207. Understanding Liminal Space: The Future of Leadership and Followership with Dr. Chris Fuzie

Join us as we engage in a transformative conversation with Dr. Chris Fuzie, who brings a unique perspective on leadership and followership from his journey from the Modesto Police Force to leadership education.

Dr. Chris challenges conventional wisdom with the intriguing concept of liminal space, redefining the dynamic relationships between leaders and followers. Through his compelling stories, listeners gain insight into the importance of continuous learning, adaptability, and the nuanced interplay between leadership roles that transcend traditional hierarchies.

Listeners will uncover the critical themes of groupthink, decision-making, and the balance of purpose, values, and courage in high-pressure environments. Dr. Chris shares gripping real-world experiences, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and challenging stereotypes. With a focus on emotional and cognitive aspects, he illustrates how empathy and reflection influence decision-making. By highlighting scenarios from law enforcement to academia, this episode explores how practice informs research, offering valuable lessons for those seeking to navigate complex leadership landscapes.

This episode is an engaging exploration of the evolving paradigms of leadership and followership, promising thought-provoking insights for everyone eager to redefine their understanding of these roles.

🌐 Connect with Dr. Chris:
• Website: https://www.cmfleadership.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-chris-fuzie-ed-d-m-a-ol-37587934/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisfuzie/
https://www.instagram.com/cmfleadershipconsulting/

📚 You can purchase Dr. Chris' book at Amazon:
• Liminal Space: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1950336689/

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Chapters

• 0:01 Redefining Leadership and Followership
• 10:45 Challenging Groupthink and Stereotypes
• 15:54 Real-Time Decision-Making in Leadership
• 20:32 [Ad] Business & Society with Senthil Nathan
• 21:20 (Cont.) Real-Time Decision-Making in Leadership
• 26:47 Understanding Purpose, Values, and Courage
• 32:54 Leadership and Followership Behaviors in Action
• 33:12 [Ad] Virtual Rockstar
• 34:03 (Cont.) Leadership and Followership Behaviors in Action
• 47:37 Resilience and Responsibility in Leadership
• 55:58 Exploring Leadership and Followership Dynamics

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What is the opposite of leader? Most people would say follower. But is that really true? In today's episode of The Leadership Project, we are joined by Dr. Chris Fuzie. Chris has had a decorated career in the Modesto police force and is the author of multiple books. He's going to challenge our thinking today about the definition of leadership and followership, and introduce us to the concept of liminal space. There is something in this episode for everyone, whether you want to become a better leader, a better follower, or develop a high performance team. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I've got a special treat for you today. I'm greatly honored to be joined by Dr.Chris Fuzie. Dr. Chris has had a decorated career. If I give you all of hisachievements in his career, we'll take up the entire show. He's had 28 years service with the Modesto police force as a lieutenant, where he's been a homicide detective. He's been a hostage negotiation team lead. He's done all kinds of things in his career. He's been a national instructor for for Chiefs of Police, an incredibly decorated career full of leadership highlights. He's also the head of the CMF Leadership Academy and a author, an author of multiple books, including the course why score, which is about performance counseling, and his latest book called limit liminal space, reshaping leadership and followship, and it's this final book. Is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about redefining leadership and how it's changing in the world, and what it means around followship. So withoutany further ado, Chris, I would love it if you would say hello to the audience, and I'd love to know a little bit more about that incredible background of yours and what inspired you into writing books, and particularly this book about liminal space.

