EP 157 The Messy Middle of Leadership: Lessons from Scaling Pyramids with Chris Stitt

In this episode of the Security Circle Podcast, Host Yolanda “Yoyo” Hamblen is joined by Chris Stitt, a highly respected security and leadership practitioner whose career spans crisis management, international security operations, and complex bureaucratic environments.

Chris brings rare credibility to the leadership conversation — not from theory, but from lived experience in high-pressure, high-stakes security roles where decisions are made with imperfect information and real consequences. Drawing on his book Scaling Pyramids, Chris explores where leadership actually happens: in the messy middle between strategy and execution, authority and influence, risk and responsibility.

Together, they unpack why middle leaders carry the greatest burden in security organisations, how toxic leadership quietly erodes mission effectiveness, and why power often sits far away from org charts. Chris shares candid stories from his career — including moments of pressure, constraint, and reflection — and explains how effective leaders translate chaos into clarity, protect their teams, and influence upwards without positional power.

Key themes include servant leadership in reality (not rhetoric), decision-making in the fog, navigating bureaucracy without losing integrity, and why organisations fail when silos overpower shared purpose. This is a thoughtful, honest conversation for security professionals who operate in complex environments and want leadership guidance that reflects the real world — not the textbook.

A must-listen for anyone leading from the middle, carrying risk, or trying to make meaningful change inside large, layered organisations.

Buy this awesome book here!!!

https://a.co/d/2jCCuTl

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherstittcem/

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

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If you enjoy the security circle podcast, please like share and comment or even better. Leave us a fab review We can be found on all podcast platforms. Be sure to subscribe. The security circle every Thursday. We love Thursdays. Hi, I'm Yolanda And welcome to the Security Circle Podcast, produced in association with IFPO, the International Foundation for Protection Officers. This podcast is all about connection, bringing you closer to the greatest minds, boldest thinkers, trailblazers, and change makers across the security industry. Whether you are here to grow your network, spark new ideas, or simply feel more connected to the world of protection and risk, you are in the right place wherever you are listening from. Thank you for being a part of the Security Circle journey..

Yoyo 1:14

Chris Stitt, welcome back. You are now in the alumni for the Security Circle podcast. How you doing?

Chris 1:20

Doing really well. It's fantastic to be back and, uh, see you again, yoyo. I'm, uh, thrilled to have the opportunity to have, you know, another extended conversation with you. We often have little snippets here and there and text messages, but the chance to actually sit down and talk with you is always wonderful.

Yoyo 1:37

Well, I'm sure the pleasure is all mine. Uh, but Chris, I'm genuinely, uh, thrilled to have you back on a security circle. Your book, scaling Pyramids, leadership Lessons from a Mid-Level Bureaucrat hit me in a way that not many leadership books do because it's honest about where leadership actually happens, and it's in the messy middle between strategy and reality pressure and people. And what really struck me is how you use the humor and the humility of the mid-level bureaucrat label to get something much deeper in how influence really works, how organizations actually move and what leaders learn when they're not sitting at the. Looking down, but climbing the structure from within. And I know our listeners come from security, all plethoras of security, really risk cyber operations, resilience. And they're used to working in environments where the pyramid is real, sometimes rigid, sometimes political, always complex. And your insights cut right into that world. So today I wanna go beyond the usual talking points. I wanna get, I wanna get to the lessons that surprised you, the moments that shaped you, and the power structures we pretend aren't there. And the parts of leadership that live between the lines of your book. Thank you for joining me. So let's dig in, shall we?

Chris 2:57

All right. Yeah. This will, this will be fun and interesting.

Yoyo 3:01

So the pyramid isn't just a structure, it's a culture in scaling pyramids, you describe the hidden mechanics of middle layer leadership. What's one behavior at the base of the pyramid that you think the top either misunderstands or constantly underestimates?

Chris 3:18

So I think one of them actually is the impact of toxic leadership on the base.

Yoyo 3:27

Yeah.

Chris 3:27

And you know, a lot of people will move up through, through the pyramid very quickly because they're perfectly willing to step on others to get there, rather than lift other up as, lift others up as they, uh, climb themselves. And you know, it's often said people join organizations, they leave managers or they leave cultures. And you get into that because. People get frustrated. People feel as though they're not being heard. And if you can create an environment in which your lower level people feel as though they're contributing to the greater mission, feel as though they are actually being heard, feeling as though their ideas actually have value and count for something, then you can create a much stronger organization and culture all the way through. So I think, I think that's one of the things that a lot of top level managers either seem to forget or they also, you know, don't recognize it happening below them because when they look down, you know, they see the smiling faces and they see, especially those people that have that kind of, you know, toxic. Toxic toxicity about them that are perfectly happy to race up that ladder and race up that pyramid. Actually, in my final chapter, not in my final chapter, but towards the end, I actually talk about some of the traps that more senior leaders fall into. And, you know, one, you know, coasting and cockiness. Um, there's a couple others, but when you're talking about, you know, this particular question, um, you know, I think that those two are particularly important, you know, uh, and conservatism is the third. So when you're talking about coaching and cockiness, you're really talking about when you get up to that level and you say, cool, I've made it. I'm good. I can just kind of rest on my laurels and have everyone else support me, and, you know. Clearly I'm the best because, you know, I've, I've made it to this level. Cockiness kind of inter interacts with that because you get up to that level and people are, you know, becoming a little more laissez-faire with things. They think they can do anything because they've made it to this level. Uh, they don't necessarily realize the impact that their words are having on the organization and the people below them. And then conservatism, you know, being that third trap to fall into that senior leaders often fall into that is something where you got to where you are by taking calculated risks. But a lot of times, once you get up to that level, and I, there's a variety of perfectly good reasons for it, you start to restrict the ability of those below you to take the same kinds of calculated risks that got you to where you are. But in order for them to grow, they need to be able to take these risks to learn from them and to be able to understand what risks they should be taking, what risks they shouldn't be taking. So, but you get into that, you know, leadership trap of conservatism and all of a sudden you're not empowering your people properly to do it. So I think, I think that's a major part of it.

