some of the stories from your book, The Small and the Mighty 12 Unsung Americans who change the course of a history from the founding to the civil rights movement.

Now, even just the opening, I was like, wait a second, I'm learning from sharing here because I've never heard of this guy. Okay. And I've definitely heard of Alexander Hamer. We all have. We've probably all seen the musical. It's amazing. It's really good. But one of his best friends, and in fact, the guy who spoke at his funeral, maybe has done as much or more as any of our founding fathers. Can you share the story of this guy and how and why we're not really taught about him in school? Yeah. It's such a curious thing about who makes it into the history books and who doesn't. Why do we know a story about? Benjamin Franklin's kite, but we don't know a story about the man who wrote a huge chunk of the Constitution, including the preamble. So the person I'm referring to is, his name is Gouverner Morris. Gouverner was like his mother's maiden name. So it looks like that's your first name. Yes.

I thought this thing was governor. Like he's the governor of something. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. That's how it seems. It's his mother's made a name. And we think about Alexander Hamilton being a very famous New Yorker in this show. They talk about how he wrote America's financial systems into existence. The whole city of New York basically shuts down for a period of time when Alexander Hamilton dies. It's, you know, it's almost, was almost like a president dying in terms of the amount of businesses were closed when Hamilton is shot by Aaron Barr, which is also, side note, it's, Aaron Burr was the sitting vice president of the United States. Imagine a sitting vice president shooting a political rival and getting away with it.

He is never prosecuted for that. He totally goes free. They put him on trial later for committing treason against the United States, not related to Hamilton's death. And he's acquitted of his treason charges. But that's a separate story for another book. So the person that I think is really, really worth noting, his name is, as I mentioned, Guviner Morris.

He is one of Hamilton's very best friends. And unlike Hamilton and Jefferson who were at each other's throats all of the time, even though they were in many ways intellectual sparring partners, Gouverner and Alexander were intellectual equals who had such an affinity for each other that it is Gouverner Morris, who is called when Alexander Hamilton has been shot and is, you know, rode back across the river from New Jersey. they call him in the Hamilton's hour of need. And he is there in the room when Hamilton dies. He is there when the doctor does an autopsy on Alexander Hamilton, like right then and there in the room of his friend's house. Imagine your friend dying like saying goodbye to your friend.

And the little like the machines go beep, you know, and you realize that they're gone. And then you sit in the room while the doctor does the autopsy he scoops out all your friend's guts. That's also bananas. Like the idea that he just sat there and watched that, that's crazy. He speaks at his funeral, as you mentioned. But the thing that we never learn about U.S. history is that Governor Morris wrote the preamble to the Constitution. He wrote the words, we the people, in order to form a more perfect union. And I talk about this in the book how the preamble to the Constitution is actually America's North Star. It tells us what

America is at her best. And that is, if you distill it down to its essence, America is just, peaceful, good, and free. And those are the principles that Governor Morris lays out in what would be printed in newspapers around the country. The Constitution was intentionally written in a short form, so that it could be easily reprinted in newspapers and people all over the country could read it. And I think too often we have forgotten what it means to be to have a mission statement. A lot of businesses have mission statements. What are we here for? What do we do?

What is our guiding principle? And they make decisions based on those guiding principles. If it's not in our mission statement, we're not going to engage in that activity. Lots of businesses use their mission statements as a guide. And the United States has a mission statement too. And that mission statement really, I feel, should be, we should reorient ourselves to it. So I love the story of Gouverner Morris. He has a very unfortunate death that I won't spoil right now, but his unfortunate death, you're going to read it and be like, excuse me.

Excuse me. It's kind of weird. That's not a normal way to die. It's unfortunate. But what a character he was. Governor Morris was also disabled. He also marries a woman who is his housekeeper and his housekeeper was a relative of Thomas Jefferson's.

So his housekeeper comes to him because she's running away from the law, essentially. She's accused of murdering her own baby. fathered by her sister's husband. We think about, you know, real housewives and all kinds of juicy stories we see in tabloids today. Early America was just as juicy, if not even more so.