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 2:13

Okay, well, thank you very much for being here and that incredible introduction. So in talking about, you know, getting to this point where I'm writing a book about leadership and followership and reshaping leadership and followership and liminal space and all that that took almost 40 years from the start of my career as a police officer till, you know, a couple months ago. So it's not something that came very easy, but, and the way it happened is, I mean, you know, I've grown up here in Modesto, California since, you know, 1965 joined the police department in 1982 as a community service officer, and then became a police officer shortly thereafter, and then went through, you know, just have, I say, having fun, because every day is different. It's, it was a lot of running and chasing and, you know, the police stuff and and thenwe got to, I got to about a point in my career. I've been working patrol and doing this for about 18 years. And I started seeing a few of my friends falling off the way, you know, getting injured or or having something happen to him. And I started thinking, what's going to happen if I, if I get hurt. So one of my lieutenants, they're sitting in a briefing one day, and I was sitting in the back, you know, all the all the senior cops would sit in the back at the row, and I'm sitting in the back and and this lieutenant, kind of, he's talking about, you know, your career and career development, that kind of stuff. He kind of turns and leads around, and he looks straight back towards the back row, towards where I'm at, and he says, If you're going to promote or get anywhere in this department, you need to think about your education. Andit was like he just shot a bullet right into the back of my head, and it just kept bouncing around and and I just kept thinking, Oh, my education, yeah, what if I do get hurt? You know, I've seen the all these guys getting hurt. I need to think about my education. And I like to say, up until this point, I only had one PhD, public high school diploma. But, you know, I went back to school. I first got my AA Degree. This is 40 years old. 40 years old. I went back to school, get my AA degree, and I said, Okay, I need to do something different, because my competition there the people who are sitting next to me for these supervisor jobs. So I start. Did the bachelor's degree, and it was in org leadership. I wanted something that was different than what I was doing. I mean, I could have gotten it an easy one in criminal justice, you know, but I wanted something that, if I needed to leave police work, what I could use it for. Well, I started seeing whatwas going on with this org leadership stuff, and how these theories, these leadership theories, were all playing out in the police department, and then I realized they're all playing out in almost every organization in the world. And so that really became interesting to me, to see to apply the fear, the theories, and the theoretical application to what was happening in the police department. So I did that for about three years, three and a half years, to get my my bachelor's degree. And I said, You know what, I'm going to go for the master's degree also. And so in 2005 I graduated with with a master's degree in organizational leadership and human resources. So right about then, the police department was starting a leadership training academy, and this was through the International Association of Chiefs of Police, while I was also the lieutenant, then in charge of training, and so I had to, you know, evaluate, is this something that we want to keep doing? And I started looking at the person who is doing the teaching there, I realized that they didn't have the training and education to match what it was supposed to be happening. So I asked if I could be an instructor. And I went through all the instructor training and and then I started teaching the leadership program for Modesto Police Department and in California and so International Association of Chiefs of Police said, hey, we'd like you to teach for us. And so that's what I did. I I started teaching for them and working as a lieutenant in the police department. And then it became, you know, just something to do, you know. And then, after I retired from the police department, I saw a a doctoral program in organizational leadership. So I went to the doctoral program, so let's do that too. So you know, what else do you do when you retire? Play golf, right? So, you know, I said, Well, I'll do this thing. And that's when I started realizing all of this led up to looking at behavior as part of leadership. All leadership is all about behavior and creating behaviors and making behaviors. And how do you get people to do things? How do you get cops to run towards people with guns? How do you get firemen to run towards birding, building, stuff that the rest of us run away from, right? And they're going towards it, you know? So that's that's how I got to thinking about this. And actually, with these books, I wrote them backwards, I say backwards in that. I started with the because why book, and that's evaluating behavior. And then I went to the score performance counseling book, which was about changing behavior and performance counseling and how to avoid the the major flaws that most supervisors make while they're doing performance counseling. And then this last book is liminal space. I realized about 2019 I started, you know, I started teaching leadership and followership in 2007 but then about 2019 I start realizing, Wait a minute, followership is a little more important than than what I thought. And we started doing more research within with the followership. So that's kind of how this came about, you know? Is this, yeah? I mean, that's the short story.

Mick Spiers: 9:01

All right, yeah, a short story of a so incredibly decorated career. So thank thank you for sharing that, and congratulations on your success, your success of the police force, and all of your service to your community, to the everyone around you, and then creating more leaders in the police force as well, so becoming a multiplier in that regard as well. And now through to the your success in in your post policing career, and congratulations on the success of the books, there's a few things I want to unpack from what Iheard Chris the the first one, the words that jumped into my mind were the words applied learning. So I'm imagining this 40 year old Chris that is learning organizational leadership in school and then immediately being able to apply what you're taking from the academic world into the real in your face. World of policing right there at the moment. So it's almost like this petri dis experimentation of I learned this at school, and then I get to apply it immediately, and then reflect on the results. Tell us more about that process. What did that look like for you?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 10:16

