Crisis Leadership: Dr. Chris Fuzie's Lessons from US Law Enforcement

ABOUT THE GUEST

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Chris Fuzie, President-Elect of the National Leaderology Association, a respected authority on leadership with over 13 years of experience as a CEO and Senior Consultant.

With a Doctorate in Organisational Leadership and 29 years as a Police Lieutenant, where he led teams such as Homicide and Hostage Negotiations, Dr. Fuzie brings an unparalleled perspective on leadership.

As a National Instructor in police leadership, author, and speaker, his mission is to help individuals and organisations apply behaviour-based leadership principles.

Today, we’ll explore leadership insights for SMEs, crisis management, and actionable strategies for driving organisational success.

To discover more about Dr Chris Fuzie and his book please click these links:

Website:            https://www.cmfleadership.com/
LinkedIn:           https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-chris-fuzie-ed-d-m-a-ol-37587934/
Facebook:         https://www.facebook.com/chris.fuzie
X Twitter:           https://x.com/CMFLeadership
Amazon book   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liminal-Space-Reshaping-Leadership-Followership-ebook/dp/B0D37GRY1R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=MRDYJ0X2SEFL&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ih0soLk9X5HGo6HQUQIOjQ.8WktSqKDrn9CtkWrbbDbcLfeiyzebyKE0i5xFZe2Qpg&dib_tag=se&keywords=Dr+chris+fuzie&qid=1726924485&sprefix=dr+chris+fuzie%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-1 

 ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Dave Barr and I am the Founder and Owner of RLB Purchasing Consultancy Limited.

I have been working in Procurement for over 25 years and have had the joy of working in a number of global manufacturing and service industries throughout this time.

I am passionate about self development, business improvement, saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues, and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

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Transcript

Intro  00:00

Welcome to The Real Life Buyer podcast. In this podcast, you will hear interviews with business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors and technical specialists in their field. These professionals will hasten your development, accelerate your career, and broaden your business. Know how now, introducing your host, Dave Barr, interviewing with a purchasing twist.

Dave Barr  00:21

Hello and welcome to The Real Life Buyer. Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr Chris Fuzie, the president elect and vice president of the National Leaderology Association and published author of "Liminal Space: Reshaping leadership and followership". During his career, Chris has amassed over 29 years in law enforcement, leading units as the homicide and hostage negotiation teams, and has now built over 14 years as an Owner and Senior Consultant of CMF LeadershipConsulting. Chris brings unmatched leadership expertise. He holds a doctorate in organisational leadership, and has dedicated his career to training others in behaviour based leadership. Today, we'll be diving into how his experience shapes leadership for today's businesses, offering practical insights for SMEs and procurement professionals alike to lead through crises and build resilient teams. So let's get started and welcome Chris onto the podcast. Hi Chris.

Dr Chris Fuzie  01:25

Hi Dave. Thank you very much.

Dave Barr  01:26

Absolute pleasure.

Dr Chris Fuzie  01:27

I'm glad to be here.

Dave Barr  01:29

I'm so good that we've managed to finally get a time together. And really it's going to be quite unique talking to you after such a long career in law enforcement, it's going to be, I think, a very different approach to perhaps other leadership people. So just mentioned nearly three decades in law enforcement, kind of interested to know, certainly for the audience and myself, what have been the pivotal moments and experiences that have inspired you to transition into leadership consulting andacademia.

Dr Chris Fuzie  02:01

Well, there was this, this point in my career. I was about, just about 40 years old, and I saw a couple of my friends, you know, other officers were out, you know, fighting crime in the middle of the night, and a couple of my friends were getting hurt and, and so I was like, man, you know, now they, they don't know what they're going to do. They don't know how to and so I said, Man, I gotta do something. And then there's, we're sitting in a briefing one night, and I remember like it was yesterday this lieutenant, and I'm just an officer, I'm sitting in the back row, and this lieutenant, kind of, he says, if any of you are willing, you know, wanting to get anywhere in your career. And he kind of leans aside, and he looks straight in the back towards me, and he says, You need to start working on your education. And it was like you shot a bullet. Went right into my head. Bounced around there for you know, and and he made me really think about going back to school, getting my education. And so I am 40 years old. I said, Okay, I only have a PhD, public high school diploma. That's all I had. And I said, I need to go back to school and talk to my wife about it. Went back to the junior college right here. And, you know, sitting in class 40 year old, seasoned cop, and I'm sitting in a classroom with 18, 19, year olds that have no clue about what's going on, and that's what started me on this path. So I went into I finished that AA degree, and I said, Well, I got to keep going. So I looked at the bachelor's degrees, and there's a local college that had the organisational leadership, and I thought, okay, if I get hurt as a cop, if I can't do this, then at least I can use that. That sounds like something could be used anywhere. So I'll do that. So I went into that program, started seeing all this stuff, all these, all these leadership theories, all of these, you know, all that stuff coming up, and realized that that's what was happening within my own organisation. So I started paying attention to what was going on in in school, started learning that and then seeing that. That's what's that will that's what was happening. So I finished the bachelor degree, and I went immediately into the master's degree, and I said, I said, this is good stuff. I mean, you could really see the use it's like going to work. Was like having my own little petri dish of, let's try some of this stuff out, so that, that's how I got into it. And it, it just blossomed from there with them getting the doctorate going from there. But yeah, it was that, that one guy who leans around the corner looks at you square in the eye and says, you need to do this, and that was it.