Probably more. There was no social media pictures. So people were doing all kinds of things behind the seats. Yeah. Why do you think we're not taught about him? Why am I just learning this now when I probably should have learned it a long time ago? It's a great question. In part, it's because Gouverner Morris intentionally walks away from power. He does not hold a position in the United States government. He is at the Constitutional Convention. He holds a state level office, but he walks away from power. He could have had. He gave the most speeches at that convention, though. He did. He did. He gave over 140 or something. Yes. Over 100 speeches at the Constitutional Convention.

He does engage in some activities for the federal government, but he could have been a senator. He could have maybe been the vice president or the secretary of state. He absolutely, as a wealthy man of prominence, James Madison talks about how uniquely suited he was to write the preamble to the Constitution because he was a fantastic writer and speaker. He could have had almost any level of power that he wanted to. and he walked away from it. And I think that is one of the reasons we don't see his name in lights the way we do with some other people. It is interesting just how history and stories are told and who tells the stories and who writes them. It feels like those who are the best storytellers are able to write history.

And you also have to probably put some work in to ensure you're part of that story. and maybe he just didn't seem like he cared or he didn't want to be a part of that or it wasn't something he pushed for or he didn't die like Alexander Hamilton did. I wonder of all of the above is the reason why we just don't know about him. Yeah, it's for sure multifaceted. But some of it is, yeah, he just was not, he had one child. His child goes on to become one of the founders of the Republican Party when Abraham Lincoln is the first Republican president. So he doesn't have this sort of long and storied legacy throughout the rest of his life. Here's a long list of my accomplishments.

Here's my portrait hung hither and yon. And what makes him walk away from power, I think is an interesting question too. I'm going to go back and forth between you and your story as well as some of the people you've written about. Are you cool with that, by the way? Of course, of course. So Sharon says so. How does this happen? Everybody wants to do what you've done when it comes to building such an amazing following.

What is the key behind the fact now that millions of people are paying very close attention to basically everything you have to say? Sharon says so. Can you talk about the origin story of that and what you think has been the key to you developing such a following? Well, I have been a teacher for a long time. I've been a government and law teacher for many years. And so I developed a lot of skills related to that, related to education, related to explaining how government works just through my years of experience teaching it in a classroom.

So I certainly had both an educational foundation and a work experience foundation when it came to being able to explain how things worked in a fact-based, non-partisan way. And it turns out that there are not a lot of places where you can get that kind of information, get your questions answered, that does not have a strong academic bent. It's not like a textbook, nor does it have a strong slant of we love Donald Trump, we love Kamala Harris, whatever, whoever the candidates are. So often cable news skews one direction or another. it can be more difficult to just go somewhere and get a straight answer for what happens if the electoral college is tied. What happens then? Yeah, could you Google it and then read four articles? Sure, but how do you know if they're accurate? Because they say slightly different things. How do you know if

Wikipedia is telling you the truth? There's just this sort of dearth of locations to be able to ask a very specific question about how something might work. And so I started this in 2020 shortly before the 2020 election when perhaps you noticed there was a fair amount of misinformation floating around the internet. And one of the pieces of misinformation that I saw that was sort of a genesis moment of this account was a person that I didn't know who was a friend of a friend on Facebook. And he was commenting on my friend's post about how the electoral college was like a university that you could graduate from, which it is not, okay? It's not a location.

You can't go there. There's no central office. It's not a educational facility. The electoral college is a concept. It's not a place. And so that's just demonstrably false, right? It's not my opinion about the electoral college. You're just wrong.

You're just incorrect about the facts, but you're very confidently wrong. And there were a lot of people who were confidently wrong on the internet in 2020. And so I decided that I could either spend my time arguing with strangers in the comment section on Facebook and Instagram about how they were wrong about things like the Electoral College. Or I could make some explainer videos that other people could use, that they could, my friend could say, actually watched this video and reply back to the guy who was being confidently wrong on Facebook. And I figured that the videos that I might make would have potentially more longevity than a single social media comment. So I just started making little, like I said, fact-based nonpartisan explainer videos. And they started growing in popularity, especially amongst local TV and radio stations around

the country. Local news stations cannot afford to alienate half of their audience by saying, and in this election, you should be voting for the following candidate, right? If you're tuning into MSNBC or Fox, you have what kind of slant you're getting, but local news stations cannot say, here's who the right candidate is. Today we have on thus and such, who's going to tell you why you should vote for Donald Trump or vote for Joe Biden. That is not a value proposition for local media. So what I was bringing to the table and what local stations around the country quickly picked up on was being able to explain how this very contentious top-of-mind event, the 2020 election,

was going to play out how to vote, but not telling you who to vote for. It turned out that that was a niche that was just waiting to be filled. And then I've spent years developing the trust of my community members. And I guard that trust very carefully. But that's the origin story. What has led to that trust? How have you earned it? Transparency is a huge part of it.