Yoyo 7:16

I watched, uh, at the weekend, uh, something, you know, when you, you just scrolling through like what to watch, it's almost, it's not doom scrolling because I actually think it's quite entertaining scrolling through Netflix, for example, to find something to watch. You're looking for something to instantly go, oh yeah, let's watch that. Right? It doesn't happen all the time, but I came across this very kind of like six episode, box set called Swimming With Sharks, and it's about, a character that immerses themselves in Hollywood knowing that there's two scales. You go in and you're a servant at whatever level until you've earned the credibility to just be utterly. Horrible to everybody. Right? And it talks about the complete, it's the epitome of what your book is trying to expose in terms of, that's why it's called Swimming with Sharks. It preaches this kind of, you know, this one character says what your job is unfair to you. Grow up. It's the way it goes. People use you. Life's unfair grow up. That's the way it goes. You know, your girlfriend doesn't love you. Tough shit. Go and get another one. And it kind of,, it's really hardcore in the sense of that the characters are in the most toxic environment completely possible. One of them uses an authority that he thinks he has to sack intern to get rid of them, and then ultimately they are missed and the big boss says. You know, get them back. Otherwise you are gone. You can imagine the type of culture. But what's super slick about this series, it's about how this character literally learns. It says here, a young naive Hollywood studio assistant finally turns the tables on their incredibly abusive producer boss. So yeah, what not to do. They should use that as the playbook. But look, middle leaders often absorb pressure from above while cushioning teams below. I mean, this is pretty much how it goes. Uh, you've only gotta look at the physics in terms of the absorbing the pressure and the cushioning from below. The physics involved in that is phenomenal on the body, the mind, and the wellbeing. What's a moment in your career when this pressure absorption became unsustainable, and what changed after that for you to be able to reflect so well?

Chris 9:41

You know, there were certainly a couple of points throughout my career where I struggle with that. For instance, one of the things I used to, especially later in my career tell my folks is that part of my job is to act as a shield from above to give them the operating space they needed to get things done. It wasn't a matter of not taking them along and not developing them as leaders. As I went and interacted with the more senior levels myself, it was literally a matter of sometimes those senior leaders become whimsical and we have a specific mission that we are trying to accomplish. So I, part of my job was to try and steer those whims of the senior level in such a way that we still had the necessary resources time. Funding, personnel, et cetera in order to get done what was actually our job. And there were times when I had to push back on senior leaders, and there was a time where I actually wrote to a pretty senior leader or in my organization asking to be allowed to curtail from my, uh, current assignment because I was so frustrated with my manager. Um, it's the only time in my career I probably should have done it other times as well. Um, I know people who were very successful in their careers because they job hopped very quickly and frequently and they would curtail, they would spend nine months to a year in, in a three year assignment, and then they would go find something more high, high profile and jump to that. I never did. I always, yeah, it wasn't even about more money, it was in our system. It was literally just about, um, exposure and, you know, jumping on the hot new topic that is more likely to get you promoted. Um, part of my bent is loyalty. So, you know, I talk about that in the chapter about values. So if I've been assigned a role, I'm going to stick it out for that role. But there was one time where I actually, you know, wrote the email to the deputy assistant secretary and said, I would like to. Get out of this position and go do something else. Because the vision that I have that I was brought in to do for this job, um, did not mesh with the vision of the person who was later brought in as my direct supervisor.

Yoyo 12:19

Um, but don't you think it's a lot easier though, for older people, more established in careers, you know, uh, people of a certain age, we say because, you've got less time for the bullshit when you are young and you are living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah. You need that money at the end of the month, you are so much more restricted in terms of, you know, being able to tell your boss to go jump. Yeah. And ultimately, it's almost like the older you get, the more you realize the quality of what you do is most important. And that's ultimately when you have the freedom to turn around and say, you know, I'm not doing this anymore.

Chris 12:54

Yeah. And it's interesting about it too, because the deputy assistant secretary told me, no. I was not allowed to curtail. I needed to stay where I was because he had selected me for that position to get, you know, the things done that I needed to get done, and I would just need to work it out with this new supervisor. And quite frankly, throughout the entire assignment, you know, we never fully got a asynchronized vision and operations.

