430: How Does Dr. Chris Fuzie Create Great Leaders?

In this episode of On the Brink with Andi Simon, I am joined by Dr. Chris Fuzie, Ed. D, leadership expert and author of the thought-provoking new book Liminal Space: Reshaping Leadership and Followership. Together, we explore how leadership is evolving and how traditional distinctions between “leader” and “follower” no longer apply in dynamic, modern organizations.

Dr. Fuzie shares insights from his 28-year career in law enforcement and his academic journey in organizational leadership. Dr. Fuzie is a seasoned leader, educator, and consultant with a passion for transforming organizations through innovative leadership practices.

He introduces the concept of liminal space—a transformative, in-between zone where individuals often occupy roles of both leader and follower simultaneously. Through engaging storytelling and a practical behavioral framework, he challenges us to think differently about how we lead, how we follow, and how we cultivate organizational cultures of adaptability, accountability, and grace.

Whether you’re in the C-suite, a middle manager, or just starting your leadership journey, this episode offers fresh and applicable insights to help you navigate fast-changing times.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn about Leaderology and Liminal Space:

• What liminal space is and why it matters for today’s leaders and followers
• Why leadership is behavior, not position—and how followership is just as critical
• How Chris developed his Tessellations of Behavior model for strategic, tactical, and operational alignment
• The power of clearly defined behaviors like integrity, teachability, and grace in shaping organizational culture
• How the National Leaderology Association is working to elevate leadership and followership as scientific disciplines
• Why grace and empathy are essential tools for modern leadership in a world of rapid change and AI integration

You will enjoy watching our podcast on YouTube: 

Books by Dr. Chris Fuzie:

1. Liminal Space: Reshaping Leadership and Followership – Available on Amazon
2. Because Why: Understanding Behavior and Exigencies
3. Score Performance Counseling: Supportive, Clear, Organized, Redirecting Effort

Resources & Links:

• CMF Leadership Consulting: www.cmfleadership.com
• Email Dr. Fuzie: chris@cmfleadership.com
• National Leaderology Association: Supporting the science of leadership and followership
• Follow Chris on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter)

Other podcasts you will enjoy:

429: Embracing the Future: How Matt Leta is Guiding Companies

428: Al Must Transform Our Communication Strategy. Just Ask Dan Nestle!

427: Empowering Women in STEM: Rashmi Chaturvedi’s Journey

Additional resources for you

Connect with me:

• Website: www.simonassociates.net
• Email: info@simonassociates.net
• Books:
  • Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business
  • Women Mean Business
  • On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights

Listen + Subscribe:

Available wherever you get your podcasts—Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review and share with someone navigating their own leadership journey.

Reach out and contact us if you want to see how a little anthropology can help your business grow.  Let’s Talk!

From Observation to Innovation,

CEO | Corporate Anthropologist | Author
Simonassociates.net
Info@simonassociates.net
@simonandi
LinkedIn

Read the text for our podcast here:

Andi Simon 00:00:01  Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon, it’s so good to have you here. Whether you’re watching our video or listening to the podcast, it’s always a pleasure to have our audience come so that we can help you get off the brink. And remember, our job is to help you see, feel, and think in new ways and the times they are changing. So, how are you going to thrive in these fast-changing times? I have with us today, Dr. Chris Fuzie, and he has a new book out that’s really going to be interesting to you called Liminal Space. It’s a different way of approaching leadership and followership. I’ll let him tell you about it in a moment. But let me give you his bio so you have a beginning of a sense of who he is and what he’s done. Dr. Chris Fuzie is the owner and CEO of CMF Leadership Consulting. Chris is a leader, ologist and president elect, the National Leader Ology Association. And he is going to tell you about this new organization that’s coming together to help pick out good leader instructors and begin to develop the consultancies that do it. Now, remember, I have three leadership academies, and I’ve been doing one for six years and another for seven years, and I have really developed them without a whole lot of meteorology, so I’m anxious to hear what this means and how it works. Dr. Fuzie holds a Doctor of Education, a master’s in organizational leadership, and has graduate certificates in human resources and criminal justice education. He’s been a developer, a trainer, a consultant for leadership of public, private, and nonprofit organizations since 2010 when he honorably retired from the Modesto Police Department as the Assistant Division Commander for investigations after 28 years of public service. Oh my goodness, that was a long time of small changes, perhaps into a time of fast moving general. Right. Wow. Chris, may I call you Chris?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:01:59  Yes. Just Chris, please.