Of course, transparency. I've raised over $10 million for a variety of causes like forgiving members. medical debt, teacher grants, et cetera, being super transparent about how much money I collect and where it all goes and keeping none of it for myself, covering all of the costs of the administration of these funds that I distribute, posting screenshots and all of the things that show how somebody is able to trust that I'm doing what I say with any money that I might raise, for example. Also posting sources of like, when I say this is happening, here's how I know that that's correct. here's a link to that.

Please verify. I make the case frequently that there is no single individual who deserves your unexamined trust for all eternity. Especially when it comes to politics, that has historically not played out well. But it's historically not played out well in places around the world. And that includes me. And so I always, like any time somebody positioned themselves as a like I alone can, can save us. I'm the only trustworthy one. You should only listen to me. That person, that's the person you should never listen to. That's the person who has always a semester

plan. Leading you to a place you don't want to go. I think transparency is a huge part of it and helping people feel educated rather than talk down to. Yes. A lot of people want to get good at the social media game though. I mean, and you're knowledgeable, you're a great communicator, right? Good on camera. So those are all things. But I think there's a lot of people like that that don't grow a following of millions of people. So what is it in addition to those, I think table stakes skills that has led you to this, again, following of millions of people? I do think some of it is having a mission that's larger than myself, right? So like the, like I mentioned, the $10 million that I've raised, doing good work in the world.

is something that matters to people. Even if you don't want to be surrounded by government knowledge on a daily basis, you are probably willing to check in because you love seeing the other work that I'm doing. I also try to bring a sense of real life and levity to the social media, that it's not just like hard-hitting news 24-7. There are news channels where you can go and get that. I like to mix in my little cute dog videos and tell a story about how over the week again, my dog caught a frog, swallowed it whole and then puked it back up again, fully intact. The whole frog just lay in there dead on the carpet and then she re-aid it. You know, like the, just, I think people are very hungry to be able to connect with an individual

with whom they can develop an affinity as opposed to connecting with a brand. It's a selling a brand is a harder proposition today than selling a connection to an individual. So I do think some of it is what they feel as a personal connection to me. And hopefully I have proven to be a trustworthy person that they can connect with. A few of the things you've done, there's a ton of them, but I just picked out a couple I wanted to hit on. I think it's easy for all of us to get stuck in our echo chambers to surround ourselves with people who we agree with. And therefore, we look at them and can nod and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I feel like that's something you're really good at is helping people get outside of those, your own echo chamber.

What are some ideas for somebody? Because nobody who's in it probably thinks they are, but a lot of us are. But we all say, oh, no, that's not me. That's other people. That's not me, though. I don't live in an echo chamber. I'm out there. I like seeing all of that, right?

And I say that stuff, but I try really hard to actively hear all different types of perspectives. That's part of the reason this podcast is so cool. Because I do have people from all over the world and different life experiences. But from your perspective, what are some ideas, what are some ways, especially Americans, can get outside of their echo chamber and be more aware of the different points of view from people all over the country in this case? It's such an important question and it's such an important thing to do, no matter who you are, but especially if you work in LeaSty, leadership, especially if you work in business, this is an incredibly important skill because what you don't know can hurt you. So it is important to know where other people are coming from. It's important to not surround yourself by yes men who just tell you everything you want to hear.