Yoyo 13:23

I'm quite conflicted here, Chris, because how can he settle with telling you that knowing that the job you do has gotta be with your consent? It's like anything, all employees are there with consent, right? Their own consent. You can't be forced unless you're in the military where you have a very different set of rules to stick to. So surely he must have realized that that decision was a fruit to no end,

Chris 13:47

except that. In my particular bureaucracy, in order to curtail assignments and get a new one, you had to have your supervisor's consent so you were trapped. So I was trapped. So, you know, I did what I could to, you know, run the program, keep it going, keep it growing, protect the people, uh, that were working for me to make sure that they, you know, had a clear vision of the direction we needed to go. And when the whims of my boss came and, um, you know, he tried to change the direction of the program and the focus of the program, I did my best to keep it on track and sometimes, you know, saw value in the whims of his vision and worked to incorporate it into what we were doing overall. But part of the result of that was we never fully, uh, got done what it was we were trying to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yoyo 14:44

And that's a difficult time for you as well, I should imagine, because no one likes to feel that trapped. But look, let's look at decision making in the fog. Security leaders constantly make imperfect decisions under ambiguity, and it's very easy, isn't it, to look back and say, you know, with hindsight, that's how we are able to reflect and learn. But what's your mental model for deciding when to escalate and when to delegate, when to own it yourself?

Chris 15:14

Yeah, so I think it's a matter of number one, looking at the task, right? Um, there are, I have a very different risk, appetite and tolerance than a lot of my peers, and I think a lot of that actually comes from, uh, my focus on emergency management because in emergency management. You rarely have the information that you fully need to make solid decisions. Um, you're constantly operating on the information that you have at the moment, and you've gotta make literally life and death decisions, you know, based on that. And therefore, I became much more comfortable with the concept of, you know, taking risks, following, uh, you know, paths that others weren't sure that we would be able to follow. Um, you know, things like that. And because of that, again, you have to decide very quickly, is this something that needs to get escalated for a decision or is this something that needs to get escalated For awareness? And in our organization, a lot of what goes on is, you know, the expectation is that you are taking action. Working to resolve the issue, but you can't let leadership get blindsided by someone else. So if you have an issue that's going on, you've gotta start the ball rolling and taking action and, you know, making it go. But at the same time, and I talk about this a little bit in my chapter of, you know, uh, communicating up the chain, you've gotta feed the beast. And you have to be able to succinctly explain what is the issue, what are we doing to resolve it, and what they need to know up the chain so that it doesn't come back to them from another part of the organization that, oh, did you know that this thus and such was going on? Of course, I know what's going on and this is what we're doing to fix it, and my people are all over it. Versus, Nope, haven't heard anything about that. Let me look into it and check. And the other part of it then becomes, when you're asking about delegation, right, who is the best person to be handling or group or team to be handling that? So you've gotta be able to know the different skill sets, mentalities, um, of your team so that you know, when you have something that comes up, here's the best person to hand that to, to run with it. We had a situation while I was at one of my overseas posts where there was a bomb threat against the school. Right. And you have a lot of moving parts in that they were literally evacuating the school and sending everybody home. And they were, because of the concerns over this bomb threat. And they were working to make sure to try and do this in an orderly fashion. Well, one of the things that we really didn't want is each of the individual parents, 'cause we had. Several dozen kids at this school. We wanted to be able to have a rally point where we could have those kids a reunification point where we have the kids and the parents meet in a certain place so that we could work on reducing the overall chaos of the situation. At the same time, I needed to, you know, be briefing the deputy Chief of Mission and the ambassador and other parts of the embassy as to what was going on. And at the same time, we needed to have somebody who was interacting with the parents to reassure them what was going on. So it literally became a, the two of you, I need you to go to the school. With the school bus driver from the embassy, marshal the kids. Make sure that everybody's accounted for. Make sure that we're good. Work with the school to make sure that they can come home. I need you two to start calling the parents. Let them know what's going on. Let them know what our plan is. Keep them from panicking. Keep them from showing up and adding to the chaos and the traffic jam that's going on over there. I'm gonna go and talk to the Deputy chief of Mission and the ambassador and I need you to come with me. 'cause you had the original information, right? Um, whole lot of that sort of thing going on. And you need to learn, like I said, what are the particular skill sets that your team has and who would be a best fit for each of those roles. As you're going through it,

Yoyo 20:04

when did you decide that there was a book in you and when did it, 'cause usually there's two parts to this, usually you decide, yeah, there's a book in me, and then there's another milestone where you are like, I've gotta do this. And what happened?