Andi Simon 00:02:01  Uh, and I, I know you can’t write me a prescription either.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:02:05  Right.

Andi Simon 00:02:06  Dr. Simon and Dr. Chris. We want to introduce you more to the audience so that we can put your book into the right context. Who are you? What was your journey all about? Share with us.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:02:17  My journey started as a police officer. I won’t go into the whole grew up where, you know, that kind of thing. But my journey started as a police officer and having experienced different types of leadership as a police officer, about halfway through my career, I was sitting in a briefing one night, and thinking about a couple of my friends had gotten hurt, and a few people had to retire. And so it was like, oh, man, you know, what’s my plan? You know, as a cop, you always go into things with a backup plan. So, what’s my plan if I get hurt? And then the lieutenant sitting way up at the front of the room, you know, old crusty cops like me, were sitting in the back and  kinda leaned one side.  And he says, for those of you who are thinking about promoting your career, you need to think about your education. And it was like he shot a bullet right into my brain and made it bounce around and kept bouncing around. And so I went back to school. Before I went back to school, I just had a public high school diploma, right. You could be very successful and do a very good job all the way up to chief of police with a high school diploma in police work. But, so, I thought, if I can’t do police work, then what do I do? So I looked at this leadership stuff, and I was hooked. After I started the bachelor’s degree, I started the master’s degree, and then I got the graduate certificate, and it was great. Then I retired in the financial crisis of 2008. They said, we’re going to send some of you people who are at the top of the food chain on your way and give you a golden handshake. Thank you very much. And so now I was out on my own. I went to work one morning; I was in charge of homicide and gangs and the street level drug unit. When I left that day, I was unemployed, 50 years old, and what am I going to do now? So I started in organizational consulting. I started teaching organizational consult, organizational stuff, leadership, and followership. And I had been teaching leadership and followership through the International Association of Chiefs of Police and then I just continued with that. And then once I retired, I stopped doing it for IACP and started doing it on my own. And Canada, that’s where this came from, I went and finished the doctorate program and, and just kept going. And here I am. So, yeah, that’s kind of the background of this. That’s how I got to where I’m at.

Andi Simon 00:05:03  Yeah. I have a hunch. When you were in the police force, did you think of yourself as a leader? I mean, it’s sort of always interesting how we perceive ourselves, a follower, a leader. What kind of role did you feel you had?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:05:18  So this is the interesting part is I would think of myself as a follower, as a patrol officer. I thought of myself as a follower, even though as a training officer, I knew I was leading other people. And then as a sergeant, I still felt as a positional leader, I felt, okay, now I’m a leader, but I still felt very much in the followership role. And then even as a lieutenant, now I’m even more of a leader, but I still felt I’m in the fathership role. And it didn’t dawn on me till probably about three or four years ago that all of those times I was actually doing both and you’re doing both. You’re in that liminal space. And that’s where this liminal idea came from, this liminal space idea came from, is that you’re doing both leading and following. But in the police world, you’re more, I like to say, you’re more of a follower than a leader. We follow the law, we follow the direction, we follow policy, we follow all that kinda stuff. You feel like you’re in this follower role and that there’s always somebody above you. Yes. But I can point to instances where I was the on-scene commander, and one of them is a very tragic incident where we had somebody murdered one of the officers. It was kind of an ambush situation, but I got thrust into the command position, and that’s actually in the book. And I got put in this position, and that transfer happened quickly. Then I knew that I was in charge, and even the county sheriff came in and he was trying to tell me what to do. I basically said, unless you’re going to take over my scene, I’m in charge. I’m a sergeant. And I’m telling the sheriff that it doesn’t make sense to me. But it dawned on me later that that’s what leadership is. It’s not so much the position, it’s the behavior. And that’s why the book is called Liminal Space, Reshaping Leadership and Followership. We talk about the behaviors that come from that also.

