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Dr. Chris Fuzie, Ed.D., is a leadership and followership expert, author, and consultant redefining leadership through behavior-based models. As the owner of CMF Leadership Consulting and President of the National Leaderology Association, he challenges traditional paradigms with innovative concepts like the Liminal Leadership Model, where leading and following happen simultaneously. A retired Modesto Police Department leader with 28 years of service, he blends real-world experience with academic insights. Dr. Fuzie is the author of Because Why... Understanding Behavior in Exigencies, S.C.O.R.E. Performance Counseling: Save the Relationship, Change the Behavior, and Liminal Space: Reshaping Leadership and Followership. Passionate about empowering individuals and organizations, he delivers engaging, practical strategies for transformational leadership.

 

In this episode, Jason and Chris discuss:

  • The interplay between leadership and followership in organizational success
  • The role of the National Leaderology Association in certifying leadership professionals
  • The concept of leaders as simultaneous followers and key leadership behaviors
  • Strategies for managing change, restructuring teams, and reassigning tasks
  • Establishing scalable, repeatable leadership patterns through behavioral tessellations

Key Takeaways:

  • The National Leaderology Association establishes rigorous standards for leadership professionals, ensuring a scientific approach to leadership studies.
  • The interplay between leadership and followership is evident, highlighting the fluidity of authority in high-stakes situations.
  • Integrity, commitment, and transparency are not just leadership qualities but essential behaviors for both leaders and followers to foster alignment toward a shared vision.
  • Organizations can drive efficiency by embedding repeatable and scalable behavioral patterns across strategic, tactical, and operational levels, ensuring seamless execution.
  • Successfully navigating transitions, whether due to resignations or role reassignments, requires managing change dynamics while addressing the fears and uncertainties of teams.

 


“The same behaviors and traits we want in leaders are the same ones we want in followers. It doesn’t matter what the position is—what matters is the behavior.”

 - Chris Fuzie

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Chris Fuzie- Reshaping Leadership and Followership

Hello and welcome everybody. This is your host, Jason Abell, and this is the next episode of The Insight Interviews. Today, I've got a guest that has had a wild and varied background. He protected us from a police standpoint for almost 30 years, and now he is a leadership expert. In fact, this guy is a “leaderologist”. which is something that we're going to dive into. It's none other than Dr. Chris Fuzie. One of his other titles is a pracademic, which, again, I just gotta dive into, Chris, but has also written several books. His latest book is called “Liminal Space”, which is reshaping leadership and followership, which we're really going to get into, but without any other ado, Chris, I just want to welcome you to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Yeah, lots of different, weird titles that I kind of have to explain all the time, so I appreciate you having me.

No, no, it's our it's our pleasure. I want to get into some of your titles, but the very first thing I want to ask is what we ask everyone. So, our very first question that we've asked for three years now, to hundreds of people, but I want to know your answer to this, which is, Chris, as you and I engage one another today, you're on the West Coast, I'm on the East Coast, different time zones, so we're coming into this in different places, but today specifically, who or what are you grateful for?

Health. Yeah, I've had had some health problems along the way, and had a discussion this morning with somebody about their situation that they're having. And so, yeah. Very grateful for my health.

That is something that full disclosure, full transparency, with some of the things that are going around in my orbit as well, I can really appreciate that answer. So, thank you for that. All right, let's now get into your titles. What the heck is a “pracademic”? I think I know, but lay it on me, man. What is a “pracademic”?

I practice leadership and followership. I currently work full time for a district attorney's office as the business manager. So, my boss is the elected DA. I have to follow what my boss wants, and I have to lead the other 160 some odd people that are in here. So, I practice, but I'm also an academic, in that, you know, I have studied leaders. All my degrees, Bachelor, Masters, Doctorate, are all in organizational leadership, so, I still stay involved with the academic world. That's where the “leaderology” thing comes in. That is purely about academics and ensuring that the people that are coaching and mentoring are academics. So “pracademic” is one of those portmanteau words that you put together two words, and you have a “pracademic”. Practicing academic.

You know, I really appreciate that answer. You're making me think years ago now, when I was an undergrad, one of my favorite teachers was a guy that, I remember it was sales, the class was sales, and he had a full-time job. I think he was a national sales director of a large manufacturing company, but then at night he taught, and we had a book, and we went through the textbook, but the best part of the class was his stories, of like, hey, today I was working on this type of thing. And so, I don't know that we used the word “pracademic” back then, but it just makes me think about that. And so, yeah, you're writing books, you're studying leadership, but your day job is you're doing this stuff as well, right?