That has historically also proven not to be an effective strategy. Dictators surround themselves with yes men, right? It's a it's a risk for your company. It's a risk for you personally. It's a to the country from a national security standpoint to not have a diversity of viewpoints surrounding you. But I will say that your brain doesn't like it. Your brain is actually hardwired to pick out information that upholds your already held beliefs. That information feels good that, you know, you've probably heard it referred to as confirmation

bias. Your brain, when that, when you find information that agrees with what you already believe, it just produces a unique feeling in your mind of like, yeah, that is right. Yeah, like how many times have we Googled? Why is such and such person? Why are they terrible? You know, like, controversy is about such and such company. Like, we love to Google information that support.

We even use Google to ask questions that will deliver us the answers we want to know. So our brains really enjoy being surrounded by that kind of information. We want to confirm how awesome we are, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. That's what we do. Yeah. We love to know that we're right and that that is, you know,

surrounding ourselves with information that we already believe. So chances are good. If you are not feeling uncomfortable on a regular basis, you actually are in an echo chamber. If you do not have people who are challenging your already held beliefs and in a way that you feel like, I don't know about, I don't know if I like that. If you don't have that kind of like, I don't know, kind of feeling, chances are good. You are in an echo chamber. Because your brain actively seeks to protect you from information that counters what you already believe. It wants to ignore that information because it wants to keep you, keep you happy,

keep you on the straight and narrow that it's determined is the right path for you. So it's going to feel bad when you are encountering new information. But if you think about some of the greatest leaders in history, the Abraham Lincoln's and the George Washington's, they intentionally surrounded themselves with people who had different perspectives. You know, you think about Lincoln's team of rivals. You think about George Washington hires both Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who have wildly divergent viewpoints on what the country should be. doing. George Washington surrounds himself with the best people he can find, not the people who

agree with him the most. One way that you can sort of move out of these echo chambers, of course, is to pay attention to a broad spectrum of media. Instead of just tuning in only to your favorite channel, or instead of reading only your one preferred newspaper, ensuring that you are getting multiple perspectives of what is happening in the world. Sometimes if you go, like I do this on a regular basis, the lead stories on a website like CNN.com are quite different very often from the lead stories on foxnews.com. Just what they think are the most important stories.

Now, today we're talking on a day when over the weekend, somebody was found on Donald Trump's golf course, it's being investigated as a potential assassination attempt. And fortunately, he's fine. But of course, both news channels are running that as their top story. Because it's a huge deal, right? But on an almost daily basis, you will see a very divergent viewpoint of what each news source believes is happening in the world. So reading news sources from across the spectrum is an important thing.

But even more than that, developing friendships with people who think differently than you is an incredibly important. thing. Iron sharpens iron. And if you think about the best sports teams in the world, they don't get to be the best sports teams or the best athletes by playing people who are much worse than they are. The NBA doesn't play some sixth grade basketball team. That doesn't make them better players. You're not a better player by just annihilating the competition constantly. that that hard competition makes you better. And so being friends with people who you respect, but who have different viewpoints than you do and are willing to have those have conversations with you, that makes you that much better for having worked through some of those really challenging issues. This is Sharon.

I may be stupid to bring up, but this is why it's hard for me. when you're like, are you Republican or Democrat? I'm like, well, I don't line up with either. Like, I think if you independently look at all of the issues, all of the ideas, all of different people, there's no way I'm going to line up with every single thing. And so that's why it's weird to me when someone's like, yep, yep, yep, yep, on every single thing, I am this or I am that. And I'm like, really? Are you really thinking for yourself here? Are you trying to understand everyone's perspectives. And I feel like if you're thinking independently and not just going along with whatever somebody tells you you should think, it's almost impossible to be one or the other.

At least that's the way it is for me. I don't know. What do you think when I say that? The way that you feel is extremely common. There's a lot of, for example, pro-choice Republicans, a lot of people who don't align with the Republican Party's current position on abortion. that that's not uncommon at all. And there's a lot of Democrats who want to see more business favorable tax policies. The current tax policy is too restrictive on small businesses. They don't want to see businesses taxed out of oblivion. And those are just two little examples.

There's many, many more. I think it's actually extremely common for people to not feel well represented by either party. They do not feel like. I can agree with everything on either one of these columns. Why can't there be a third way or a fourth way or a fifth way that better aligns with my perspective on the world? And it's true that no party is ever going to perfectly represent you. But overall, the statistics absolutely support what you're saying that most Americans do

not feel well represented by the two-party binary. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, what do you do about that? What can you do? Because then you feel like you're, I mean, Tim Ryan called it the exhausted majority. I don't know. I mean, I wonder, I'm just like, okay, but it's still there.