Andi Simon 00:07:46  This is really quite fascinating. I want you to talk about the perspective you have. It’s an interesting book. And we’ll talk about the what, the how, and the why. But then I also want to talk about it in the context of traditional literature, about different styles of leaders, the kind of cultures that they have to lead in. And it’s a really deep and important question that you’re raising. But let’s stay on Liminal Space. What is that about? How did you begin to try and make sense out of this fluidity that you had? And it sounds like it was very fluid, I’ll move here, and I’m a leader, and here I’m a follower, and it’s okay to be both, please.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:08:25  Yeah. So, even like right now, I work at a district attorney’s office, and I’m the business manager at the district attorney’s office. I report directly to the DA And so he says, this is the direction we’re going to go. I have to follow that direction. But then I have to turn around and at the same time, I have to lead 164 other people in how we’re going to make this happen. And so I’m following and leading at the same time. Liminality, as you know as an anthropologist, has to do with animals and how they transition from one to the other, like a butterfly in a cocoon. In Liminal Space, what I’m talking about in that context is that not only are you leading, but you’re following at the same time.  So my action as a follower to the DA is at the same time as simultaneously an action of leading to the people behind me. When we talk about that liminal space,  the position isn’t as important. The position takes a backseat to the behaviors that I have to do, because let’s say, let’s just pick a behavior, honest. So being honest, whether I’m being honest as a follower, or I’m being honest as a leader, it really doesn’t matter because the behavior of being honest is what’s important. This liminal space, and almost anybody that leads and follows: any middle manager, any supervisor. I look back at my career as an officer, as a police officer, when I was training brand new police officers as a field training officer. I’m a leader of one, but that one is so important that I get that person up to speed, and I teach them the right way, and I teach them how to do things. And then I became a sergeant. Now I’m a leader of about seven or eight, but I’m still following the direction of the lieutenant and the captain and the chief. I started looking at this about five or six years ago.  In 2019, we went to the first Global Followership Conference and I spoke about this in the first global followership conference.

Andi Simon 00:10:58  Interesting. A Global Followership Conference. I never knew about that.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:11:04  Yeah. And there’s one coming up this year in Claremont, California, May 20- 30. Okay. Spread the word please. I mean, if people want to go and learn about followership and how followership is such a part of leadership, an integral part that you can’t have one without the other. Then last year I spoke at the same conference about these concepts in the book at the Global Followership Conference. And that one was in Glasgow, Scotland, that was just such an incredible time. But anyway, so you think about this liminal space, and that’s what we’re talking about, is that leading and following simultaneously. And most people don’t realize it until they stop. It’s kinda like breathing. You don’t think about your breathing until you have to think about your breathing.