Dave Barr  04:42

That's a fantastic lesson that you can really get the bug for learning at any age, and just one influence was enough to set you on this path. It's quite fascinating. The other thing I find quite interesting, or love to hear from you, is you're in a classroom. As you mentioned, with a lot of young people, and you are little bit older than them, say, certainly been out in in a career and a career that probably is quite influential in itself. Yeah. How did they take to you? How did they react to you in the classroom?

Dr Chris Fuzie  05:13

They they didn't like they didn't take it because I Well, the the students, not as much as the instructors, because I was challenging the instructors. I had one instructor that, you know, and we had maybe three or four of us that had had been in this classroom. There was a couple people that were also there from other law enforcement agency, and I had this instructor in a sociology class telling me that men are not victims of domestic violence. And I said, Well, yeah, they are. And she goes, No men cannot be victims of domestic violence. And so I go, you know, how do you tell the instructor you're wrong? And you know, still be polite. But I told that's so I just said it. I said, Well, you're wrong. I just arrested a lady the other night for domestic violence. So it was hard because a lot of the theory in some of these courses, not so much the leadership courses, but, you know, sociology, and then the math and history and some of these other things, some of the theories and stuff don't add up. And if you don't have life experience, then you're just going to accept whatever the instructor says. And so I didn't accept whatever the instructor says. And a lot of the students were, they would, they would talk with you, you know, talk with me about some of these things, and I'd explain to them why. And so is it was, it was interesting, because it wasn't just sit there and learn and do the homework, and, you know, you really had to discuss stuff and and sometimes show people that they're wrong.

Dave Barr  06:46

Yeah, I think from, for me, one of the best learning experiences is hearing stories from other people, as you say, real, lived experiences. I've done it. It's not a case. It's come out of a book or off Google. You've you've been there and got the T shirts, so to speak. And nobody can argue with somebody who has been through not just one, but probably multiple examples of these things. And I said, I think you learn far more from people in in that context than ever from a book. Would you? Would you agree with that?

Dr Chris Fuzie  07:17

I'd agree with that. I don't know personally. Yeah, absolutely. Because and those experiences, we're observational learners. And so when somebody says, This is what happened, this is how it happened, and you can ask them questions about it, they can clarify or show you or whatever, then, yeah, that's way more important than you know, here's a theory Exactly.

Dave Barr  07:37

So obviously you've got a unique lens on leadership, certainly from a very different position to many people. So how do high stake leadership lessons from your police work, especially in units like hostage negotiations and homicide you know that's quite astounding to be involved in that. How do they translate to the leadership challenges faced by small business owners today, particularly now it's quite tough and in the economic environment and that they may well have an operational crisis to deal with as well.