Yeah, right.

Very cool. Very cool. Tell me a little bit about you. In your defining “pracademic”, you use the word “leaderologist”. Tell me more about that, because there's a whole group, right?

Yeah, it's the National Leaderology Association. It’s brand new. I say brand new in the terms of societies and associations, that kind of stuff, it's brand new. About about two years old right now, and so we're still trying to get members, etc. But “leaderology” is just like psychology, sociology. We even have mixology if you want to be a bartender,.

This is one I'm familiar with.

I might do that as a third career. Who knows? So, yeah. So, I mean, you wouldn't go to a psychologist who hasn't studied psychology. You wouldn't go to all of these ologists kind of things. So, a “leaderologist” is somebody who studies the science of leadership. And so, the National Association of Leaderology, it's a nonprofit, and what we do is we have different levels of certification. I'm a verified “leaderologist” too, which means that I have the highest level of leaderology certification now, because I have three different degrees in leadership. So if you have one degree in leadership, there's all these different rankings, but basically it's so that people recognize that you have studied leadership and the theory of leadership and all the different theories that go along with it, instead of just, you know, hey, I ran my flower shop for 20 years and so, I decided I didn't want to do a flower shop anymore, I'm going to be a leadership coach. And so now you start coaching, and, well, maybe you're coaching somebody who's in a different field than flower shop, and you send them the wrong way. Just an example, if somebody brings up being a cohesive team, well, do you understand how there's several different ways of building cohesion? And what are those several different ways? And how does cohesion work in a team setting? It's a group structural dimension, and it's a group process. So, you have to understand how each of those work and then task cohesion versus social cohesion. All of these things that, you know, people say, oh, we just need to be cohesive. What's that mean? Well, we do a team building. But what are you doing in the team building, right?

Yeah, yeah. Sure.

So, understanding the theories of how these things work, that's where the leaderology comes in, is that you've actually studied the theories of leadership and leaderology, right? The scientific study of leaderology, which includes followership too. Followerology leadership involves followership. You can't have one without the other. So, that's why we have the leaderology. The Association of Leaderologists.

Well, and it makes me think to what we said at the at the top of our conversation here, when you were talking about defining “pracademic”. You've got some practical background, right? Before you started studying this and became an academic expert in leadership, you were doing a lot of it. I mean, you're doing it now, I get that, with the D A'S office, but in your years on the force, you know, I read enough about you to know you worked your way up to leadership. So, you had some boots on the ground, very practical type of experiences. Your path is very different. I mean, I know, gosh, I've even interviewed people that have been in different police enforcement capacities that then do some sort of consulting or security, or they open a business that has something to do with police. Yours is specific in leadership. Talk to us a little bit about your path from being on the force to what you explain that you're doing right now.

It started with about being 18 years on, being one of the old crusty salt kind of cops and realizing that some of my friends were getting hurt. I was just about ready to turn 40 years old and, you know, chasing somebody over a fence, I just thought, this is stupid. This is crazy, you know? The bad guys stay 18 to 25 and the cops, we just kept getting older, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah. So, one night while we're doing briefing, the Lieutenant kind of leans to the side and he goes, so he can see me, he goes, you guys that are looking at promoting, you need to start thinking about your education. And at that time, I only had one PhD, public high school diploma.

That’s awesome.

Right. So, you know, we you think about it's like, oh, man, you know, I really need to do something. So, I went back to school. Because everybody's getting hurt, they can't be cops anymore, so it's like, I need something that I can use after. You know, the backup plan. What cop didn't have a backup plan, right? So, I needed a backup plan. So, I went to school. I said, oh, I'll try this org leadership stuff. This sounds like it could fit everywhere. I finished my AA Degree, then I finished my bachelor's degree in org leadership and then they said, well, if you want to keep going, we have this master's degree you can do, and then you get a graduate certificate at the same time while you do that in human resources. So, I said, I’ll do that too.

Sure.