Andi Simon 00:12:05  Chris, this is really quite fascinating. I want to go down a little bit further in terms of, like you had said, it’s not hard for people to be preaching about what good leadership is, whether you’re a command-and-control leader, an entrepreneurial one, or market driven, or a collaborative one. I mean, there are different styles of leading, but they really talk about the other side, which is what kind of followers we are, and how do we make sure that the job we have to get done will get done with others. I can’t do it alone if I’m a soloist, it’s not easy to get things accomplished. And even if they don’t work for me, I’ve got to be able to lead others in some fashion. So what did you put together in Liminal Space?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:12:46  So I put together Liminal Space because you have to be a good follower to be a good leader. Thinking about this leadership stuff and followership stuff, what happened was over the last 10 years, I say the last 10 years, but it was actually from 2010, up until 2019, every time I would do training, I would ask people, okay, give me two traits of great leaders. So, like a good consultant, you put all that stuff on the walls and write all over and everything. And so, they would give me these traits of great leaders, two traits of great leaders from every person. Then later on in the day, we would talk about followership. And, and I would go back to that list and I’d say, now look at your list here. You said, these are traits of great leaders. Are these also traits of great followers or behaviors of great followers? And everybody agreed, yes, they are. So when you think about this liminal space, you’re talking about leaders, but you’re also talking about exemplary followers. And then we would get into the discussion of the different follower types: alienated, conformist, that kind of stuff. All of Kelly’s followership type  behaviors. We go through that and then at the end, I would say, look, to be a good follower, and then we would talk about leading up and, and how you may have to step into a leadership role. I would always use the thing about  what if you got hit by a train on the way? Well, and then we almost got hit by a train and it was, I don’t say that anymore. If something happens to you or your boss or somebody else, you have to step into that role, or somebody else is going to have to step into your role. So now you’re talking about succession planning. So this liminal space kind of bleeds into succession planning. It bleeds into hierarchical structure. What kind of structure do you have in your organization? Liminal space, once you start thinking about it in those terms, that’s why I wrote this book, and I wanted it to be a fictional parable kind of book, but in the end of the book, the chapter 10 actually has ways that you can implement every bit of this, uh, that’s discussed in the book. So, okay. So I wanted to make it a useful project.

Andi Simon 00:15:33  Well, it’s not abstract or esoteric. It’s very concrete. The basis for it is very real. I think it’s a really different and interesting approach so that they aren’t separate, this one system, call it whatever you like, a club or an organization or a police department or whatever. And people have to get things done sometimes by following and sometimes by leading others. Um, but it isn’t either or you flow in and out as if it’s an amoeba. You know, you just keep changing the role you’re playing, and you need to know to play ’em really well, don’t you?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:16:12  Yeah. You’re part of the process. You know, we talk about the leadership process and a lot of leadership literature. You know, all of that, I’m talking about the literature, the surveys, all the stuff you find on Google. A lot of that has to do with the position of being a leader and the position of being a follower. Well, if you take those, if you think of it more as a process where you have to have a leader, a follower, and a situational context to deal with, you can’t do anything without one of those three. You take away the leader, now you just have a follower and a situation. You take away the following, now you just have a leader in a situation. You take away the situation, you have two people standing there with nothing to do. You have to think about this in the process. I talk about somebody in that process as one person who has the lead and follows simultaneously. And that’s where this liminal space comes in, is that you are doing both leading and following. You still have a leader, you still have a follower, but the behavior now is what becomes important and not the position. So it’s the behavior within the process.

Andi Simon 00:17:40  Well, I think it’s really fascinating. Um, how does somebody take your ideas and try to implement them?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:17:48  In the back of the book, it has it right there. Mary’s memos: how to create tessellations of behavior. It talks about how you can look at your liminal space and your liminal positions and identify the behaviors that you want at the three different levels of an organization, the strategic, the tactical, and the operational level in the organization. And it uses what’s called Tessellations of Behaviors. And so you have a triangle for the upper level, for the strategic level, three overriding or overarching behaviors you want in your entire organization. And then in the middle management or tactical area, you have four behaviors. And those four behaviors are four behaviors that you want within your middle management and throughout the whole middle management. And then at the operational level, you have the hexagon or the six behaviors, six core behaviors that you want everybody. So let’s use teachable as a behavior, so now we know what we can define it. If we pick the behaviors, we can define them. And once you define it, then you can teach it. And once you teach it, you can have it repeated and it can be evaluated, what better way to have evaluations, but on core behaviors that people are supposed to do within the organization.