Dr Chris Fuzie  08:08

Yeah. So one of the things from from law enforcement, is that you you you plan for different possibilities. So I always tell people, Look, you have the possibilities and the probabilities, you have to plan for possibilities, but you react based on the probabilities. And so same thing for for small businesses is that, I mean, you can see what's there, you can see the possibilities or what could be happening, but you still need to plan on the probabilities of of of market share. What's happening with the economy are we're talking about the election, you know, I mean, all that stuff is going to drive the people were already day one with with the election, they're talking about getting their attorneys together, because something's going to happen with the stock market. Okay? So you still have to plan for the probabilities or possibilities, but, but, but act on the probabilities. Same thing in law enforcement is that there's all sorts of you always have a backup plan or, or, you know, start with a backup plan and, and then if that backup plan goes sideways, then you you start with another one. One of the best analogies can give is that when, when we would get a high stakes situation, a hostage situation, or a SWAT situation, or something like that, we get in the command trailer. And this command trailer, the walls were just their dry erase walls. The whole wall was a dry erase race wall. And we just start writing on the walls, what options you have? And there's always one option, do nothing, you know. And so that's the first one I would write, okay, what if we do nothing? And then, and then you go from there, and you start looking at all these options. Well, what if? What if we got this person to come out? What if we didn't get this person to come out? Is the person you know, is the hostage still? How do we know the house, you know? So you start planning all these things, and the more you can think of different possibilities, then the more flexible you're going to be when the probabilities show up. So, yeah, that's, that's one of the things. And, and, you know, it's not, not a matter of, of saying, This is my plan. We have to follow this plan. Let's see if that plan is starting to we've erased entire plans, yeah. And we just go, Okay, well, here we go. Or, you know, you get ready and you start to have something ready, and then the person walks out and goes, Okay, I'm done. I say, Wait, we have this great plan. Pretty well. Okay, I guess we're done.

Dave Barr  10:46

Obviously, in your situation, in quite a few situations, things change dramatically, and there's only so much planning you can do, particularly when you've got a short timeline. And no matter what you do, planning wise, somebody's going to do something different to what may be expected. You know, people don't tend to follow logic all the time, right? So from a leadership perspective, where you have responsibilities for people that are alongside you, how do you ensure that the decisions you make are kind of the best decisions under the pressure that you're under at that time?

Dr Chris Fuzie  11:20

I have to preface it by saying sometimes you just don't know. You know. You try to make the best decision for everybody. Try. I mean, like in a tactical situation, knowing where, knowing where your other people are at, knowing what the target is, knowing you know all of that, sometimes you just don't know what's going to happen. That was one of the first books I wrote. Is it's called "Because Why" and and it's called because why understanding behavior and exigencies, because you really don't know what people are going to do all the time, especially when somebody feels that their life is in danger or or their the fear that their life is in danger, whether it is actually or not. That's what COVID did to all of us. You know, we all had that. Oh my god, we're all going to die, not necessarily, you know, I don't, I still don't understand the whole why we stock up on toilet paper thing. I'll never get that, but, but that's, that's what the because why book was about is that there's factors there, like, what's somebody's thought process? What you know, what is the time factor? What is their perception of time? Do Do they feel they have that amount of time? And so all of this stuff goes into play at the time, as things are unfolding. Well, then later on, if you try to evaluate that, you may not know why those things have happened. In one of my personal incidents, I remember I'm holding on to this guy. I'm fighting with this guy, and I'm trying to keep my gun back here so he can't get me. And I could hear everything he was saying, but I couldn't hear the alarm that was like five feet from my head. And how does that happen? Right? So, I mean, there we can explain how it happens, but those are the kind of things that you don't know what's going on. You don't know what's going through that person's mind. Or, you know, sometimes you don't even know what you're thinking, and some of those thought processes are really crazy at one point, like fighting with this guy. I'm I'm looking at him, and just before, you know, I was making the decision whether I'm going to shoot him or not, I just kept thinking, he's about the same age as my son. You know, 21, 22 years old. He's about the same age as my son. He's got a dad. I'm sure he's got a dad. What would his dad think if I killed him? You know, I mean, those kind of thoughts go through your head and and it all that influences the decision making process. And so you don't know what's going through somebody's head, and you try to make the best decision possible based on the circumstances as they present. You know, it'd be nice if you could look miles down the road and say, Yes, I know what's going to happen. And if we all had a crystal ball, we wouldn't, you know, we'd be great, but, but we don't have that. And so you try and do the best, best thing possible in the circumstances.

Dave Barr  14:16

Yeah. So that's just occurred to me from a point of view of the team that you have under your command. How essential is it for you to fully understand their thought process, their behaviors, their values, how they will react in certain situations? Because I guess you have to know them fairly intimately as well when you're in that kind of situation.