So it was, it was very interesting, and I actually use that, use that example of a petri dish, because it was just like that. We would talk about cohesion and how to build cohesion, and then the next day, I mean a staff meeting or a squad meeting. And we're talking about, you know, hey, we all need to work together. And I use the word cohesion and these things, I mean it was just one right after the other. It was very was very interesting. There was one instance where we're talking about, I'm trying to think of what it was we'retalking about groupthink. And so that night, the next, I'm sorry it was the next night, we're talking about groupthink and how you know all the problems with groupthink. The next night, we have a call where there's a gang fight going on and there's some shots fired, and so every cop in the city is rolling to that call and and one of the cops gets on and I'm the lieutenant in charge, and I'm listening to this stuff, and one of the cops says, Okay, we're gonna 1198 or meet at a certain church that's nearby where this is happening. So that way we can all be ready and rolling together. So they're all rolling code, three lights and siren to a place that's it's not even happening. And so to me, that was an example of groupthink, where everybody's still rolling. They're still, you know, we got to get there. We got to do this is very urgent, you know, our and, and I told them to to cancel code three. In other words, keep going, but you don't needlights and siren. You don't have, you know, I don't want you running through an intersection and smashing into some family or something. And so the next day after they were they were not happy with that. So the next day, we're in briefing, and I said, we need to talk about what happened last night, this idea ofgroupthink, where you're rolling code three. And when I say groupthink, I had a few people go, Oh, more of this educated stuff. And that's exactly what it was. And I started talking about how groupthink causes us problems sometimes and and then we applied it right then to that situation that happened the night before. But having that at the top of my mind when I went to work that night, and then when it happened,is like, Okay, this is not good. Somebody's going to run a red light. Somebody's going to, you know, the cops are rolling code three, they're running red lights to this thing where it's a possible shooting. We need to stop this, right? This is, this is, this is a groupthink issue, in my mind, that's what it was. And then so when we debriefed it the next day, it was that immediate application. There was another incident where I'm in class, and it was kind of interesting, because it was me, a sheriff's deputy, somebody from mental health and one of our victim services people that we're all taking the the same kind of program together, and we in this class, and the instructor is talking about, it's a sociology class. The instructor is talking about domestic violence, and she says, Well, men can't be victims of domestic violence. And so I raised my hand, yes, yeah, I want to disagree with you, because, you know, I've arrested men and women for domestic violence. And she goes, No, you know, I've been teaching. I've been teaching for 30, however many years. And you know, I was in social work, I said, Well, you need to come ride with me, because women, women do beat up men. So, you know, there is domestic violence on the other side. And she got very angry with me, but then again, go back out in the field, and the very next day, what do we have? We have a case where and and our victim advocate was saying the same thing, and our person from mental health was saying the same thing, and our so, our our Sheriff's Department person, they're all, we're all saying the same thing. And she said, Nope, this is not the case. So. But then the next day I go out, we havea domestic violence case where the woman was the aggressor and she ended up getting arrested. I go to class the next week and this guy says, No, that's it's I've looked into this. I've researched those Well, you know, obviously. Don't know what you're talking about. And so this, it worked both ways, really. So it's not just you know how they you know how you talk about research informs practice. Well, practice also informs research. And that's what that was. It was, it was really cool to see that happening.

Mick Spiers: 15:19

Yeah, I love this, Chris, and the first thing I want to say to the audience here is, anyone that is listening to this, and if you are in a domestic violence situation, please do seek help. There are really great organizations out there that can help you. I know it's scary to take that first step, whether you're a man or a woman, if you're in a domestic violence situation, please seek help. There are really good organizations that can help you, and there's always a way out. There's always a solution. You just need to ask for help, and it's and it's not a sign of weakness to ask for help. It's a sign of strength. I love this bi directional thing that you're talking about here. Chris, so that ability to okay, I learned something from my academic studies last week that can apply in my policing today, and then equally in those in that academic setting, to be able to say, Well, hang on a second, my lived experience is this, they inform each other, and it's that ability to stop and reflect and and bring both together that makes for a richer education for you, but also,we're going to say a richer education for for those around you, because we all learn from each other, and that's and this ability to put it into practice and learn in real time is quite incredible. What what I want to go to now is, is then thinking about, and this will be hard to imagine for for some of us that have not been either in the military or in the in a policing situation, is some of the real time aspects that we're talking about here. So in most, for most people that are listening to the show when we're leading, when we're making decisions quite often. If we make a snap decision, it can it can also be at our peril. We get go into firefighting mode instead of making considered decisions and taking our time. And then if we get a decision wrong, it's usually not life threatening or anything like this. Tell us about the pressure cooker of the leader in those situations where you do have a squad of cars that are on their way to a shooting, whatdoes that mean from that pressure cooker situation of time critical decision making as a leader?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 17:37

Well, that's one of the things that's actually that's why I wrote the book, because why is a lot of that decision making is it's not a perfect process. We're people, and what we do is is based on our experience. It's based on our knowledge, it's based on our training, it's based on everything we know sometimes. But then you have to throw in, what is the time? What does time look like? How much time does it take? Whatif we wait? What if we don't wait? So all of that takes place. You got to look at the situation itself as an example, we had one person who was this is before it became a norm to leave people in their own house. If they're suicidal, they're in their own house, as long as there's nobody else there. What do we do? Do we go in and get them, do we leave them? And so one of the times we made the decision to just leave the person there. He didn't have any firearms. If you know, I mean, they're in their own house, their kingdom, in their castle. I mean, it sounds terrible, it sounds heartless, but you know, you have to make these decisions based on the situation, and every single situation is different. So that's why, in these kind of situations, when you're you have to make those decisions. It's everything you know, everything you you've been trained for. But then also, what are your values? What? What? What is your thought process? And allof that plays a part in it. That's where training is important. Knowledge of policies and laws is important, because you have to make your your best, not guess, but you know your best evaluation and your best decision that you can and so the more you know what the law and the policies are, the more you know about the situation that's going to be that's going to be helpful. The problem is all these thoughts that go through your head. So just as an example, one of my. Shooting situations. I was face to face with somebody who I'd already fought with. I'd already shot him twice, and I've got him pinned behind a fence,and I'm holding my gun up, and I'm holding him and he's still reaching for a gun that he had in a backpack with him, and he he asked me. He says, Why are you killing me? And and I said, I haven't yet. And but what went through my mind?

