Come Rain or Shine

If you've ever wanted to know how to better lead through effective communication, you must hone the bottom line of your expectations. In this episode, I discuss the importance of communication, its benefit on organizational culture, and how greater clarity can enhance objective outcomes. Whether you're a supervisor or supervisee, at the end of the week, it's critical for employees to have a platfo...

Before speaking to the executive team, I like to spend time with frontline employees. If you want to find out what's going on in a company and what people are thinking, you have to talk with the people who are on the frontline interacting with your customers. In this episode, I share how we have roundtable discussions with the frontline employees. We start with an icebreaker and explain why we're...

At Disney, I was responsible for 12,000 cast members. Jody and I talk about how I prioritized things. Everyone has the same amount of minutes in a day to get things done. It's just about how you use that time. There is no magical formula and it really is a dilemma. You have to make a list, be relentless about what you prioritize, and put the most important stuff at the top and work your way down....

On this episode, we talk with Simon Little of Studio STL in Port Townsend, WA. Simon runs a business that used to be just himself and has now grown to several employees. We discuss some scalability principles he can apply in a small office environment that would make an impact for the staff and clients. Before anyone worries about scaling though, they should make sure they have the right processes...

We all need feedback to get better. Feedback usually goes from supervisor to employee but sometimes it's good to have feedback going the other direction too - employee to supervisor. However, that's certainly not easy for it to go "up the chain" even though it's beneficial. There are creative ways to go about this though. For example, I had a voicemail system set up where a cast member could call...

We had a listener question on this episode about food allergies and how Disney World works with that. Disney does an excellent job working with food allergies from a real and perceived risk and this listener is curious how Disney tackles this issue so well. We believe we do this well because it stems from our culture at Disney and the reason we exist which is to help guests have the best vacation...

The one thing I used to worry about at the Magic Kingdom is that I had a blind spot or something I wasn't aware of going on in the park. I wanted to do my best to know what was going on on the frontlines. To do this, I'd visit the park as a guest once a month. I'd listen to what the other guests are saying and try to see things from their point of view. I'd take note of what worked well and what d...

In leadership, you can have as many values as you want but if you don't put actions and behaviors in line with those values, they don't mean anything. It seems the values of an organization are on a poster on the wall but they aren't taken down often enough to be analyzed. Put your values into action by assessing the values you want to be your reputation and think about an action plan to implement...

I just came back from a trip to Zurich where my dad and I did some consulting for a company. They mostly wanted to discuss how to give effective feedback.   We talked about some reasons why we don't give feedback and here are some of the common responses: I don't know how, I'm afraid of the reaction, I'm not sure how to open the conversation, etc.   We discussed how if you don't have feedback, you...

Balance is the holy grail of life and I don't know if we'll ever really find it. A concept I learned a long time ago is the difference between problems and dilemmas. Problems have solutions and dilemmas can only be managed. I think balance is one of those dilemmas where there never is a final answer. Everyone deals with balance and is trying to figure it out. Your behaviors define who you are and...

Disney goes out of their way to create magical moments for guests but what about for the employees? If you're going to do something for your guests you need to give a taste of that to your employees. Sometimes when you're heads down in your work you can forget to think about the moments that need recognition so it's a great idea to have someone around who will remind you of this or put things on y...

A special guest this week is my father, Lee Cockerell, who is the retired Executive VP of Disney World. We pulled some questions to ask him. A leadership lesson Lee learned from being a parent is being clear and setting expectations. He says you need to be willing to have the hard discussions. Lee continues to have the drive to develop himself he says mostly out of fear of failure. He loves helpin...

I've been preparing for a trip to Zurich where I'll meet with a consulting company for pharmaceutical companies. When it comes to leadership concepts, nothing lives in a vacuum but everything overlaps. This particular company wants to focus on getting feedback because it's so important and I'm going to be walking them through that process. "Clarity is power." I believe the more clear you are, the...

The name of the podcast came from the idea that "Come Rain or Shine", a leader has to show up every day to be there for their people, bring energy, and an optimistic attitude. I retired from Disney in May 2018 and am on a new career path of speaking and consulting. I'd like to take what I've learned from working at Disney for 27 years to help people with their companies. Help them realize that if...