Dr Chris Fuzie  14:38

Yes, yeah. And the personalities, you know, personalities, values, all those things come into play, their experience, level, their what all of that comes into play when you work with your team, and you have to have that, because you're going to position people in a certain spot. There was one incident where we had a guy in a house with a gun. And we're making an approach. And one of the we had a brand new reserve police officer, and she was positioned next to, not a big tree, but a kind of little tree. She's fairly small person, so she could kind of hide behind this little tree. But from where I was, I could see that she was backlit, and you could see her clears clear, just like putting a spotlight on her and and then so I saw her, and I told one of the other officers, I say, get her out of there, move her to, you know, some other spot. Just right after she moved, our guy had had gone out the back, somehow gotten past the guy we had in the in the alley, and had come around and was had and stopped right at that spot where she was, and he had a loaded gun with him, and you know, so we ended up turn around and take him down a gun point and all that. And he gave up and everything. But, you know, it could have been him approaching her from from behind, and, you know, so those kind of things that you just do it based on that. And I knew she was inexperienced, I knew she was brand new, but also knew that that was not a safe place for her so we moved her, yeah, you know. And those are the kind of things that you have to think about. You have to know your team. You have to know what their capabilities are, what they do, and don't know that kind of stuff.

Dave Barr  16:25

Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that's just dropped into my mind is scenario planning. You say we talk about planning on on a whiteboard is one thing. How critical do you think business owners should be not just scenario planning on a whiteboard, but actually engaging in activity as if something really happened. I guess in your case, you have to undergo, undergo real life situations. But you know, obviously, in an in an active scenario, how critical is that to do those things time and time again to get people familiar with how to behave in certain situations.

Dr Chris Fuzie  17:05

So let me see if I understand your question. Is the scenario planning? How important is that for for business people,

Dave Barr  17:13

but actually to do it? Because I think it's easy for people to plan on a whiteboard, but you see the TV and you see police on the TV actually undergoing physical activities as if a scenario was taking place, right? How often or how important do you feel it is for business owners not to just to do things on the whiteboard, but let's actually do an activity, you know, like a fire drill. Everybody goes out and does a fire drill as if it was going to happen. What about in other business situations?

Dr Chris Fuzie  17:43

Yeah, absolutely. So in those crisis situations, when we do it on the whiteboard, that's just because we don't have time to do everything else. But let's say we're going to do another operation, we fill out an operational plan and and it gets reviewed by everybody. You go through that, I've go through these plans and say, Okay, well, let's move this. Let's change that. And so that's, that's where business owners people should be looking at, what is your business plan? What you know? What happens if, if I keep going back to the election thing, because that's still huge in the news here, you know, what happens if this person gets elected? What happens if this bill passes? How are you going to, you know, how are you going to change your business what new law? Every year we get new laws about business stuff, and, you know, and you should be looking at, okay, here's the new laws. This is what I need to do. And writing that stuff down does I mean every year? If you re revise your business plan every year based on what's happening now, it's the living document, just like your organisation is a living organization. And you can, you can keep going with that, yeah? So, yeah, I think it's important. It's really important to to keep that idea. You know, you're not if nothing changes, everything else changes.

Dave Barr  19:00

Yeah, yeah, because people often think of business planning in 3,4,5, year cycles, but the reality is, things can change overnight, right? It's the important thing is to keep reviewing, as you said, keep reviewing that plan in light of what's actually happening around you, not in the pretense that things are going to be the same in two or three years?

Dr Chris Fuzie  19:21

Yeah. I mean, even just one supplier, okay, let's say you you have one supplier for all of your utensils that you you give out in your restaurant or whatever. What if that supplier's business goes out? Now, do you have a plan ready for where you're going to get other utensils? So you need to have those kind of things ready and and and have that backup plan, have you know at least Okay, well, what if this? What if that and sit there and what if it on it maybe just you and a couple key people in your organization, just sit there and what if and say, Okay, well, what if this, it makes you that much more prepared. And you're, you're ready for. If something happened?

Dave Barr  20:00

Yeah, absolutely. Now you're involved in leaderology. It's not something that I think we've heard of a lot of over here at all, or even at all. So I'd love to understand a what's as a very simplistic way of explaining it, and from that, what kind of actionable steps can business owners use in that science based study of leadership?

