Our special guest on this week’s episode of the Vibrant Leadership Podcast is Dan Cockerell, the author of How’s the Culture in Your Kingdom? Dan graduated from Boston University in 1991 with a degree in Political Science. After graduating, he moved to Florida and worked as a parking attendant at Disney’s Epcot Center. He went on to join the Disneyland Paris management trainee program and went to France as part of the opening team in 1992.
After five years in France, Dan came back to Florida and held a number of management positions at the Disney World Resort, including Vice President of Epcot, Vice President of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and eventually Vice President of the Magic Kingdom, where he led 12,000 cast members, and entertained over 20 million guests annually.
Dan says, “I think a lot of times leadership becomes too inwardly focused for people and it’s about who they are and what they do. At the Magic Kingdom, it didn’t matter who I was because I didn’t see the guests; I was leading 12,000 people who interacted with 20 million people. My job was to make sure those 12,000 people loved what they did so we could complete our mission to create incredible magical experiences for guests.”
We chat with Dan about setting clear expectations, as well as:
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Disney’s formula for an incredible guest experience
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Hiring practices to find the best people who align with Disney’s values
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Frontline workers at Disney creating the real magic
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12,000 cast members tuning into the same purpose every day
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Letting go of your ego to allow your team to provide constructive feedback
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And more
Mentioned in this episode:
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How’s the Culture in Your Kingdom? By Dan Cockerell
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@dancockerell on Twitter
Transcript
Dan Cockerell: It’s not about how you’re doing your job, it’s how you’re helping your team do their job. And if there was things I was doing that was holding them back from doing their jobs, well, I had to fix myself too. So they had to fix what they were doing. And I was gonna do that. But I also had to take accountability, how is leading them and so that that built a lot of trust. Now, the key is, once they give you the feedback, you better follow through. Like, if you’re not gonna follow through, don’t even ask in the first place. That’s the worst thing you can do. As a leader, you need to be open to be able to change your own behaviors. And when you can show that kind of respect to people, they start to trust you more and more.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership Podcast with leadership speaker and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Vibrant Leadership Podcast. My name is Nicole Greer. And today I have a wonderful guest with me. He is an author and a serious leader. He worked for Disney for many, many years and is now a consultant. He wrote this book right here. How’s the Culture in Your Kingdom? His name is Dan Cockerell. And I’m going to introduce him with his bio. Dan is a former vice president of the Magic Kingdom for Walt Disney World, Florida. He attended Boston University, graduated in 1991, and he got his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. And upon graduation from Boston University in 1991, he moved to Florida, working as a parking attendant in the Disney’s Epcot Center.
So I’m curious about was he the Pluto location or the Mickey location? He’ll tell us. Subsequently, he joined the Disneyland Paris management trainee program and went to France, which is, I’m jealous as part of the opening team and moved there in 1992. While he was in Paris, Dan held various management positions. He was in parking, ticketing, guest relations, food and beverages and human resources. And after spending five years in France, he came back to Florida, and held a variety of executive roles at the Walt Disney World Resort, both in the theme parks and in the resort hotels.
His last nine years of the company, he was the Vice President of Epcot and the Vice President of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and eventually vice president of the Magic Kingdom where he led, don’t miss this people, 12,000 cast members. That’s some serious folks to be taking care of. And entertained over 20 million guests annually. So I am just absolutely delighted to have you on the Vibrant Leadership Podcast. Thank you for coming.
Dan Cockerell: Well thank you, Nicole. I love talking about this stuff. And as I mentioned to this, I love the name of your podcast, you were a pro getting me prepared for this great thing in the mail with the questions and who you are. And so I’ve stolen some of your ideas. I hope that’s okay to add to my my own processes to improve my business.
Nicole: Oh, 100% 100%. Yeah, yeah. So I’m glad that I got to lead one of the great leaders that are on my show. So that’s fantastic. Well, right out of the gate, I like to get kind of my guests, you know, take on like, what is leadership? Your definition of leadership.