Speaker: 21:13

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Dr. Chris Fuzie: 22:00

Was my own son. My own son could have been in that situation. I'm sorry about this. It happens because we're human. But I thought, I thought this could be my son, same age, same you know, kind of thing goingon. And I thought, What would his father think if I killed his son? What would I think as the Father that took maybe, point five seconds, if, if that to consider that, and that's the one reason why I didn't shoot himand and that that decision making, it's all those things that happen. You have tunnel vision, tunnel hearing. You know, focused attention. I can tell you that in that instance, there was a an alarm about five feet from my head ringing big old, blaring alarm. I couldn't hear it. To this day, I can tell you that I couldn'thear it because I was so focused on this person. So all of that happens, it's it's a little easier when you're not in it personally, so you feel more detached and and it's a lot easier to make those decisions because you're not having these same things. You're not having the emotional reaction that you end up having when you're personally involved. So the decision making process is actually easier when that, when that takes place, but it's still, you know, time, I think, is something that people don't think about as much as because we're always pushed to how do we resolve this? Let's find this. Let's solve this. Let's get it over with. Let's but sometimes that time could be 1/10 of a second, or that time could be 10 hours, you know. So we try to stretch out the time. We try to get people to slow things down. Okay, let's just slow things down, and so we have time to make these cognitive decisions go from the amygdala to the frontal cortex so that we can, we can make those decisions with an intelligent thing instead of a knee jerk or emotional hijacked reaction, you know. So that's part of what that is. It's, it's very complicated kind of thing, and a lot of it goes back to your training.

Mick Spiers: 24:40

Really powerful, Chris. Thank you for sharing that story so openly and vulnerably with us. A few things I want to reflect on. The first one was the emotion in your voice. And we do sometimes get a stereotype of someone that's been in the police force for 28 years may have become desensitized and emotionally detached, but that's not what I'm seeing in front of me. I'm seeing a very human person in front of me thatand the humanity in policing is something that is critical for you to make those right decisions in those moments, what I'm hearing then is then the situational leadership, to be able to read the situation in front of you, the adaptability to be able to do that in real time, and to adjust as new information comes in that I didn't have before that might influence what I'm about to do, what my next. To Action is the aspect of time. How much time do I have to make this decision? And sometimes it is going to be a microsecond, and other times it's going to be, hang on a second. Let's slow. Let's slow the pace down a little bit. Here we have time to do. So let's make a more, more considered decision, so that temporal aspects really interesting for me. Then the other part that I picked up is what you fell back to in those moments, was your values and your and your SOPs. So a value based decision at that at that moment in time, would I be proud of this decision tomorrow? Is it congruent with my values? And then, if I'm really stuck, let's get to what does the what do the standard operating procedures tell me to do right now? But you're doing all of that in a time that's faster than what I've just described it. You're you're doing it in those absolutely criticalmoments. What, what I'd like to go with next is you said something else really interesting before, which is now our very definition of leadership on this show, is the ability to inspire people into meaningful action around a worthy cause because they wanted to do it, not because they were told to do it. Now that's easyfor me to say in the corporate world, Chris, what you said before is you're inspiring people to run towards, the very danger that most people would be running away from. How does that play out?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 27:07