I mean, you know, it's still happening. There's a few ways that we can address the issue. One of the reasons, third parties and fourth parties and fifth parties, most political scientists who study healthy democracies around the world say that ideally to have a healthy democracy, a country needs between five and seven political parties. That is, that represents the sort of the spectrum of beliefs. If you start getting more than that, then it's too fragmented and you can't develop consensus. But the two-party system is actually not used very often amongst democracies. Like the UK and the United States are really two of the, you know, some of their, amongst the outliers,

amongst the democracies around the world that we have a strong two-party binary. So because of the structure of the U.S. governmental system, currently, this is not actually how it was designed to work, but the current iteration strongly favors this two-party binary and supports the two-party binary.

The two parties don't want more competition. If it's only cocaine Pepsi, it's way easier for me to fight one opponent than to fight six new cola companies. Of course I'm not going to be like, we need more cola options. Of course not, right? Like, I want it to just be me and them. In fact, I hope it's just me. But the same is, the same is absolutely true political parties. Why would I want more options to have to fight against? Why would I want to give up some of my market share? I want, you know, I want to keep the system as it is. So, uh, The Electoral College is an example of something that helps reinforce the two-party binary.

The Electoral College, by the way, was never designed to have to be run by political parties. Political parties didn't exist when the Electoral College was designed. But the winner-take-all system that 48 out of 50 states use where whoever wins the popular vote in that state gets all of that state's electoral vote. That was not designed in the Electoral College. That's nowhere in the Constitution that did not become a popular thing nationwide for decades after. after the Constitution was ratified. So that structural system of winner-take-all reinforces a two-party binary,

as does the party control of primary elections. Not every state has party-controlled primary elections, but many do, and they exclude people who are not part of their party very often from participating. So when you're saying like, I don't know if I'm a Republican or Democrat, I'm just going to register as an independent. Independent voter registration has skyrocketed in the last decade. People like you, if you are a registered independent, are often excluded from primary elections in different states because parties run them. So these sort of structural things are actually quite simple to address. They're not easy. But they're simple. Like the fix is simple.

We get rid of winner take all in the electoral college system. Or we change the way the electoral college works or we eliminate the electoral college to allow for the proliferation of more parties. And there's more too. I won't spend this whole episode talking about all of my plans to change, all of my proposals to change how elections in the United States work. Because those are just a couple of examples of why people like you don't feel well represented. You seem like you need to be in charge of some stuff. Very reasonable. I say that as a very as a compliment, very reasonable as a not a crazy person, but a reasonable

one to say, hey, let's try to represent all the people. More people. Yes. Right. That's a reasonable thing in a democracy. Most other democracies in the world do have a system that better represents the citizens. And I don't say this as a hater of America. I just wrote a whole book about great Americans, right?

I love this country. And I only want it to get better. And I only want people to feel represented by their own government because when you don't, that develops, you develop cynicism. It makes you check out of the system. You feel like nothing will ever change. What's the point? I don't care. Whatever.

The whole thing's terrible. Blah, blah, blah. So you don't participate. And that's actually bad for democracy too. We're actually much better off having a system that represents all of us rather than a system that represents only these two sort of extreme ends of the spectrum. Yeah, I'm with you. I feel like the luckiest person in the world just to have been born here, right?

With amazing family and because a lot of people haven't. And so just born here, grow up here, live here forever. Hopefully it's the best place in the world. We're so lucky. But that doesn't mean just because you're lucky. you're awesome and you're great, doesn't mean you can't get better. And that's the same that goes for anybody in any leadership role or any job that you have just because you're doing well or you've won championships or things are going great. It doesn't mean that we're not going to strive to be better.

And I think that's the case, whether it's your country or it's you as a person. That's a mindset. That's a growth-focused mindset that I feel like people who sustain excellence over time, which is what I study on this show. That's the way that they approach their lives. That's the they approach the world. That's well said, because to achieve excellence is one thing. To maintain it is another thing entirely. And that requires that growth mindset of how can I get one percent better? How can I incrementally make improvements so that the system works better for more people? That's what all of the greats in business, in sports, in finance, in leadership, have done. I was just going to ask you that Sharon.