Dr Chris Fuzie  20:26

So one of the well, let's explain leaderology In the first first place Leadership Studies is, I mean, you all these colleges have leadership studies. We do all this, you know. Well, if you're a sociologist, you study sociology. If you're a biologist, you study biology. And we have all of these ologies, which is the studies of the science of whatever, even have mixology for people who are bartenders. So, you know, I mean, okay, so what we were talking about, what we did, this guy named Dr Dave Robinson, he called me one day and we're talking about this, and he goes, I got this idea. And this is, this thing is, you know, leaderology. And I said, you know, this sounds fake, but, but when you think about it, leaderology has to do with the study, the actual scientific study of leadership, and so you look at what's happening in a lot of coaching and mentoring, that kind of thing. You may get a coach. You hire somebody who says, I'm a leadership coach. Well, they may have had a great floral shop for 30 years, and they they've been able to be successful with their floral shop. How are they going to help you in your in your mechanic shop, right? Well, it's, it's different, or in your yard work company, or whatever it is, yeah. How are they going to help you? And and in coaching, the idea is to just ask a lot of questions and let the let the client find their own well, they can do that on their own. But with leaderology, we take the science of leadership and to be a leader ologist, you have to have at least two degrees in leadership, either masters and bachelor's, or, you know, doctorate, whatever. So you have some formal training in leadership and leadership theory. And what the National Leaderology Association does is we verify that the people that you would hire are leadership trained. So when you come to me and you say, Hey, I don't know what's going on with my organisation. I can go in there and I can look at it, and I could say, well, let's say you you have a socialisation and a cohesion problem. Well, what is it? What does that mean? Well, an untrained coach is going to ask you, well, how do you get these people together? What are you going to do? How let's have a party? Let's, you know, but there's actually seven different things you can do. And so if you know what those seven different things you can do are to build cohesion, let's say then you can start implementing those seven different things and not just let this person flounder on their own and keep paying you hundreds of dollars to ask them questions. So this the the industry of leadership coaching is very, very unregulated. It's very open, and you could get almost anybody to be a coach. And so what we're trying to do with the National Leaderology Association is say these people are verified leaderologists. They know their stuff as far as leadership. So these are the ones that you want to help you. So that's, that's, in essence, what it's about.

Dave Barr  23:53

Okay, you've got me intrigued about the seven, seven things that people need to understand. Give us a brief snapshot of those seven things.

Dr Chris Fuzie  24:02

Okay, so stick them, S, T, I, C, K, U, M, right. Sacrifice, okay, so some kind of personal sacrifice that you would make for the team, not the company, making for the team, you personally make for the team that it almost goes along that servant leadership role where you are, you are being the servant leader for somebody else. You're sacrificing your time, your effort, your whatever. So that's one people recognize that, and they will, they'll say, okay, hey, if he's willing to do it, then, you know, let's all get together interaction. I'm talking about forced interaction. So sometimes people don't want to work together, you know, and and you have, I had this probably two months ago. You have two people who sit right next to each other. Their backs are kind of to each other, and one would hear the other one talking on the phone with the husband, and when the other one didn't like it the other and so finally, call them in a room. I go look, you don't have to. Like each other. You don't have to you don't have to be best friends, you don't have to go to tea. You don't have to go to coffee, but you do have to work together. Your communication needs to be clear. I mean three professional, polite, productive and appropriate. That's what needs to happen. But you have to force that interaction. And then the C is for competition. So create some kind of competition between different units or different people. So if you can do that, then that's going to that's going to help people, you know, people kind of rally around the competition. Look at little football, right? You know, you get two teams, people, they know this, my team, this my team. So you create some kind of competition there, and that helps people become more cohesive. Because, I mean, just watching a football game, you know, 40,000 people in the stands and and they're all cheering for the same thing. It's amazing. So that's, that's, and then stick them, and you go through the whole thing, but that's that's kind of a snapshot of of how stickum works, and that's specifically for cohesion.

Dave Barr  26:08

Brilliant. Okay, now, obviously, given your role in training leaders, what do you feel are the most overlooked aspects of leadership development? What would you say that people should be particularly looking at when leading and working within cross functional teams, followership

Dr Chris Fuzie  26:25

Followership is is, I think, one of the most overlooked aspects of leadership because, and I don't think we look at it correctly, that's what the "Liminal Space" book is about, is that we don't think about leadership or followership as a part of the process of leadership. So you have the three aspects, the three parts of leadership, which is a leader, a follower, and some kind of situation, you take away any one of those three, and you don't have a process. So when you're talking about cross functional teams, first of all, you have to understand your teams and and your people, and they need to know that maybe at one point they're in the lead, and then the next, whatever, they're not in the lead. They're they're a follower, but they still need to do what they need to do to achieve the common goal. So yeah, that's, that's one of the biggest things, is that we don't, we don't think of followership as important. And when you think about it, you know, let's go back to the football game. You think about you have however many players, what is 12, 15, players on the field, whatever, right? And but you have 40,000 people in the stands who has the most ability to get something done, if, if, if the 12 players, or 15 players decided they want to pull down the goal post, maybe not going to happen. If those 40,000 people decided they want to pull down a goal post, it's going to happen. And so we have to, we don't think of the power of followership and and how we can use that if we could harness some of the things. And I always think about this when I watch sport. If we can harness the power of that, that group of fans there to do one thing, we'd be so much better off.