Chris 20:20

So the book actually, I started to write it as a cathartic exercise, to a overseas tour that I had, uh, in which I had great frustrations with the people, with my managers. Um, you know, they thought themselves, leader leaders, and I say this in the book, but more people ended up fleeing them than being attracted to them. Um, which is not a sign of a strong leader. No. Um, and I actually wrote it kind of as a cathartic exercise with a lot of anger built into it. Um. In just a couple of months, uh, in between that tour and my next, um, luckily I had a friend of mine, I actually, uh, my pastor at the time, uh, approach me one day in my next tour and he asked me, can I speak into your life? Which was kind of a shocking question. And I said, yeah, sure, go ahead. And he said, you know, you have a lot of anger and I don't know if you realize how much it affects you and everyone around you. And for me, that was a huge blind spot. But coming back to writing the book, one of the things was over about literally the next 10 years between the time I wrote the original draft and got around to publishing it, I really, it'll really allowed me to reflect on, okay, not just what are the bad examples of leadership that I've encountered in my career, but what are some of the really good ones? What are the, some of the really, you know, strong leaders that I've worked with that have helped shape me and mold me, that I've then try to use the lessons that I learned from them to help shape and mold others. And then as I was looking at getting the book published, uh, part of that process is you build your own little bureaucracy, right? Your own little pyramid. Um, and for those who are listening and won't see the video on this, you can't see me with my little pyramid shapes with my hands. Um, but part of that process is to, um, send it out to pre-reads. And is this work even worth publishing as part of the question? Right? Um, as I said, I sat on my book for about 10 years. Part of that was fear because I'm highlighting not great behavior by some people that I was still working with. I. Part of it was, I'm glad I waited that long because it did give a lot of the time for the anger to subside. So I had kind of updated it anyway, but then it was actually Gav Schneider, um, who as he was doing, and I know you've had him on a couple of times, I think good friend of ours, um, yes, he had actually, um, said to me when he was doing his pre-reading, you know, Chris, this is actually really good, but if you wanna make it great, you need to be able to tie what you're saying into, uh, leadership research and contemporary voices in lead in leadership. And it was, that wasn't a thing that really unlocked something in me because when I wrote the book originally, I was very focused on having this whole thing be my original thoughts, my original authentic voice. I. And because of that I was intentionally not including outside research and contemporary voices, but Gav telling me that really gave me the permission in kind of my inner being to say, alright, let's see what we can do to connect this. So I went through the entire book and I worked to find ways to connect that with contemporary research, contemporary voices. Um, and then it was our good friend Michael Gipps, who I know you had on recently as well, uh, that had connected me with, uh, the publisher, uh, Dan Swanson over at CRC Press and, uh, which is part of Taylor and Fran Francis Ledge. Um, that actually, you know, helped me move this whole thing through to what we have today as, as the book. The other funny thing about it is the title had always been leadership lessons from a mid-level bureaucrat. It wasn't until the very end when I was thinking about it, I'm like, I need a snappier title. Because, you know, leadership lessons from a mid-level bureaucrat is really kind of a mouthful. And people like it and they think it's funny and it's, you know, great. But it is hard to say over and over again, try and save it. Say it times fast. Right. So as I was thinking about it, I was like, well, I talk about the bureaucratic pyramid. What can I do with the pyramid? Well, there's, there's climbing, climbing the pyramid, things like that. And I actually went back and forth quite a bit and I finally came up with scaling pyramids. And I like it be for two reasons. Number one, you've got scaling, IE climbing work, moving your way up inside or outside, et cetera. But then as I've moved into entrepreneurship and running my own business, one of the things about a business is you want it to scale. You want it to grow. And when you're talking about your, you know, leadership capabilities and your leadership team and the number of employees and people that you have, again, you want that to scale as well. So Scaling Pyramids became the official title with the subtitle of Leadership Lessons from a Mid-Level Bureaucrat.

Yoyo 26:16

So for those people that don't know you, Chris, uh, and there will be many because we are listened to globally in over 2000 cities around the world. This question, I'm shocked.

Chris 26:26

There's people out there that might not know me.

Yoyo 26:28

I, I, especially of late. Yes. Uh, but because I haven't seen you at all on LinkedIn lately, um,

Chris 26:35

no, not at all.

Yoyo 26:37

If, if you could replay one leadership moment with the experiences that you have now, what would you do differently? And it's important for the people that don't know you to understand the you, because it's usually through understanding the individual or liking what they say, that leads us to buying books.

Chris 26:59

So if I could redo one. Yeah. You know, one

Yoyo 27:03

thing, tell us a story.

Chris 27:05

As I came out of the assignment, that inspired me to write the, the book, and I then went into, uh, my next assignment. Um, I honestly, because of the anger I was carrying, because of the frustration that I had, I made a lot of mistakes early on. In how I was, you know, trying to lead my team and instead of listening more to them, especially because they had been at this assignment for longer than I had, I had just shown up and, you know, taken over. That was part of our culture is that we rotated every one to three years. So I had people that had already been there for a year or two years that, you know, were getting ready in the next year to rotate that. I needed to learn a lot from about how this operated, but you know, I was, I'll be honest, kind of scarred from my previous assignment and here I was with the opportunity to be in charge again. So I kind of was trying to be in charge and I really wish that I had taken more time to listen to those around me. And really get a better, of under better understanding of what was going on and what their own backgrounds, skill sets, and value to the program was, rather than just making assumptions.

Yoyo 28:36

Interesting. So this next question, I'm gonna answer it myself. First of all, I believe that not all leaders are bad people, but some of them are just bad leaders. Mm-hmm., Those bad leaders shouldn't be leading people and more people should realize that they shouldn't be managing people and that they should just realize they don't enjoy managing people. Managing people is hard. What is a, and I'm admitting to that, I think managing people is really hard. What is a leadership belief that you hold that most people would disagree with?

Chris 29:12

A leadership belief that I hold that most people would disagree with.

Yoyo 29:16

Yeah. Wow. Um, dig deep, Chris.

Chris 29:19

Yeah. You know, I think there's a lot to be said about servant leadership.

Yoyo 29:25

Mm-hmm.

Chris 29:26

And I think a lot of people, um, will pay lip service to the concept of servant leadership, but very few of them are actually willing to make the sacrifices necessary that servant leadership truly entails.

Yoyo 29:42

Yeah. Especially bad news. And

Chris 29:45

that actually comes back to the last question to an extent because I was very lucky in that as my team rotated. The next cycle. Um, I had a guy join my team. Um, and you know what, I'm gonna give him a shout out. Steve Antoine joined my team and Steve is one of the best personal leaders that I've ever seen.

Yoyo 30:18

What makes him good?