So thinking back, and there's another specific question after this, I want to ask about your book. But when you think of all the people in history that you've studied and their stories and the impact they've had, what have you found to be the commonalities among those leaders who have sustained excellence, as you said, sustained excellence over an extended period of time versus the ones who maybe just like one hit wonders or had a little bit of thing? But the ones who were able to sustain it, what are some of the commonalities among those people? I know there are so many people who are great historians of business. And my expertise is really in U.S. history. So thinking about great leaders in the United States history, like the Teddy Roosevelt's of the world, the Abraham Lincoln's of the world, the FDRs of the world.

Now, you can agree with all their policies or not, but anybody would objectively look at them and say they were a great leader. one of the things that that all of them have in common is the ability to articulate and communicate a vision that other people want to follow. And as soon as that dies, that is when they begin to lose their power as a leader. There's a reason FDR can get reelected over and over and over again. It's not because things are going real swell in the country, right? We're in this terrible depression. Now we're in the middle of a terrible war. FDR is hiding the fact that he's crippled.

He's hiding the fact that he's been engaged in an extramarital affair forever that he promised Eleanor Roosevelt. He would stop doing and then didn't and then died out of retreat away with his mistress. There's all kinds of stuff that he's up to. But he is a uniquely good communicator at articulating a vision. And that is executing on that vision. It's not just saying, hey, guys, I got some real great ideas. Everybody's going to get a billion dollar check tomorrow and then nothing ever happens, right? It's articulating a vision and other people want to follow and then being able to work towards the execution of that vision.

That is what sustains, at least in U.S. history, sustains people's affinity or allegiance to you as a leader. It's worth it to get good at understanding the vision and then communicating it to the people and making it something that others want to get behind. My dad taught me that when I got my first real job after I got done playing football and he just said, you will be amazed at the difference between the people who can get up in front of a group of people and be an effective communicator. Give a one minute, five minutes, 20 minutes, hour long speech versus the one. ones who can't. You'll get so much more credit. You'll get so much more growth. You'll get so many more promotions if you get good at that skill. And I think it doesn't mean that you can don't back it up. As you said, you have to execute on that as well. But it's worth it for leaders to think about a skill

to develop as becoming an effective communicator and inspiring people on that vision that you've set and then execute on that. That is a big one. Okay, there is a group called the hello girls, right? This group of female telephone operators. They risked their lives to manage switchboards on the front lines of World War I. So I'd never heard about them until you, Sharon. So you made me aware of them. Can you tell me about the heroic elements of the Hello Girls? They're such an interesting group.

First of all, the United States during World War I was engaged in a number of public-private partnerships that I find really interesting. And one of them was a public-private partnership. private partnership with what would become the company AT&T. So AT&T, American, you know, telephone and telecommunications or whatever the acronym was back in back in the early part of the 20th century, T&T is a pioneer of telephones. They are the people who are out there laying the lines. They're the people who are connecting your homes to a telephone.

And at the time, you've probably seen movies where you pick up the receiver and you talk into a little separate piece. You hold one thing up. Or maybe you have a receiver like this. And you don't dial the number yourself and then wait for it to ring. You pick up the phone and there's another person on the other end. And they say like, number please or, you know, hello, how can I help you? And you tell them who you want to call and they connect the call for you. Well, this was such a revolutionary idea. We take it for granted today, of course, but this was such a revolutionary idea and being a person to connect the calls was actually a very specific skill. Not only did you need to understand how the switchboard worked, but there was also this element of you needed to be a person

that other people wanted to talk to. Right? Nobody wants to have somebody answer the phone, be like, hello? You're like, that's not, that's not the vibe. It has to be a person. It's got to be a good vibes person, right? That's right. That's right. And of course, who is, who's making these phone calls, especially when we're talking about the war. World War I is predominantly men who are making these phone calls. So there was this element of like, we need some nice sounding girls to answer the phone for us. But they also, in World War I, when AT&T begins to ship massive quantities of telecom equipment to France, where the United States is sort of setting up its staging for its involvement in World War I, they're shipping over all of this equipment. The equipment