That is it's difficult, because this is where you have to know your people, most people you know when theyI'm just going to use police work because I've never I've never served for any length in the military. But in police work, you get people who come into this for those intrinsic purposes of wanting to help others. You get people that come in here for the higher call kind of thing. And it's not that they're not afraid to go, youknow, after somebody with a shotgun or or excuse me, or run towards the fire, or any of that, there's fear there. Anyway, there. It's just you have to overcome that fear in order to to complete the task. And so that's where a lot of the training is involved. Is, you know, people have to, they have to by repetition. They're going to have to get this. And you you mentioned the the desensitization, and that's really where we do try to desensitize people to some of this, but you also have to keep the focus. So there's a very delicate balance of keeping the focus of the purpose. I'm doing this to help somebody. There's that very delicate balance of knowing your people and what inspires them. You know, maybe you have somebody who's a a baseball coach, right? And so you talk to that person about baseball and how this is kind of like baseball, you know, we want to win the game, but we don't want to win the game at the at the the cost o being unethical, you know, let's not call it stealing base. Let's call it, you know, acquiring brace. I don't know, you know. And so you think about that, you talk to your people differently. Each person has a different motivator, and you have to find out what that motivator is. As a leader, is it because they like the power trip of being a cop. If they do, then those are people we probably want to get rid of. You know, that's, that's not a good choice, you know, if it's because they want to help people and they want to, you know, serve. You know, a lot of the servantly you go into the servant leadership kind of realm here, and a lot of that, you know, I want to serve. I'm going to lead people, but I'm going to help them also, you know, so most of the people I've run into, almost all of them, you get into the job for the fact of helping people. And does it change? Sometimes? Yeah, it changes over time. And the desensitization happens there and then and then, sometimes you have to refocus people back to that and but it's all about knowing your people and and getting the the right people. That's why it's very difficult in in police work to find, find people. Now there's a lot of lot of people don't want to serve others. They just going to focus on themselves. And so when we do backgrounds, we find that quite a bit. You know, you do probably about 100 backgrounds for every one person, for every one applicant. So there's a lot of money being spent on on getting the right people.

Mick Spiers: 30:38

Yeah, really interesting, Chris, and certainly tapping into purpose is what I'm hearing. I'm also hearing tapping into values, and I'm hearing you really take the time to know each individual, because each individual on this planet has a different set of purposes and values. The other thing I was picking up there was this courage, and courage is the ability to act despite fear, not the absence of fear. And in fact, I'd be quite worried if they were fearless. I don't really think that there is such a thing. But if they were fearless, I think they would become reckless, and they'd start making decisions that put themselves in danger, and that's not going to serve anyone Well, right? So tapping into that purpose, tapping into their values, and then tapping into the courage of to take action despite fear, not the absence of fear. How does, how does that sit with you?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 31:35

Well, I had an incident with one of the officers who had gone over to fight in Iraq, when, after 911 and it was a reserve officer, and they came back, and he was hired as a regular. And then I noticed after a while that he was going to certain calls, gun calls, multiple suspect, kind of calls where he wasn't taking a backup or a cover unit, or he would cancel his backup or cover unit. I said, No, that's not going to happen.We're not going to do that. So I started talking to him. He goes, Look, I've been to war. I've been shot at, I've been this, I've been there. Okay, fine, so I can handle this. I go, Well, I'm still responsible for, you know your life and your family's going to get mad if, if you know something happens, we just reckless, and that'show you use that term, if we just recklessly allow you to do whatever you're going to do, plus you're you're creating a target. You're creating, you're making the situation worse. And so we had to stop that. We had to take him off the street and get him some counseling, and get him, you know, some treatments and and then he realized what he was doing, and he came back to work. And, you know, I mean, we really watched this guy, but, you know, he started being doing things exactly how we wanted him to do them. So, yeah, that is a it is a concern there.

Mick Spiers: 33:47

Yeah, that's really interesting, Chris. And you know what I'm what I'm picking up on there, again, is what action is going to serve us well, everyone well right now, and those actions were not serving well, but then to tap into that's a behavior. What's driving that behavior? Where is that coming from? Is it some post traumatic stress disorder? Is there something missing in this person's life, that they're that they're looking to fill a void, to unpack the the behavior, which I think is a really interesting segue to then talk about behavioral based leadership and you and in liminal space, you're talking about reshaping leadership and followship. So what do you mean by reshaping leadership and fellowship?