Dave Barr  28:11

Getting followers. You often people think about obviously, social media. I think it's perhaps in a strange context, in some ways it does. How do you feel? What do you think are the attributes of a person, a leader that really helps to engage people, to follow them, that may that is different from, say, the usual management style of leadership? What's the difference between the two?

Dr Chris Fuzie  28:36

That's a good question, because there's, there's like 86 different behaviors that I've been able to identify with people that they're all good, you know, they're all possible. They're all that every behavior can be functional or dysfunctional, and the ones that get people to follow them, I can't even say that, because even in a criminal street gang, you know, it's some of the same behaviors, but it's for a malevolent purpose, you know. So, you know, out of these 86 behaviors I'm gonna just look at so you have things like emotional control, empathetic, empowering, honest, integrity, intelligent, lead by example. I mean, all of those are, are things that people say we want and our leaders, problem solving, self motivated. Sure, success, teachable. You know, these are all things that people say we want our leaders. But it can be. It works with good groups as well as bad groups. So it's hard to say, because leadership is leadership and and what the goal is is part of the context. And so you get somebody who's very good at leading a criminal street gang, they might be just as good at leading some kind of, you know, financial planning corporation, you know. Know? So it's hard to say, because it a lot of it is dependent on the context of which they're leading. Yeah, you know, if you have a situation where the or the context where you need somebody who's very decisive wants to get, you know, something that you have to do, like the police work stuff, right, but then that type of leadership wouldn't work if you're talking about creating a schoolyard or a new school setting, you're going to want to have collaboration. You're going to want to have input for everybody else. You're not going to be able to just go in and say, this is where we're putting the monkey bars. This is where we're you know, you can't just do that.

Dave Barr  30:39

Yeah, yeah. How important do you think is the term charisma in leadership? Is that something that can be taught?

Dr Chris Fuzie  30:46

I think it's not very important. And the reason I say that is in our in our survey, it came out second to the last 86 behaviors and and when you think about charisma. You have these very charismatic kind of people that go out there, but then a lot of times they're just talking. They're just, you know, they're just mouthing and repeating something else. And the people who are actually doing the thinking, or the the the introverts, the ones who are sitting behind the scenes, and they'll sit there and they'll think about something for a couple days before they make their decision. I I've worked with very charismatic leaders, and they're a lot of fun to be around. But they they their decisions aren't usually the best.

Dave Barr  31:33

Yeah, that's really interesting. Now I'm quite fascinated to now ask you, what would you say were your top two leaders. And why would you say for you, are they at the top of their game? Top

Dr Chris Fuzie  31:48

Top two leaders? You mean actual people that I know,

Dave Barr  31:52

hopefully well at least I'm aware of. If you're going to put two people on a pedestal to say this is the epitome, in my opinion, of someone who is nailed leadership, who would they be and why?