Chris 30:20

Um, number one, he's a massive student of leadership. He is constantly learning, constantly massive growth mindset, and constantly trying to build other leaders. Okay. Now, and it was always amazing too. He, he had what I was referred to as kind of his back pocket leadership stories, leadership parables, and his ability to use those with people to point out where they may be going wrong or where they can improve or things like that. Without doing so in a, you know, accusatory way. Was really fantastic. But coming back to the point on servant leadership as well, this guy came in and let me tell you, I was actually kind of intimidated by him and we had some mutual friends that weren't sure that we would be able to make a relationship between the two of us work because our personality styles were so different. I'm much more of an introvert. He is absolutely the extrovert. Um, you know, and you know, there's just a lot to Steve and it's really, I had to make a decision that I'm in charge of this office, but at this point, Steve is absolutely the better leader. So how do I do two things, empower him to do what he's doing and learn from him. And it was actually through that process that I managed to work through a lot of the anger and toxicity that I had brought from my previous assignment and make that sacrifice to, you know, kind of sacrificing myself some in order to make sure that the overall program was running more effectively and efficiently by empowering the other leaders around me.

Yoyo 32:27

But do you not think that that's because the environment was just a good environment to be in? If you were to take those individuals out, put them in a very toxic environment, would they still be able to show those two qualities and turn that toxicity around? Is it, that's a fair question.

Chris 32:46

Well, so, so this was a new assignment and I, you know, the, this assignment didn't have the toxicity of the previous one. Um, if they had joined into my previous assignment, and we actually did, you know, in my previous assignment, again, we had a couple of people leave right before the new, you know, um, leader showed up. Um, and I had new people that came in. And again, one of those, uh, is a very positive, personally oriented leader who, um, is really just, um, good at leading and building other leaders as well. Um, and that helped somewhat, but we still had, you know, problems above us. Um, but I think, you know, if these new people had been dropped into my previous assignment with me, I don't know that they would've stayed very long. They would've made the assessment that, you know what, this is not the right spot for me. I'm gonna go ahead and see where else I can go, that I can have more of an impact and more influence, he said. And I, I often wonder what would've happened to me if I had actually made that same decision instead of saying, you know what, I'm here. I'm loyal to my, my department. I'm loyal to my agency. I'm going to stick it out.

Yoyo 34:13

You said middle leaders succeed, not by shouting upwards or downwards, but by translating chaos into clarity. Can you talk to an experience where you found yourself in that situation?

Chris 34:26

So there were, you know, throughout my career, many of them, uh, one was, I would say, as we were, uh, when I was in Iraq and we evacuated the US Consulate in Basra and ended up closing it. There was a lot of chaos going on around because of the threats against the facility and personnel there. The demands of senior leadership in the White House and the department, the desires of, you know, certain, uh, people in Iraq to keep it open as long as possible, that we're then being overridden. And the question of what needed to happen with all of this. So I played a somewhat minor role in the process, but I was assigned to, uh, what was called the Baghdad Democratic Support Center, uh, which was the site over by the airport that literally all of the people and material came in through and it was, okay, this is happening. How are we gonna do it? And luckily I had some great team members that I was working with who had. Ideas for different parts of it. And then it just became how do we weave this stuff together to make it into a solid program and then make it go Yeah. And, and communicate it effectively to the other people who needed to give us the green light to go for it. Mm-hmm. So I think, I think that's one. Um, another one, when I was in Burkina Faso, we had, uh, in the Ivory Coast kotei, there was a coup or an attempted coup, uh, country next door. There was a lot of tensions between Kotei and Burkina Faso about this. This led to massive protests in Waga Dogo where I was stationed. Um, and, you know. There was tear gas going off, um, you know, in our neighborhoods and around our houses and, you know, the tear gas would go off and the protestors would scatter and climb over the walls and, you know, not trying to get into the houses, but just trying to get away from the authorities. And, you know, I needed to make sure that all of our residences and all of our, you know, people were safe and secure throughout this process. So, you know, again, it's a matter of setting up, okay, how are we gonna do this? Um, you're talking 2001, 2002. Um, so we had very little limited communications infrastructure, um, and it was a matter of making sure people knew what was going on, knew what they needed to do to shelter in place, um, physically going around and doing checks on all of the residences. Uh, I commandeered a motorbike from the guard force and was literally riding around myself to make sure that everybody was okay, checking in with them. Um. And also communicating with the host, government security services saying, hi, US embassy over here. We've got massive protestors, not about us, but about, um, you know, the embassy, which is next door. Uh, can you please make sure that we keep the protestors and the tear gas away from our facilities? So a whole lot of things going on at once that needed to be accomplished there.

Yoyo 37:56

we know that power in organizations doesn't always sit where the org chart says it does. True. It sits and it says, uh, in your book that it sits wherever someone is brave enough to take responsibility. But I always find such a shyness in stepping up and taking responsibility these days. And I just wondered if you've got any kind of comments around why you think some people just don't take the responsibility that they should.