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Dr. Chris Fuzie: 35:19

Well, right now, and I've done this with different groups right now, if I say, you know, what's the opposite of a leader, people would say follower. And I've done this several times, and, and, and now people know, wait a minute, he's setting us up, you know? But we, still have that mental scheme in our in our heads, thatthe opposite of leader is follower, and when it's really not the case. I did this with chat, GT GPT. I typed in what's the opposite of leader? And it said, Follow. This actually in the book. And then I said, Okay, well, what does it mean to be the opposite? And it gives me the definition of being the opposite, contrary, that kind of stuff. I said, well, then if leader and follower are attempting to do the same thing, and you know, they're in the same organization, is follower in? Context of what you just said as a as opposite is Faller, actually the opposite of leader and chat GPT just sat there for a second, and I thought, Uh oh, I broke it and and then it got some of these ellipses points. And then next thing I see is, is it says, um, says, Thank you for clarifying, or something like that. And and then actually, in that context, leading and following are not are not opposites. They're actually complimentary. And I actually put the the words that came out of the whole process is actually in the book. And so when you think about this as leading and following, we're doing the same behaviors, which leads into the liminal space. Part of it is that if we're doing the same behaviors, like if I'm working for a CEO, and I have to, I have to do what the CEO tells me, but then I have other people underneath me, or or, you know, my dura the CEO wants, so I'm following, but then I also have to get me to do that. And so now I'm leading. I'm leading and following simultaneously. And that's where this idea of liminal space, or transitional space, comes in. And so when we talk about the behavior, if you are leading and following simultaneously, then it doesn't matter whether you're the leaderor the follower or which role you're acting in, you still have to do the same behavior, you still want the same behavior. So then the behavior becomes more important and and if you're focusing on the behaviorand not the position, now, we are starting to actually change or influence what's going on. And so that's why this, this behavior, behavior based leadership, to me, is where we're going, where we're headed. We need to start focusing more on the behaviors of people who lead and follow simultaneously. And what arethose behaviors? What are the similar behaviors? And I started looking at this, what what happened was, as I was training, doing the trainings started in 2010 and went to about 2019, 2020, every time I would do a training, say, Okay, everybody in the class, I want two traits of a great leader. We start talking about great leaders, okay, two traits of great leaders. And I, you know, like a good consultant, you write it on paper and stick it on all over the walls and stuff. And so I would do that. And then later on in the day, we start talking about followership. What is a good follower, what is an exemplary follower, putting all of all of the followership types up there, discussing it. And then I go to the list, I'd say, how many of these traits or behaviors do you not want in your followers? And I kept track of those lists. And I kept track of those lists for that whole time. And you know, you get duplicates. You get, you know, everybody says communication, everybody says honesty, everybody says, and so I boiled it down to 86 behaviors that people have said they want, those behaviors in different, different amounts, depending on what you're doing. They want those same behaviors, those same leader and follower behaviors, and their leaders and followers. Those are, those are the behaviors they want, both their exemplary followers and their great leaders. So now we have a list of behaviors. Well, I thought I was unique in doing that. Well, I'm not. There's a person down in University of Texas doing the same thing. There's another one. I think it's Mississippi, University of Mississippi doing the same thing. People up in, I think it's Ohio, they're doing, you know? So everybody's starting to see this. It's not about the position as much as it is about the behavior. And then when you think about it, let's say you have an organization of 150 people, right? You have one boss, the owner, CEO, whatever. If we did a tug of war, who's gonna win, we put the leaders on one end, the followers on the other end, who's gonna win, right? So, yeah, so it's, it's not, it's not, yeah, that's a visual that I recently it's like, I want to do a tug of war, right? And so you look at that, actually, they're not pulling opposite directions. They're pulling the same way. So, you know, they have to figure out some way of doing that. But, but we're it's about the behavior, and that's where all of this you end up. You end up putting, pushing the positions to the back and worrying about the behavior. Yeah, all right, that's, that's how I started focusing on this.

Mick Spiers: 41:38

Yeah. Really good, Chris. Liminal, Liminal space is a really interesting concept of I've thought of this before, but never had a good definition for how to describe it. But we are always concurrently leading andfollowing and similar to what you're saying, I would say that it's, it's not even, we're not even talking organizational structure here. I'm talking within a team of peers, there's going to be micro moments of time where you're leading, inspiring and influencing people's behavior. And then there's going to be other times where you're in a bit more of a receptive mode of of being encouraged and inspired by by those around you. And when we can do this in real time, if we if we're open to each other, where we're now in the world of co creation, code leadership, where you're all hopefully heading towards the same purpose, but you're doing it together. And there's so much more that you can do together than you can by any individual leader. How does that sit with you?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 42:40

Right. Well, I'd say you're hitting the nail right on the head, because and when we're talking about this, I go back to thinking about my life in the I say my past life in the law enforcement world is that from the very beginning in the police academy, you're either positioned as the lead officer or any call you get. You're either the primary officer, you're the one that that handles the call, or you're the backup or the cover, and so and depending on what the call is, you know, maybe it's in somebody else's beat, they're theprimary and you're the cover, or you have multiple people and you're going to go search a building. Well, if you're the primary, you take point, or you look at some of these SWAT teams where they have interchangeable positions. And so from the time I started, where it didn't even dawn on me that that's what was happening in the police world, but from the very start, you're doing leading and following simultaneously. Let's say something happens where the leader ends up they're busy, or they've taken somebody into custody, or they've stopped, then you have to take the lead, and so I have a shirt that sayslead as or follow, as if you are leading, if the situation changes, you just may have to. And, you know, you think about some of those shooting incidents where teams of police officers are supposed to go in and, you know, and and you're trained that if you somebody goes down, you continue to go after the shooter. If somebody, if somebody, for some reason, takes somebody, or there's somebody, they stop whatever, you continue to go after the shooter. And so you go from a support role instantly to a lead role, and the role doesn't matter. It's the behavior that matters, so it's continuing to get that mission completed.