Dr Chris Fuzie  32:05

Wow, I had a sergeant. His name was Ron Chandler, and Ron was the kind of person that he just kind of understood who you were. He would come talk with you, just be, you know, grab a cup of coffee and go sit and talk and and then. But when there was problems, there was issues and problems, he is the kind of person that he understood where you were and took care of you. So I'll give you an example. At one point, I was going through a divorce cops. You know, we all go through divorces, so I'm going through a divorce, and I was really, really not in a place where I needed to come to work and try to deal with other people's problems. And I showed up at work, and he met me at the back door of the department, and he goes, Hey, Chris, I got a job for you to do tonight. I said, What's that? He said, I need you to take these two cars, and I need you to put miles on them. We need to, we need to get these to have some miles on. He says, All I want you to do is drive these cars up and down the freeway, put some miles on these. But he knew that I couldn't be out dealing with other people's problems, you know, I mean, here I just went through my own issues at home with my ex, and now I'm going to go out and handle, you know, domestic violence problems or this. He said, No, he understood that. And he said, and he took care of me. He changed what I needed to do that day, and it put a burden on him. There was another one, Doug Winfrey. Doug Winfrey was, he was a lieutenant and and one night I'm and he's just a good guy. You never heard him cuss he never cussed. I don't know how you people can do that, but he never cussed. And so he one night, I've been in court all day, and I was working graveyard, and I came in, I said, Hey, LT, I need to have some time off. You know, I've been in court all day. He goes, No. He says, we're down to minimums. I need you to be here. Oh, man, okay. So he says, Well, go out and, you know, if you get to a point where you're really tired or you need just give me a give me a call. Okay, so I tried to make it about two hours, and I stopped at the time we didn't have cell phones, so I stopped and at a phone booth, and I called him. I said, Hey, boss, you know, it's really getting bad. I'm about ready to fall asleep. I stopped because I don't want to crash the car, you know. And he says, Okay, well, where are you at? So I tell him where I'm at, and he says, Stay there. I'll be out in a minute. So he comes out, and this is midnight. He comes out and he brings me a cup of coffee. Well, I'm right here by a 711 I get my own coffee, but, you know, okay, so he brings me this cup of coffee. Says, drink that. And then what I want you to do is drive down to the police department, put a couple chairs together in the in the basement, and, you know, lay down and try and get a little bit of sleep. And I'll have the station officer wake you up in a little while. Okay. So I down to the police department put some chairs together. As soon as I lay down, I'm out, and then next thing I know is the station officers tapped me on the on the foot, saying, Hey, Chris, time to get up. Lieutenant said for you to get up. So I wake up, and I realize it's seven o'clock in the morning, and it's like, oh man, you know, I run upstairs. As I run upstairs, the lieutenant's coming in. He hands me two reports, a couple tickets and a field interview card. He did my job. He worked my beat. And so I I go, Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sleep down. He goes, No, that's good. It was good for me to get out and see what it's like to be a good cop again, and, you know, so he took care again, take care of your people. 

Dave Barr  35:45

Yeah, that's a great lesson. There's obviously very astute. They're empathetic, they understand, as you say, and then they put themselves in that kind of position, you know, as you said, supported you directly. So that's an incredible two stories to share that really, it really is good keeping an eye on the time. There's two more questions I want to ask you. Okay, firstly, there's an awful lot of change going on in this world. It's a little bit crazy at the moment, and Organisational Change is inevitable, yeah, and certainly small business owners, even large business owners, have to deal with the challenge of managing teams through a change and also often those those changes can be positive, but they can also be demoralizing for various reasons. So what kind of strategies would you recommend for guiding teams through that kind of transition without losing their morale or their productivity. What's your thoughts on that?

Dr Chris Fuzie  36:45

So with teams, you know you have the three parts of the teams. You have task, relationship and structure, and so you don't want to change the relationship. That's the morale part, that's the that's the part where, you know, that's the important part the task, it depends on your company or your culture, whatever your organization does. So then you focus on the structure. Do we maintain the same structure? In my in the liminal space book, I talk about using a different type of structure, whereas it's not a hierarchical structure. It's more of a, I don't know looks like kind of a snowflake, even where you have triangles, triangles, squares and hexagons, and each one of those has to do with different behaviors. So if we try to keep the same structure when everything else is changing, it may not work, right? So we have to think about being flexible, being being more agile, changing the structure of what we're doing. And sometimes that means changing a person, and you may have to change a couple people, but the goal should be maintain those relationships. You know the relationship part, because the task is probably not going to change. You're in business for a reason to do something, so the task is probably not going to change. And if the task does change, that's fine, you know, that's part of part of what you're doing. But then also look at where you're at in that team development, and try to keep pushing towards the performance, high performing teams and and it's okay to have discourse. We don't all have to get along. A good team will fight. They'll have these knock down, drag outs to and then, and then, when it's all done, they all come out and say, Okay, let's move on. And so don't be afraid of that, but be ready to be flexible that some kind Something has to change. And like I said before, if, if everything else changes, if you don't change, or one thing doesn't change, everything else changes around it. I mean, just think of a piece of metal, how it rusts, even though everything is right. So you know, you have to be ready for that change? Yeah, structure is the best part.

Dave Barr  39:03

Yes, always a difficult one. People are naturally adverse to change, yeah, and particularly when it affects them personally, right? It could be quite a difficult thing to deal with, especially when you're talking about structural changes in companies, their responsibilities change, their goal was the, you know, the values and beliefs need to change in line with what's happening in the market. And some people can do that. Some people, you know, prefer to hit the exit button then find somewhere else that fits more with them, right, right?

Dr Chris Fuzie  39:33

Yeah. And change is all fear based, you know, resist. I shouldn't say that resistance to change is all fear based, you know, individual individual fear. And then team fears. You know what happened to our team? We have the and then organizationally, those are all all fear based.