Chris 38:27

A lot of people I think, are afraid, right? What if this doesn't go well? What if, you know, I make a decision that ends up being detrimental to the people around me, to my career, to, you know, and especially in the security realm where life safety is an actual thing. You know, I think a lot of people can be hesitant to stepping up and take, making those decisions and taking on that responsibility. It's, it's something that, uh, Dr. Rob McKenna over at Colon, intentional Leader Development Wild Leaders talks about quite a bit. Um, that, you know, the best leaders out there are the ones that are actually hesitant to take up. Leadership mantle, but do it anyway. And the reason is because they understand the responsibility that comes with it. And I talk a little bit about that in the book as well. Um, you know, I've been, uh, part of wild leaders working with them since 2020. Uh, Ron Warman actually introduced me to wild leaders. Um, and, uh, you know, it is, um, I, I think it's important to, to understand that and to understand what are the risks, what are the benefits. There's also sometimes a sense of, well, not my job, somebody else's responsibility, right? And if this doesn't work out and does this doesn't get done, Hey, not my fault because somebody else was in charge. So I don't have to worry about it. But I disagree with that sentiment. I have. Long been a person who, when I see a leadership vacuum, I feel compelled to step into it. I feel compelled to, you know, try to make things move, try to make things right. Again, part of this might be my background and then focus on emergency management. Part of it might be my background and personality set in general. Um, but I am willing to put myself out there and take those risks.

Yoyo 40:44

So I wanna put a scenario to you, Chris. This is a, uh, this is a lived experience. It's a very live experience. Uh, it's actually my netball team, but please don't be, don't be shocked that I'm a netball player. Netball for those, that folk outside the UK is a game that we play on a court, larger than a basketball court. But we don't run with a ball. We can't bounce it, and we shoot into hoops in the same way either end and, you've got a defensive, third, you've got a, attack third, and then you've got the center third. And we've recently formed a team, but I'm finding myself to be a little bit perplexed because at the moment, my observations are that nobody trusts each other. So therefore, there's no psychological trust there to be able to give or accept feedback. Feedback needs to be given. There are definitely some issues around performance and, you know, there's a way to deliver that. And it isn't by saying, quote, as one lady did, some of you need to learn how to catch a fucking ball. Nice. That, yeah, I interjected. Then remember, we're a newly formed team. I interjected and said. I don't agree with you, but then nobody also sort of stepped in to say, actually, yeah, I think that's a bit harsh. It's not even fair. You can't even say harsh, but fair. And then I came away and reflected with one of the other women who I was in the police with. So we have quite strong bond and I just said, we don't have a team captain, and so therefore we can't expect to be able to go in a certain direction. I'm a very strategic player. I can see that we are developing, we are still forming. Mm-hmm. And we've probably yet to go through storming, but we haven't yet become established in our positions, but mm-hmm. My biggest concern is it's all well and good me diagnosing what we should do and what's going wrong and being quite. right about that. You know, we must have a game captain. If we expect to go anywhere, we must not say disparaging comments to each other. Mm-hmm. My view would've been to say, someone says that I need some honest feedback and say, look, individually, we can all reflect on our own performances and be very honest with ourselves, but we are still very new as a team. We are forming our own style. We haven't got set moves yet. We are making lots of mistakes and we should continue to make lots of mistakes while we learn and feel good about that. We're not here to be the top of the league. There's ways to encourage people and to get them thinking without offending them. Because we had one lady who almost quit because she felt so bad, and you don't have that kind of thing after work to feel so bad, Chris, that you then wanna come out of it. Right. So my question to you is, yeah, and I'm really struggling to emerge as a leader, ironically. I don't seem to have yet built enough foundations because I'm quite a recent newcomer back into the sport. I've been away from the sport for more decades than I can say. 'cause I'm really, 25 plus the 18, or I should say 25 plus tax. But just because I've been away from the game for a long time, it doesn't mean to say that I have all the right things to contribute. But the ladies don't seem to be very open to receiving any type of direction. And we're looking at simple team play here. These team dysfunction exists commonly everywhere. Mm-hmm. In the absence of leadership, we're not gonna go anywhere. So somebody's gotta step up and say, look, I think we need to do this. Does that person. Emerge as a natural leader. We don't know. Somebody else will have to ask me the question later on down the line. Well, what's your advice when you see this happening in the workplace? And you can see that, oh, it could all go. It's, it's like an orchestra all playing out. Tune chemistry isn't right, Chris.

Chris 44:50

Yeah, no, I, so as you're talking, there's a couple of things that come to mind. Um, the first is, you may not have an overall leader who's emerged yet, but my guess is you've got some, you know, as they're called, diads and triads groups of two or three, where you have, you know, people who are, um, forming these little groups that then subgroups Yep. Little subgroups that then connect with, you know, the bigger groups. And the question becomes. Who is the strongest member of that diad and triad? Sometimes, you know, in the book I talk about, you know, um, finding the alpha kind of like, you know, in a wolf pack, who, who is the alpha that, um, is the actual leader of the group? Who are people deferring to? And a lot of that is gonna be through observation at first to really figure it out who has influence over the others. And you'll hit this tipping point where you've got enough people that have congealed around a single person. And if you want that to be you, there's ways to do that, uh, especially with a new group where it hasn't sorted itself out yet. Um, but you need to figure out at what point where is that tipping point where everybody else is going to follow because you have enough critical mass. In order to get, um, that first group moving.

Yoyo 46:33

it, it really does. And I've had somebody say to me like, why don't you step up and be captain? And I kind of said, well, look, I'd never said all of this with that motivation. I'm not really an alpha female, I'm a beta female. I'm a mm-hmm. Support act. You know, I deliver in a support act function, but it would be a huge step for me to be captain of a team. Where I don't feel I have won everybody's trust and respect yet. But also on, on top of that, I would kind of wanna do it with consent. I would never want to just say, right, that's it. We need a captain. I'm gonna be a captain. I've always thought that leadership is with consent. Mm-hmm. And, and I guess that comes from the policing days that I had where, you know, we had to police by consent and we had to be very mindful of that and have humility in our policing. Very different in America. But you know, when you're policing with a community's consent, you gain a lot more collaboration and support. And I just don't know if I've been kind of considered in that way. But I think we need to have some tough conversations and you need it, you know?