Andi Simon 00:19:19  Now, for the six behaviors, can you suggest to us what they represent?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:19:25  Well, it depends on the organization. So the six behaviors are operational behaviors. I have a list of 86 behaviors. And those 86 behaviors come from that training that I did where the lists that we made. What I did was I kept track of those lists, and then I boiled it down to 86 basic behaviors that people use and that they say these are the 86 behaviors of great leaders and followers and exemplary followers. That’s the list that I use for people to say here’s good behavior. Now let’s define it. What is it? Pick any behavior really: what does integrity mean to this organization? And what does integrity mean in our setting? And so you could use that, and it applies in every organization, public, private, profit, nonprofit, doesn’t matter.

Andi Simon 00:20:28  The interesting part is you don’t define it, you define the category, and they can define it that’s relevant for whether they’re not for profit or a for-profit or a manufacturing or whatever. You are starting to implement it in the district attorney’s office. How’s that going?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:20:45  It’s going really well. We’ve done it with our clerical unit. We keep referring back to those six behaviors. It’s hanging in the clerical manager’s office, the list that we wrote out is hanging in our office. And when it comes up, a problem or an issue, it’s how does it fit with these six? And that’s what we’re using

Andi Simon 00:21:11  As it cuts down on the, I’ll call it the warfare that often develops among the folks in a clerical office. Where things are endless and the purpose is meaningless, but well, often that happens.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:21:24  Yeah, the different supervisors are aware of what it means. They’ve all agreed on what it means. So they defined it. We all agree on what it means. And so if there’s an issue or a question,  this is what we agreed on. We said this and we have it written right on there. So it’s kind of cool because you can go back and try and solve any kind of problems or do some kind of mentoring, coaching with people.

Andi Simon 00:21:54  Uh, I think it’s wonderful. Well, um, I know that you’re very involved in this association. How important is this for the implementation of this? Is this something that everyone has embraced?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:22:17  Okay. So the National Leadrology Association is separate and distinct from, as a nonprofit, our goal there at the National Leaderology Association is to support forward the science of leadership, which includes followership. I don’t know why I always feel obligated to say that, you know, which includes followership. The scientific study of leadership, liminal space, the way I use that in liminal space. They’re scientists, so that lets them study their part of science, leadership science.

Andi Simon 00:23:15  And I’m curious how they’re doing it in a scientific way. Are they having double blind studies? Are they having, is it quantitative or qualitative or it’s an interesting opportunity to study how people lead and others follow systematically. What are they doing?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:23:30  In the National Leaderology Association, we’re not supporting specific initiatives as far as leadership and followership. It’s a brand-new organization. Right now, we’re just trying to recruit members who have already done their own studies, who have already done their own, and have gotten their degrees. But we are starting a journal, Journal of Applied Leadorology.I couldn’t get it off the top of my head. But it’s a peer review journal that’s going to be for leadership and followership.

Andi Simon 00:24:17  Sounds terrific.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:24:18  Yeah. And we’re just starting. So, I mean, it’s brand new and it takes 20-30 years to get some of these things off the ground.

Andi Simon 00:24:26  Well, but it is sort of a weird way of beginning to do this at a time of great change. Because I have a hunch, even the word leadership is going to be changing. And, um, you know, and I don’t care whether it’s a fourth industrial revolution, AI, or machine learning blockchain. Are these positions or are they simply styles that people follow and who are the informal leaders and the formal leaders? And in a place, that’s going through change and with a fighting, everyone’s opposing it. It’s going to be an interesting time.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:24:58  It is very interesting. I appreciated the way in, in your introduction you talked about how leadership is evolving. I tend to say that a lot. You know, if you look at any of my LinkedIn posts, a lot of them will say leadership is changing. Leadership and followership are evolving. That’s what’s happening. As we go to AI, we still have to focus on people and we’re not going to evolve as fast as AI is going to evolve. So you’re going to have to use the fast brain for the AI stuff and the slow brain for the people stuff. I don’t know how this is going to be, it’s going to be interesting.