So yeah. So, I spent, you know, five or six years going back to school, and while I was doing that, what was cool was that I started seeing all of the theories put into practice on a day-to-day basis as I'm going to work. I promoted to a sergeant and during that time, all sorts of stuff started happening. I started realizing all the different things like how a supervisor can influence people and I started really getting into that. There were a couple instances that now looking back at it, it makes sense to me, but then, I was just kind of perked off because of what happened. Like we had this one incident where there was a shooting, and this is actually in the book. The names are changed to protect the guilty and all that kind of stuff, but we're handling this incident, and the Sheriff of the county, I'm a sergeant in one of the cities in the county, right? So, the Sheriff of the county comes into the command center, and he says, hey, Chris, this is who we think it is. He hands me a photograph and I said, well, you know, he says, I want you to take one of the SWAT teams and go to this house and I kind of said, you know, are you taking over my scene? Because I was the incident commander, and the incident commander runs the whole thing regardless of rank, right? And I said, are you taking over my scene? And he says, no. And he hands me this picture. I said, no, I'm not. And my chief is sitting right there in in the command center. So, I'm telling this Sheriff, he's the elected sheriff. I mean, this is the highest law enforcement in the county, and I'm telling him, no, I'm not going to do what he said.

Oh boy.

And just about then we ended up having shots fired and so complete switch and I never had to deal with any repercussions from that. But what that showed me is that, you know, I'm a follower, but I'm also a leader. I was leading that entire scene. And, I mean, this was basically a officer involved shooting, where the guy lured some officers to a place, and then started shooting at him, and ended up murdering one sergeant and then critically wounding the other. And, you know, so I started realizing, and it made me mad at the time that here, my chief never said anything. He never said good job, he never said bad job, but he let it happen. The sheriff never said anything. Nobody ever said anything to me about this. But at that time, I was leading, but I was also following with what I should be doing.

Yeah.

And yeah, it was kind of interesting, because that particular instance, now, looking back at it, I could put it in those terms, but I couldn't at the time, and that that happened quite a bit through the law enforcement world.

I'm intrigued. I want to go in a couple different directions here, Chris. One, I want to find out more about that specific story, but that's not the kind of podcast that we run here. You know, we're not doing a crime podcast. Maybe I should, because I'm so interested in what you just said. But anyways, I digress. I know when I was doing my research, I've seen you written a couple pieces, and you're alluding to this being in the book, but this idea of leaders being followers also, and sometimes at the same time. I remember when I was doing my reading, kind of coming up on the topic of leadership, you know you can't have leaders without followers. The part of the definition of leadership is that you have followers, but what you're touching on right now, I feel like is a little bit different, and I want to dive into it more, which is, sometimes you're a leader and a follower at the same time. Could you just talk more about that?

Yeah, that's the interesting part here, and that's why this book is called “Liminal Space. Reshaping Leadership and Followership”. So, when you think of liminality, it comes from anthropology. You're talking about being in a transition state, and so we have this liminality, like in the position I’m in right now at the district attorney's office. I'm just one guy, but you know, the DA says, hey, we want to go this direction, well, he gives me the general idea of where we want to go and it's up to me to work out the details. And so, I'm leading other people by working out the details, but I'm also following the direction that I've been given. And so, it's not so much that I'm a leader or a follower, it's more than I'm doing the behaviors that I need to do in order to lead and follow simultaneously, and if you're doing that, then the behaviors become more important. If I'm being, let's say transparent, people talk about, oh, we want our leaders be transparent, well, that's good, but we also want our followers to be transparent with us, and we should be transparent with our leader, right? And so, it's the behavior of transparency that makes things work better, and you can use all sorts of different behaviors with this. And so, the position, it doesn't matter if I'm leading or following, if I'm being transparent, because I'm doing the same behavior in both directions.

Yeah. You get you opened with the story of the shooting incident, to start to illustrate this. Is there e a recent story? I want to grab onto this topic a little bit more, because I think it'll serve our audience, but selfishly, I want to understand this a little bit more. At least your take on this. Do you have any story or anything that's happened recent to illustrate the point that you're making?

So, I mean, it happens here every day. Just yesterday, that's pretty recent. We have one of our employees here who's been here for 25 years, she just resigned. She's the executive assistant, and so now the district attorney needs a new executive assistant, and he wants to use one of the people that are already up here in the admin area. So, it's like, okay, yeah, what am I going to do? Say no That's not going to happen. So, he wants to do that. So, it's like, okay. So now my job is to figure out how we're going to disperse all the executive assistant jobs until we make that transition, and then we have to make that transition. So, you know, in an any day kind of business setting, you're doing this all the time, and most people don't realize it. Just like this, that one thing, now I have to do it. So, that's just an everyday thing. But when you break it down and you think about, okay, so the boss wants to do this., he wants to go a certain direction, he wants to use a certain person, so that affects the team that I have, and so now I have to reconfigure that team and the tasks of that team, and the structure of that team, and so we start looking at the whole team dynamics. What's going to happen with the team? And then change. Now the whole change dynamics. So, what's going to happen with the change. And the fear, you know? Well, wait a minute. So and so is leaving, so now am I going to have to do all their work? Well, maybe not. So, now there's the fear part gets involved. So, you have all these dynamics of leading and following, and so what I need to do is I need to use the behaviors that I know work in creating change in getting that change. This is an incremental type of change. We don't have to do some kind of major restructuring or anything, and everybody will go, yeah, okay, let's work it out. Then we move the person that is going to be going into there. We'll move that person in there. Restructure again. So, I mean, this happens every single day.