Chris 47:37

And it sounds like you do need to have some tough conversations and part of the conversation you may have, may be, Hey, we need to come together more. I recommend we have a team captain. I'm willing to do it, but if there's somebody else out there who feels more strongly that they would like to be the team captain.

Yoyo 47:58

Yeah, let's have a poll. Let's have

Chris 47:59

a discussion.

Yoyo 48:00

Yeah.

Chris 48:00

Right. The other thing is, there is a technique that I learned, when part of my job overseas, was, operational command of marine security guard attachments at our overseas embassies. And as part of that, we had regular training and drills with the marines, you know, our little detachment anywhere from, you know, five to seven to some of the bigger de attachments around 20. Whenever they did a drill practicing, you know, response to an intruder or a bomb threat or anything else like that. At the end of it, there was always a hot wash. And part of that hot wash was each person there was required to give one positive and one negative observation. One good, one bad. What went well, what didn't went go well. That is an area for improvement. And

Yoyo 48:57

yeah,

Chris 48:57

it really got people thinking in that mode. And you weren't allowed to repeat. Everybody couldn't just say, oh yeah, what they said, right?

Yoyo 49:06

Yeah.

Chris 49:07

So getting people to actually start talking about it and communicating about it, I think is incredibly helpful as well. And part of that, what you'll find is, again, going through these observations of, all right, who's actually in charge? Who do people really listen to? And then encouraging that person to take on the role of team captain if you're not willing to do it yourself.

Yoyo 49:32

So I, it's probably a good way to

Chris 49:34

go.

Yoyo 49:34

I took some more time to think about this and because it's not something that I, it's probably a bit of a weakness of mine is the fact that I don't just step up and say, right ladies, I'm gonna be temporary captain until we elect a captain. We, we need a captain. Right. I lack that assertiveness, but I'm not, people might be listening going, what? But it's true. That's crazy. And then, yeah, and I do tend to reflect a lot. And then I thought, okay, you know, I don't really wanna put the poll out there too soon with everybody's names. 'cause you need to gain everyone's consent to whether they wanna be a captain or not. And we've had somebody in the group that was captain and couldn't cope with the pressure of it. So we know that they're not gonna step up. So then I thought, because I was aware of that, I thought, why don't we have, 'cause we already have, like I manage the money. There's another lady, she manages all the fixtures. And the comms, which is quite a big part. That's usually the role of a captain. So we split that between us. We set up the team and so she is a natural leader, but she's absolutely not willing to speak up when she should. So in a sense, she's not got really good experience of leadership skills., I say that with kindness because she's really a bit of a gentle soul. So I came away and I thought, supposing we had a game captain each week, so that mm-hmm. Each person's got the opportunity to say, okay, I'm gonna be game captain. It's gonna be my strategy. We're gonna do it my way. Everyone has to agree. And then we debate it afterwards and we see what works and what worked well. And I'm thinking that's a really nice opportunity because I always sit back on collaborations first rather than. Dictatorial type of working. Mm-hmm. And then everybody gets the experience. But it's really hard to do that when we've got some players who've never played netball before and it's not really appropriate to say to them, you be captain for the week because they haven't got the foundation. You wouldn't say to a new team player, right, I'm gonna get you to manage the team this week. Or would you, it's a bit of a dilemma, isn't it? If you're gonna be fair for it.

Chris 51:38

Well, and what I'm hearing as you're talking is that you have a really strong grasp of the group dynamics.

Yoyo 51:46

Mm-hmm.

Chris 51:47

And from a leadership perspective, that's actually really important. Yeah. To, to get a strong grasp. And, you know, going back to our earlier conversation, you know, when I rotated into that new assignment, that was one of the things that, that I had failed at. I had failed at, you know, taking the time to really understand the group dynamics. Before long charging in headlong and saying, okay, I'm in charge and here's what we're gonna do. Um, so I think that, you know, what you're talking about, the oppor giving people the opportunity to be the game captain. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to. But hey, let's get a roster of people who would like to be game captain, who would like to work on, you know, the team, work on their leadership skills, things like that. And then the goal is that, you know, for the next several games, we're gonna have rotating game captains, uh, as we figure out kind of who works best and how, and, and how it works best. And then after that we'll have a setup where, okay, here's our principal game captain, but you gotta have backups or you've got so many people that really want to be game captain, that you set up a regular rotation. But eventually it'll start to sort itself out.

Yoyo 53:10

Well, we'll find out here. Won't we watch this space?