Andi Simon 00:25:38  Well, we have to get together. If not, you’ll be doing one thing. I’m writing one thing, but it’s a very, very interesting time. So let’s sort of begin to wrap up. Three important ideas, you don’t want them to forget, they often remember the ending. So help them remember two or three things that you think are important.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:25:59  If you’re in a leadership position, you’re most likely also in a followership position. So that’s the first thing. And those two things, the behaviors of those are more important than the position. So that’s, that’s the first thing. The other thing is that people make mistakes. People are fallible and we’re not machines. And so just to treat each other with a little bit of grace.

Andi Simon 00:26:34  Judith Glazer’s work on conversational intelligence and the power of the brain, what you’re talking about really is the human approach. They’re not soloists, whistleblowers, soloists, outsiders don’t do very well. If you want to survive, you have to be part of something. We’re herd animals. We live in groups. However you think of it, somebody’s going to have to tell us where we’re going and somebody has to agree or not agree and tackle us somewhere else. You’ve got dynamics going on that some will lead and will follow, and others won’t follow and want to know why we didn’t want to follow. But it’s a very interesting time for being wise about who I follow and how I lead.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:27:30  Yeah. And even though we’ve evolved to this point, when you think about it, you’re an anthropologist, you think about how we’ve developed up until this point. We still hold onto the things that kept us safe when we were living out, we still hold onto those things. And those fears are still as absolutely as valid as, as if we have a tiger chasing us.

Andi Simon 00:27:59  So we all do have a tiger chasing us. They’re hiding behind. But it’s true.  And humans survive because we’re able to respond. The question is, how can we do that now and do it in a way which is not alone? Because you don’t want to be a survivor by yourself. You want to be with someone. So it’s going to be tough. If they want to reach you, where can they find you?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:28:20  Well, I have it my website is www.cmfleadership.com. And then I also have another one for Score Performance Counseling. But you can find that on the CMF site. You can email me at chris@cmfleadership.com. So you just have to remember my name and where I work. And then I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, and X guess what it’s called now. So Twitter X, so all over the place.

Andi Simon 00:28:58  Well, it’s been a pleasure. Is your book being available at Amazon?

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:29:04  Yes. amazon.com. All three books are available.

Andi Simon 00:29:11  Tell us quickly about the other two before we leave, just so about

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:29:15  They’re all behavior-based books. The first one is called Because Why Understanding Behavior and Exigencies. This has a lot to do with my experience in the police world and handling critical incidents. You need to understand why people are doing what they’re doing. And so that’s important and that’s what that book is about, the human factors of understanding that. The second book is Score Performance Counseling: Supportive, Clear Organized, Redirecting Effort. And this was a direct creation from the office of Personnel Management that puts together a report every year. And in that report every year it says X number of employees who are poor performers are not being dealt with by their supervisors. And so I took that data and put it into a book about how you can make performance counseling much better with people and make that performance counseling, supportive, clear, organized, redirecting effort. So that’s what that book is about.

Andi Simon 00:30:29  Chris, it’s been really interesting, a wonderful time. I’ll keep it in mind as I start my leadership academy this Thursday. We do it remotely for two months, and we’re together for one month. And so we’ll be back together in April. And I think April is when we talk about followers.

Andi Simon 00:30:46  It’ll be great. I’ll let you know how it goes. And I’ll get a copy of your book and begin to read through it, and I encourage my folks to do the same. What a cool, cool guy. I’m so glad we met.

Dr Chris Fuzie 00:30:56  It’s been a pleasure. It’s nice meeting you. Nice meeting you. Thank you very much for having me here.

Andi Simon 00:31:00  Oh, it’s been great. For my listeners and my viewers, I can only thank you for coming. Send me your emails as you always do, at info@simonassociates.net. My books are on Amazon and like Chris’s, they’re all bestsellers and they help you see, feel, and think in new ways. And the two books about women in business Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business and Women Mean Business have opened up a whole opportunity for us to share the changes that women are making as a lead without limits and are changing how women are in the workforce. And I think it’s a really wonderful time. I’m going to say thank you. Remember, turn your observations into innovations and send along your great ideas. It’s great to share them.