precedes all of the operators that it's going to send. And so they initially hire French operators to deal with the incoming phone calls. Well, they were not efficient at it. Americans are nothing if not efficient. It was taking them, you know, like 60 seconds to connect a call. And by the time the American women get over there, they're connecting, you know, like five calls a minute. It's far, far, far more efficient. But one of the things that I think is really noteworthy about the hello girls who really are,

that's not what they were officially called, but that's what they became colloquially known as, who really are like doing their job in gas masks on the front lines. Stuff is exploding all around them. People are, things are being bombed. They don't have fuel for the fires to keep the buildings that they're working in warm. They are handling top secret information, so they have to be extremely. They had to pay for their own uniforms, by the way. All the other service members were issued uniforms.

The Hello Girls had to pay for their own uniforms, which cost the modern day equivalent of $7,000. $7,000. What other uniform cost $7,000? A space suit? Like what? Like I'm walking on the moon? That probably costs more. than seven thousand, but you know what I'm saying? What uniform cost seven thousand dollars? That's how much

they were asked to pay and an AT&T was like, we'll just take it in increments out of your check. Don't worry. But ultimately, it is their willingness to risk their lives to be on the front lines of World War I that moves the needle enough that women back home get the right to vote. Woodrow Wilson, who was president at the time, had been saying, no, no, no, no. no, no, no, no, no, to women who were advocating for suffrage. People were picketing the White House. They're out there 24 hours a day with their little bonfires and their placards and giving the speeches and having the parades and doing all the things. And he keeps saying no and he finds suffrage kind of reprehensible. But when he sees the service of women in World War I,

he changes his mind, goes to Congress and begins advocating for a constitutional amendment to to change the Constitution to allow women to have the right to vote. He feels like, how can these women be willing to risk their lives, but then have no say in the country that they were willing to risk their lives for? So it's such an interesting story. Most people have no idea who they are or what they did. But we have them to thank. A lot of women have them to thank for moving the ball across the final finish line. Well, that's what your whole book is. That's why I was so initially, and I was like, huh, interesting. Let me, let me dig in here.

And then I started reading and then I couldn't stop. And then I wanted to learn about the next one and the next one. And I was like, wow, how do you share know all this stuff? This is wild because we haven't learned any of it. It's so good. But I just thought of this as you were saying this because of how crazy a few, there's a lot of things that were crazy back in the day. Obviously slavery, insane.

It's just wild that it was a thing. but the fact that in addition to that one, the fact that women couldn't vote is another one of those now. We look back. We're like, there's no way that was real. There's no way that. And yeah,

these were real things that we went through. I don't want to ask you, I'm not trying to get you in trouble, but like what's going on now that like 100 years or 200 years from now, you're going to be like, can you believe back in 2024 they did fill in the blank? Like, is there anything that you can project that you think is just,

insane. That will not be a thing 100 years from now. Yeah, that's a fun question. Like what to think about like, what are the children, the school children of the future going to look back and I'd be like, excuse me? They need to pay $6,000 for a uniform. Like women were not allowed to vote. I mean, certainly some of it is the fact that women still have a comparatively far too few leadership roles in both government and business. In the future, people are going to be like, what? Women were 25% of Congress. That's so dumb. You know, like, that's so, that's so stupid. People are in the future are definitely going to think that. And that's true of every level of business and every level of leadership. I also think this time period that we're living in right now,

this 2020 through 2024 time period, this is going to be one of the time periods that is studied in the future, much like we studied the Great Depression, where we're like, and then the Depression and the people were homeless and they lost their jobs. This is going to be one of these time periods, the beginning of the pandemic, all the way through the 2020 election, all the way up through the 2024 election. This is one of those time periods. I was just having a conversation with some other teachers. And we were like, what are the people of the future going to call this time period? Because we call it the Great Depression or we call it the Roaring 20s or we have names for these things.