Dave Barr  39:50

It's quite interesting, because sometimes change can be exciting, but we always naturally tend to think of the fear side of things, of how it could negatively affect us. What's the, what's the way you can affect change, where people get excited and looking forward to the change, because it could be a whole new, wonderful experience

Dr Chris Fuzie  40:09

That that's where you have to allow enough time for them to assimilate that build the vision that they can see. You know, you don't just talk about it in just make a picture. Here's a model of what this building is going to look like. Here's, you know, here's, here's what I see. As far as you know, we'll all be able to do this. We'll all and people want that kind of they want new stuff, but they also have to have time to assimilate that and think about what this is going to do. Well, if we do this, then this will be better. And if we do that, that you know. So we have to have time to let them do that. But if you can paint that picture, that people see the vision, that's why we always talk about visioning and vision you know, if people can see your vision your way, then that's where you're going to really get people excited about the change, because that's when they get on board. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dave Barr  41:00

That's brilliant. The perfect thing I was looking for is, is the vision must excite people, and they must see themselves in that picture, and how much better they're going to be as a result of it, isn't it, right?

Dr Chris Fuzie  41:13

Yeah, the people that are with them, people, what's in it for me, you know those people, they're going to be some of the first ones on board, if you can paint that picture for them.

Dave Barr  41:22

Yep, yep. I think that natural excitement from others then helps the rest of the, you know, corporate, call it the the group, the team, or the herd, to say, oh, done a minute. You know, they get influenced by that and the excitement they get dragged along by, in some cases, right, right now, before I ask my last question, How could people learn more about you? What you do? Find out about you? Know, some great lessons that you share?

Dr Chris Fuzie  41:48

Well, you can look at my website, which is www.CMFleadership.com, CMF is for Clear, Meaningful, Focus, but it's just too much to write. CMFleadership.com, I'm also on LinkedIn, Facebook. I don't look at Facebook that much, but I'm on there, and then Twitter, X also those kind of things, but the website is actually the best because it has a contact page and explains kind of what we do and why we do it.

Dave Barr  42:17

Fabulous, fabulous. Okay, my last question, you've recently released that your book liminal space. Yeah. Now if you're going to share some a few top tips for business owners with limited resources, what tips would they be to help them improve their leadership skills and competence and perhaps even their businesses as a result of that?

Dr Chris Fuzie  42:38

Let's see top tips. So the first one would be, learn as much as you can. You know the leadership is not it's not just by gut reaction. Leadership is it is a science. And so just like I shared with the cohesion you have. The same thing with cohesion, the same thing with socialization, learning about your people. Team structure has two different two different sides to it, where cohesion is on both sides. So you have to know how that works. So if you really want to increase your leadership, learn about your people and then understand how some of these theories, some of these scientific things actually work, and you can put them together. And that may mean, you know, getting a hold of a leader ologist. That may mean getting a hold of somebody who actually does know how to not just someone who's going to ask you question after question after question until you say, Okay, well, I think I'm where I want to be, and I'm done. So that's what I would say, is, you know, knowing your people is the first thing, because situationally, that's what's going to help you take care of things in any team or any individual.

Dave Barr  43:50

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I totally agree. And understanding where your team are, the things that they like, their values, behaviors, the alignment with each other and the business all critical. And I totally, I'm on board with you about continual learning, because some things you'll learn today, you can apply tomorrow, right? And you can see which works best for you. If you do the same things day after day, you're probably going to pretty well static for the rest of your career, and your business probably will be as a result of that too.

Dr Chris Fuzie  44:21

Right, right? Yeah, you have to be ready for change. You gotta be, you know, and as things change go along with it, yeah, absolutely.

Dave Barr  44:29

Well, it's been fascinating talking to you today. Chris, I could probably spend another couple of hours or two if given the chat, but we're effectively at a time again. Thanks for sharing all the information. I really encourage people to obviously look out fit for your book. I'll put links to it in my posts, and I can say is, thank you for doing the things you do and for helping people become better leaders in business today. 

Dr Chris Fuzie  44:54

Thank you, Dave. I really appreciate you giving me the chance to tell some stories and how. People also a lot of fun. Thank you.

Dave Barr  45:02

So there's another Real Life Buyer podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it, and it has given you some ideas and inspiration for greater action and achievement. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes, and a five star review would be most appreciated if you would like to discover more about me and what I do, take a look at