Mick Spiers: 44:50

I tell you what's jumping into my head as we talk about it, Chris, is is the is the following statement is that collaboration and leadership is a team sport, and we don't always think of it that way. We if we think about it hierarchically, that we think about the leader as opposed to leadership and leadership behaviors, and that leadership is a team sport and that we dynamically adjust to the situation that we're faced with. And you'll have people step forward, step back, step left, step right, and you're now almost like a collective organism that is adjusting to the situation and the changes that are happening around you, and that those behaviors when when you tap into them, you're going to tap into them for greater effect?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 45:38

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, exactly. If you look at, I mean, we just had the Olympics on right. And so you see some of these teams of two, well, it's still a team. And so when you say leadership is a team sport, it really is, because you have to have a leader and a follower and the situation or the context in order to have leadership. It's we talk about leadership. It's not the person or the acts of the person. Leadership is a process and and to have that process, you have to have the leader a follower and the context. You take any one of those three away, you don't have leadership. Let's say you have a leader and a follower, but they don't. Do anything, and there's nothing to solve, and there's no goal, and they just sit there, well, there's no leadership happening. So it is a team sport. And so you think about in the Olympics, if like the volleyball, I love watching volleyball. I don't know why, but when they have the two people playing the volleyball, right? Well, one hits it and and maybe it goes a little sideways, the other one has to go get it because you can't hit it twice, so the other one has to go so now they're in the it's just that changes all the time, and it is a dynamic sport, and it's amazing to think about it that way. A lot of people don't think about leadership as a process and and we really need to, because the leader and the follower are the team players, and at least one leader and at least one follower is what you have to have. But most organizations, we have multiple, yeah.

Mick Spiers: 47:11

Yeah. I love it, Chris and so your your beach volleyball example is a really good one, which is because then what's happening is the two players adjusting to each other. So if, if one person went up for a block, the other person's go, oh, okay, I better be ready. If, if the ball comes off the block, so they're adjusting to each other and they're adjusting to the dynamics of, where is the ball, where what are the what is the opposition team doing? Am I going to go for a spike now, or am I going to go for a tap? You're dynamically adjusting with each other, and you become you almost become two people that become one, and you start moving in different shapes to be able to match the situation that's in front of you. And I think that's a really interesting takeaway for our leaders today. The sports metaphor is really easy to understand, whether it's rugby, volleyball, cycling, you know, things like Team Pursuit cycling, they're always adjusting, and all this kind of stuff. It's really obvious. My question to the audience is, are you doing that in your teams like so if you're out there in corporate world today, or if you're in the police force like Chris has been for for many years, and you're in your team leadership situation. Is your team dynamically adjusting to each other? Are they concurrently leading and following? Are they supporting and complementing each other in the right way? Or are they all just doing their own thing and going in their own direction, or are they all just sitting there waiting for the leader to make decisions? And I'm going to say if, if you're in the second or third situation, you're you're not, you're not tapping into the power of what leadership and fellowship could be. How does that summary sit with you, Chris?

Speaker: 48:59

We'll be back after a quick break. Welcome to practical wisdom for leaders, the podcast where we help you become a great leader. I'm Dr Scott Allen, and each week I engage with world leaders, senior executives, nonprofit trailblazers and professors from universities around the globe. We explore all aspects of leadership, executive development, personal growth, bad leadership, women in leadership, decision making and so much more, tune into practical wisdom for leaders, for critical insights to help you lead and live with purpose.

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 49:45

It's great and and, you know the the the sports analogy, because I just thought about the sports analogy while we're talking, but you picked up on it really well is that it doesn't matter which sport it is, Ping Pong was very interesting. The doubles Ping Pong was because of the same thing. And so, yeah, you have to. And when you think about the how teams work, if you're talking about the team, the group structural dimensions, or you're talking about the group processes. There's cohesion on both, and you have to have that cohesion. You have to have the interplay. You have to have people adjusting to each other, as you put it, and that has to do with the relationship, that has to do with tasks, that has to do with the construct of the team and how that's done, which are all, all things that you look at in in team development theory. And so you can actually break down, I think you could actually break down a tennis match by how they do that, a team doubles tennis match, or, you know, it's that'd be, no, that'd be fun to do.

Mick Spiers: 51:03

It's, it's really good.

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 51:04

To hit the nail on the hill with that one too.

Mick Spiers: 51:06

Yeah, I'm loving this, Chris. Tackling before we know.