Yeah. And it's just ongoing, right? Because once that's done, then there'll be something else behind that you need to start working on.

Right.

So, okay, what are some of the other big ideas from your book “Liminal Space”? Besides the leadership and followership, I know that that's the subtitle, but what are a few things that I haven't asked you about that are some big ideas of the book?

So, leadership and followership are not opposites. If you ask people, okay, so, and I do this in my training, sometimes I'll say, okay, I'm going to do a test really quick. As fast as you can tell me the opposite of the word that I say. And I'll say, fast, slow, up, down, in out, you know? And then I say leader, and you get people who go follower, right? And then, okay, now think about it. If you think about followership, are we actually the opposite? Are we going in opposite directions? Usually not. We're going towards the same goals.

That's right. Yeah.

We have a shared purpose, and so all those things, we're not actually doing the opposite. And that's in my book, because I did this with chat GPT. I asked chat GPT, I said, hey, what's the opposite of leader? It said follower. I said, okay, what's the definition of opposite? And it tells me the definition of opposite. I said, okay, given that definition of opposite, is follower actually the opposite of leader? And it just stopped for a second and I thought, oh, did I piss it off? And then it says, thank you for clarifying. You're correct. I took the text, and I put it right in the book, because it says it right in there. Under those circumstances, you're going the same direction, you're doing the same things, etc. So, that's one thing there and that’s a mental schema that we really need to change, because we've been trained, just like everything, we've been trained that leaders and followers are opposite. They’re not.

So, before you go on to the next one, II want to go a level deeper on that. So, I'm nodding my head in agreement about what you said, that leaders and followers are going in the in the same direction, not opposite directions. I get that. I have in my head what makes really good followers, and I think you can almost lead by following, but I would love to know from your aspect, from your vantage point, what makes really good followers?

I'm going to say the same thing that makes good leaders, and I'll tell you why. For 10 years, what we did in our classes, at the beginning of the class, I would ask everybody in there, and these are mostly cops, you know, firemen and medical personnel, and I would ask him, okay, you know, give me two traits or behaviors of great leaders. So, we would do that. Like a good consultant, you know, I write it on a piece of large paper and stick it on the walls.

That's right, yeah.

Otherwise, you're not a consultant? You have to do that.

That's right. Yep, exactly.

So, I would do that and, and then later on I'd say, okay, this is what this class says are good leader. So then later on, we're talking about followership, and I would go over to the class. We talk about Kelly's followership styles and all that other stuff and then get to talking about followership in general. I went over to this list, and I said, okay, so what on this list do you not want in your followers?

Nothing.

Right.

Yeah.

So, it's the same thing that we want in our followers, that we want in our leaders. It's the same behaviors and treats that we want. So that's why you know the answer to your question is, it's the same thing. We want the same thing. We want the same behaviors. It doesn't matter what the position is. That's why I keep going back to it's not the position; it's the behavior that's important.

Yep, yep. So good. Okay, well, I thank you for that. That actually helps a ton. What other big ideas do you want our listeners to know about from your book?

So, we talked about the liminal space a little bit. The other one is what's called tessellations of behavior. I freak out every time I think about tessellations, because it involves math and I'm not math guy, but a tessellation is nothing more than a repeated geometric shapes, repeated patterns of geometric shapes, and if you look at in the math books, it could talk about, I forget what it's called. Proper tessellations? I forget the terminology for it, but these tessellations where you use squares, triangles and hexagons, because those can all be fitted together and never have to cover each other and not leave any spaces and you can completely cover a plane or surface with those kinds of shapes. Well, if you take those shapes and put them into the three areas of an organization, so the top area is strategic. You know, the C suites. All the C suites are in the strategic development, strategic planning, etc., and so that's the strategic level. That would be the triangle. Then you have the middle level, the tactical level of an organization, which is the mid managers, etc., and you use a square for that; those four behaviors. And then at the bottom level, you use a hexagon or the six behaviors. So, now you have 13 behaviors. If you identify those 13 behaviors so at the top level, the strategic, I mean, think of all the different possibilities you could use, just identify three behaviors that you want that are overriding behaviors for the entire organization. And then at the mid-level you have four behaviors, four behaviors that are tactically designed to help the organization achieve its goals and the three strategic. And then at the bottom level you have the six behaviors. So, when you put these behaviors into shapes and write them on the side of each shape, you can actually fit those together and cover an entire plane or surface. Well, if you think about the behaviors as covering your entire organization, let's say you have four or 5000 people, and if they all know what these 13 behaviors are, and they can do these 13 behaviors, now you've identified the 13 behaviors, and if you identify it, you can define it. If you define it, you can train it. If you train it, then you can evaluate it, start putting that into your expectations, into your evaluations, into everything that you're doing as far as recognizing what the people are doing. So kind of a long explanation, but yeah.