It dawned on me that the people of the future who are going to name this time period are currently in Gen Z. They are currently 20 years old, okay? They're currently, so their vernacular is going to have an impact on what it's called in the future. Is this going to be called the Great Dumpster Fire? What is this? Is this going to, what will people? Future historians call this four-year time period. I don't know the answer to that, but it makes me chuckled to think about. So that's just one thing that I think about. This is a time period. It's a pivotal moment in history that will be studied.

That's for sure. One more, Sharon, before we run, you're meeting with somebody who's a recent college graduate, okay, who's going to name the future. But I'm curious, just from a more broader perspective, they want to leave a positive dent in the world. They want to do good. They want to leave people. better than they found them, but they don't necessarily fully know what they want to do. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? I think one of them is absolutely something we touched on earlier. Be the can-do person. You will, even if you end up doing stuff that you're like, I don't want to do that for a career, you are going to learn so much from just being the person with the best attitude in the room. whatever you are doing, whether it is fetching coffee or taking out the trash or doing some high-level

job, whatever it is you find yourself doing in that moment, be the best at it. Because that is how you will advance your career. How do I know to recommend you for a promotion if you're not the best at what you're doing now? So take whatever it is that you find yourself doing, whether you love it and this is my passion or not and be amazing at it because that is how you will get recommended for bigger and better things in the future. So much of it has to do with your attitude, right? Like we've all had jobs where the job itself was kind of meh, but we loved the people we worked with or vice versa. A dream job ruined by somebody that we hated. We're like, oh my God, I cannot work with her another day.

be the person that people love to work with. And they love to work with a can-do person who has an attitude of like, I may not know it now, but I'm going to figure it out. And I'm going to do it with a smile on my face. That'll take you so much farther than almost anything else. Yeah. Regardless of what you're signing up for, be as good as you can possibly be at that thing and work to get better and work to get better. It doesn't matter if you're volunteering to be. the line judge at your daughter's volleyball game or whatever it may be.

I want to be the best possible line judge I can be when I volunteer for that job, right? It's not like, oh, no, I don't really want to do this. I'd rather watch. No, be the best you can be at that, whether it's at work, whether it's volunteering, whether it's in any arena that you're in. I think good things are probably going to happen. That's great advice sharing. The book, again, is called The Small and the Mighty 12 unsung Americans who change the

course of history from the founding to the civil rights movement. As I said before, I highly, highly recommend this book. One, because you're going to learn a lot. And that's great. We're learning leaders here. We're going to learn a lot. But you're going to be very entertained. Sharon, you're an amazing storyteller, as you as evidence from today, but both in the written form and obviously verbally, too, which you've proven over over years now. But it is a very entertaining book. You're going to learn and have fun along the way. And that's why I was so excited to talk to you. So I highly recommend that.

And Sharon, I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. This has been so much fun. Likewise. Thank you so much for inviting me. I loved this. Awesome. Thank you. It is the end of the podcast club.

Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan, at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Sharon McMahon. A few takeaways from my notes. What did Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR all have in common? The ability to articulate a vision that others wanted to follow. They were great communicators. If you want to lead people, it helps to become a fantastic storyteller.

It helps to be able to stand up in front of a group of people and share the vision in an entertaining and informative way. And then you execute on that. vision over and over. Next, be a doer. The best Americans are not the critics. They are the doers. They are the people who went for broke when everyone else yelled to turn back. They are those who know that one becomes great because of who they lift up, not who they put down. And then from Huberman, I've never observed anyone, regardless of field, achieve lasting prominence while voicing rancor or focusing much on the failings of others.

create and share support others and enjoy givers and creators always prevail right be a doer be someone who's in the arena regularly doing the work and then echo chambers as a leader what you don't know can hurt you do not surround yourself with yes men or yes women you need a diversity of viewpoints you should feel uncomfortable on a regular basis you should be told that you're wrong from the people you surround yourself with if you're not then you're living in an chamber. Also, pay attention to a broad spectrum of media. If you only watch one news channel or read one newspaper, you will probably end up in an echo chamber and then develop friendships with people who think differently than you. They're not wrong because they think the way they do.

Instead of judging them, let's be curious and learn more about them and their viewpoint. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Sharon McMahon. I think she'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you write a thoughtful review. You subscribe to the show and you rate it, hopefully five stars. By doing all of that, you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so much. Talk as you. Can't wait.