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 52:29

All right, I'd like there's a couple of factors with that. Well, I was just gonna say a couple factors in that, in that resilience, is that the ability to adjust, right? You have to be able to adjust and and then with that comes a little bit of grace. Yeah, you have to have a little bit of grace. And, you know, not everybody's going to be perfect. People are going to make mistakes. Okay, don't, you know, don't do the blame game.Don't do let's just get, let's get the task done. Let's focus on the task list. Focus on the behavior. Let's get it done. Give people a little little bit of grace, and don't play the blame game.

Mick Spiers: 53:08

Yeah, I love it. Love it, Chris. And then we can throw that in. It's really good. Then. Then what we can do is we can learn together, and we can fail forward and and, but it needs that grace, and it needs the humility as well of others to be able to do that. Okay, really, good. Now I'd like to take us to our Rapid Round. So these are the same four questions that we ask all about Okay, so first one, what's the one thing you know now, Dr. Chris Fuzie, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 53:42

Uh, how to be a good listener. I wish I listened a lot more when I was 20 years old. But just like most people, when they're, you know, 18, 19, 20, they're, they're ready to go, they think they've had 20 years experience, and they know everything. And, yeah, you can't stop me. I'm going,

Mick Spiers: 54:06

I wish I knew that one too.

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 54:07

That's I wish I'd wish that.

Mick Spiers: 54:10

Yeah, all right, brilliant. Okay, what's your what's your as an author, what is your favorite book?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 54:18

Well, there's actually two, but the one I'm going to say today is the courageous follower by Irish shalef. The courageous follower is, I mean, it talks about doing what we're supposed to do and and even when we don't want to do it. I mean, we talked about careers before, and you eloquently explained how that works. And so that's, to me, that's one of my favorite books, yeah.

Mick Spiers: 54:51

Okay, really interesting. Okay, very good. And what's your favorite quote?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 54:57

Well, it's actually from that book, and I'm going to read it because I have it right here at my desk, and it's the paradox of followership. And it says we are responsible whether we lead or follow. We're responsible for our own actions. So again, behaviors, right? We are responsible for our own actions, and we share responsibility for the actions of those whom we can influence. And the reason I I like that quote is that it talks about leaders and followers. It talks about it. You can apply that quote to a parent. You can apply that quote to a CEO. You can apply that quote to the President of the United States. You can apply that quote to an Eskimo and his family. It applies everywhere. But the other thing about that quote is that we are responsible, so we're responsible for our own actions and others that we can influence. And it makes it it makes it clear to me that that we all need to share that responsibility, and not just, not just, Well, you're in charge, or you're this, or you're that, and that's where it kind of goes back to that blame game and little bit of grace.

Mick Spiers: 56:13

Yeah, loving this. I'm loving the air of responsibility and accountability in in what you're saying. Yeah, really good, Chris. I. And finally, there's going to be people that are listening to this, and they're probably quite enthralled with this concept of liminal space, but also in you and your career and everything you've learned as as a leader. How do people find you, if they'd like to know more, Chris?

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 56:37

Well, I try to hide as much as possible, but, but I do have a website. It's www.cmfleadership.com, and on there, you can contact me from that from there, or there's links to the book. There's also this podcast will be on there. So I'm going to make sure that, you know, we have all that going and then where you can I just have to remember where I work and who I am, and you can email me at chris@cmfleadership.com that's, that's the easiest way to get ahold of me.

Mick Spiers: 57:12

All right, brilliant. And I strongly encourage people to grab hold of the books. There's multiple books. There's three in total. But liminal space is the new one. Really interesting concept around reshaping, what it means around leadership and followship and this concurrent activity that we're all doing it together. And if we can tap into this, we can be so more resilient and so more powerful through the multiplication effect. Really interesting conversation. Chris, thank you so much for your time today, for your gift of your time with us, and your wisdom and insights today. Greatly appreciate it.

Dr. Chris Fuzie: 57:49

Well, thank you for letting me be here, and I love how you pulled some of these things out of my ramblings. So I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Mick Spiers: 58:00

You've been listening to The Leadership Project. In the next episode, it will be a solo cast where I share myreflections from this insightful interview with Dr. Chris Fuzie. I'll be exploring liminal space and the definition of leader and follower. I'm also going to discuss what is the opposite of leader? We now know that follower is not the opposite of leader, so what is as always, I will also share my own leadership reflections from the week. If you are getting great value from our content, we would love it if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast or on your preferred podcast service, you can also subscribe to the leadership project, YouTube channel, where we bring you weekly live stream shows, weekly video podcasts and curated videos to help you become the leader that you wish You always had. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo And my amazing wife Sei Spiers. I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can followus on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.