Chris 53:14

I hope so. That's right Chris. More to come on Netball with Yo-yo

Yoyo 53:19

Netball. Hashtag netball strategy. Hashtag netball fails. We haven't, we haven't won a game yet. Of course. I don't expect us to. We're playing against very established teams and we're at the bottom of the league, but I have this kind of cool running mantra in my head to say, look, I used to play incredibly competitively. You see, and for me, it feels like, with the exception of a few decades, it feels like I've never left the game. In my head. Mm-hmm. And I remember somebody said to me, why did you throw the ball to me there? I said, because that's where you should be. Yeah. And the thing is, it's true. If you can't throw the ball into a cluster of women waving their hands in the air going, me. You know, you have to find the space and there's a lot of training that we need to do. And so I said, you know, I threw the ball there because that's where you should be in that space, ready to receive it. But they don't understand that yet. So it's possibly actually that it's not a good fit for me and that I should go and play in a more established team. But nevertheless, we will find out what goes on. But it's interesting, isn't it, to look at team dynamics and just using the netball example, Google, YouTube, netball Rules, it's an exciting game. And,, you do have a USA team, but it's interesting to see that there's no easy answer. There's no easy solution, right? There's no easy fix because we're dealing with people, people who are immensely, you know, you don't, you don't even giving people difficult feedback is not something you really wanna do. You want everyone to kind of go, yeah, I had a bit of a shit game tonight. I'm gonna have a word with myself or check myself before I wreck myself. And it's the same in the corporate space. And if the environment isn't set up to explore all of the avenues that we just talked about in a simple after work, you know, hobby, hobby sport.

Chris 55:10

Mm-hmm.

Yoyo 55:10

You can imagine why there's so much dysfunctional, everything, you know, in that space. What's, what's your recommendation? Somebody is in that space right now. It's muddled, it's foggy. There's, a lack of leadership. Mm-hmm. They kind of like the job, but they're finding it a bit boring. They're not really given opportunities to progress. Everything else is right. You know, the whole business is right, the company is right, but where they're sitting right now, it just feels foggy and fuggy. What would you advise?

Chris 55:44

Well, I think first I'd advise, pick up a copy of my book. Well, yes, and give it a good read. Um, but no, so there's a lot out there. Try to start to clear some of that fog conversations, um, with coworkers both in your unit and outside conversations with those above you and those below you so you can really figure out the alignment of what's going on and clear out some of that fog. And then as you start to come up with ideas to make things better, the question becomes how do you get those ideas enacted? So I got a chapter in the book, you know, the problem with having a vision is getting others to see.

Yoyo 56:30

Oh, love it. Yeah, love that.

Chris 56:32

It really comes down to, as I've found it, there are, you know, five things that really need to align in order for your idea to come to fruition. You know, first of all, you've gotta have a problem and that problem has to be pretty well defined, right? You need to have a solution. The solution to that problem needs to be able to make that problem better without causing more complexity in mayhem. Along the way, you need to have the timing right, because right now you may see a problem, but it's not really enough of a problem for others to care about.

Yoyo 57:16

Yeah,

Chris 57:16

right? And or you may have a solution to that problem, but the stars haven't aligned yet to make that solution really ideal, or you need to spend more time developing the solution.

Yoyo 57:30

Yeah.

Chris 57:31

Then it's a question of who are the decision makers. You know, and this comes back to your netball as well, who are the decision makers needed that can actually say, yes, we see the problem, we agree that you've defined it properly. We agree that you've got a solid solution to it, and we're going to work to enact that. But then the problem becomes, can you get to those decision makers and how? Right. So how then, and this is the fifth part of it, who in your network do you have to get what it is, the problem that you've defined, the solution that you've defined, and that this is the time to fix it in front of those decision makers, especially when you're at a lower or mid level.

Yoyo 58:15

Yeah,

Chris 58:16

and there's a couple of different ways that I put in the book to do that. Um, one is six degrees of separation. Who do you know that knows someone else, that knows someone else that can put that idea in front of the people that need to see it. The other one is kind of a grassroots campaign, talking to other people at your level saying, Hey, do you guys have a problem with this as well? And this will help you develop the definition of the problem and your proposed solution, right? So having those side conversations, those quiet conversations along at the grassroots and getting other people to support you so that it can work its way up with some momentum up the pyramid. And then once you have all of those things to together, that is when you can actually start to clear some of that fog and have some forward progress on solving that problem that you've found. And there are gonna be ideas that you have that you never get to solve because you don't have the full all five factors. Clicked into place like a combination lock to make it go again. For those of you listening, I really wish you could see my hand signals as I'm doing this.

Yoyo 59:32

Some problems aren't to be solved right now., Some problems are to be solved in the passing of time, aren't they? Yes. This, that's how we reflect and learn you. Mm-hmm. There's also a quote from your book just to wrap up, that states that complex organizations don't fail because people are bad. They fail because silos are stronger than shared purpose. And I think just, I think that's quite profound. I think many of us know that silos exist. Mm-hmm. Many, many of us, many of us know that silos break down shared purpose. And that shared purpose is ultimately what makes entrepreneurial organizations a lot more successful. because they don't have time to build their own blockers, mm-hmm. Uh, to success. So listen, that's something that people can discover more about in the book. We will provide the link and release just before Christmas. Thank you. People can order it now. And Chris, I wish you all the success. With this book, I think it's lovely that you've been able to talk to it so candidly and share your own experiences as well. Thank you so much for joining us on the Security Circle podcast.

Chris 1:00:34

Thank you, yoyo. It really is a fantastic pleasure to be here with you. And you know, I love having conversations with you because you really make me think deeply about, angles of things that I hadn't considered before, and it really just makes you a fantastic interviewer and you know, I'm thrilled to be able to engage with you in this way.

Yoyo 1:00:56

Well, pleasures all ours, purely selfishly for listening. Thank you so much.

Chris 1:01:01

All right, thank you.