Well, I just like the word. First of all, I wrote the word down, and I'm not going to proclaim that I just understood everything that you said, but I got about maybe 80% and at the very end there, where you talk about, you know, explaining it, defining it, training to it, one of the benefits of all of that is that now you've got some things that are repeatable, that's in a process and scalable, as opposed to what a lot of organizations run up against is, man, every single scenario is just different .There's more junkiness and friction and different things, where what you're talking about with tessellation is it's more streamlined, more repeatable, more scalable. Do I track there?

And it's a recognizable pattern. I'm sure you probably have some tile in your bathroom somewhere, right?

Sure.

And so, you look at a tile that's a repeatable pattern

Yeah.

And so, if you look at these kinds of things, and it's all throughout nature. Turtle shells, pineapples, pineapple skins, all sorts of things. All of this stuff is throughout nature and in design. We specifically design things. Look at carpet patterns. Look at all these different things. Well, if we do that in nature, we do it in design, we do it in in all of these other things, in our architecture, etc. why don't we do it in our behavior?

Yeah.

And then we have those behaviors that we know are repeatable patterns, and once we have that repeatable pattern and we know what they are, and we can define them and train them and evaluate them, now we can adjust the behaviors. Now we're focused on the behaviors. So, yeah. And tessellation, it is kind of a cool word, you know?

Yeah, I wrote it down. Well, I tell you what, Chris, this has already been a fascinating and intriguing conversation. I have a feeling there are people that are going to want to maybe dive into your material a little bit more. You know, “Liminal Space” is on Amazon. Where's the best place for people to get the book if they're interested or any of your books?

Yeah, Amazon is where all the books are. Amazon.com. Just search for Chris Fuzi books, and they'll show up.

Okay, perfect. And then if people want to reach out to you specifically for a deeper conversation, or any of the leadership work that you do, or followership work that you do, what's the best way for people to find you?

So, my website is actually the best way, because it has the contact information right on there. So, it's www.CMFleadership.com. I just have to remember my name and where I work.

I like your brand of humor, too, Chris. I definitely appreciate that. Well, thank you so much. What a great conversation. Before our conversation, liminal space was a little heady, I'll be honest with you, but as I listened to you talk it through, it just makes a lot more sense. And I really appreciate your bringing down to earth conversations where these things may sound a little heady with all of your, you know, what did we say here? Leaderology, pracademic? But at the same time, this is boots on the ground, these are actual stories and some things that are very practical, so, thank you for all of that. Thanks for what you're doing out there, and thanks for the conversation today.

Oh, thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and talk with people, and I hope people get something out of it, and I’m more than happy to have any conversations people want to have afterwards.

I have a sneaky suspicion that that will definitely happen. Well, thank you so much, Chris.

Okay, thank you.

Really good stuff with Dr Chris Fuzi. First of all, I just appreciate the service of him being in the police enforcement for almost 30 years and then going on to study and practically implement and teach the rest of us more about leadership and this idea of the liminal space of reshaping leadership and followership. Some deep stuff, but boy, important work. Things that stuck out to me were just the new words that he introduced me to. He introduced me to the word pracademic. He introduced me to the word leaderology, and he also introduced me to the word of tessellations. So, I definitely appreciate that. I'm just grateful that there are people like Chris out there for doing this type of work. I know that on a day-to-day basis I can just get bogged down in the day to day decisions that I need to make that type of thing. Chris's conversation allowed me to pick my head up take a look around, not only in my own organization of Rewire, but that of our clients as well. But those are the insights that me as the host had, but as we say at the end of every episode of The Insight Interviews, it doesn't much matter what me as the host what my insights were, but what really matters is what insights did you have?

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