Dan: Yeah, that’s, I’ll tell ya, I think it’s a great question on any given day, I think you’ll get a little while you’ll get different answers from different people. But I’m pretty, I think practical, I think, you know, leadership is being able to facilitate a group towards a goal, a mission and completing a mission. When I was, and and I would have told you probably previously, earlier in my career, well, leadership’s about listening. And it’s about, you know, empathy, and giving you a laundry list of I think of things you need to do.
But leadership in the day, whether you’re running a nonprofit, you’re running a for profit company, you’re running a club, you’re in your, your church, whatever it is, you are, you’re taking a group of people, and you’re facilitating them and getting them to complete a mission. Complete a goal. So I think once you think about it, that way, it changes a little bit. And I learned a lot of Disney that my job wasn’t to do things. My job was to make sure we got to the mission. And so you think about it differently. Because you got to position all your resources the right way. You have to create the right and culture and environment for people to get there. But I think a lot of people forget about that. And you know, and we’ll I know we’re gonna talk more about this.
But I think a lot of times leadership becomes to way too much inward focus for people, and it’s about who they are and what they do. At the Magic Kingdom with 12,000 cast members. It didn’t matter who I was, because I didn’t see the guests. I saw a few. But I didn’t see 20 million. I was leading 12,000 people who interacted with 20 million people. So my job was to make sure those 12,000 loved what they did. So we could get we could lead that group and complete our mission was to create incredible magical experiences for guests. So they come back again and give us more money.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So don’t miss what he said. He said that it’s all about getting the mission done through others. All right. So I love that definition. And so I want to hear about how did you get your team of 12,000 excited about serving the guests because you know, having again, don’t miss his mission was to have magical experiences for his people, for his guests that came to Disney, and then turn around and make profit, right? Because that’s why we’re in business we get we got to make some profit. So tell me a little bit about how you got people motivated to to do that every single day in the Florida heat. Because I used to live in Orlando. I was in Altamonte Springs. You know where that is?
Dan: I know. It’s hot there. It’s hot all over Disney World. Yeah. So yeah, um, there’s a I’ve used a formula I’ve used it for back in the late 90s. I went and participated in a leadership program with the Gallup organization. And if you’re familiar with Strength Finders, 2.0, all that all those tools that were created by Gallup, and I was lucky enough to have a leader who sent me to a three day session. And we used to use Gallup extensively to hire people at Disney. You figure out what what interview questions, you identify people’s predictive talents and see if they align with the organization. And when you get the right people in the right jobs, incredible things happen.
So the first thing and like you said, I’d love to tell you, I made this up. But I love just learning and implementing things. So that there’s a formula that Gallup uses that I’ve used for years one is the most important thing by far, without a doubt, in leadership is selecting the right people. So I’ll tell you, I really don’t think you can motivate people. I think you can encourage people, you can reinforce behaviors, you can teach people, you can develop them. But motivation for me is internal, it comes from people’s intrinsic that they just want to be that way. So I would tell you the number one key reason or way that I was able to be successful Disney was, I worked in a company where we were really serious about the kind of people we hired.
So we hired people that enjoyed service, we hired people who are empathetic, we hired people had a really great work ethic, we hired people that loved working on teams, we hired people that love to collaborate. So we kind of determine what the profile of a Disney employee should be. We figured that out. And then we started to put processes in place, how to identify them through interviews, and bring them in the organization. And once you’ve done that, everything else is like extra. But if you bring in the right people, you almost don’t need to do anything else, you just turn them loose, and they’re just going to do great things.
But in addition, that once you get the right people, you build relationships with them, you build trust, you get an emotional connection, you set clear expectations for performance, clarity is one of my favorite words. And there’s so lack of it. And I think in marriages and jobs and raising kids, I mean, we just don’t we don’t spend the time to create clarity for people. And then last is you reward and recognize performance when people do it right. And to reinforce the behavior. And when they don’t do it, right. You give him some tough love, and you coach him and you correct it.
So you hire the right people. You build a relationship with him, let him know you respect them, you care about him, you set clear expectations. When they do it well, you reinforce that when they don’t do it well, you you correct it. And so what I like to tell people, well, there’s no there is no magic. It is a formula, we execute the plan every day. But it’s the consistency at which we do that. And great companies do that, I think is where the success lies. And those are my Those are my four big things. I thought about those every single day when I was working. Am I doing? Am I doing the right people the right jobs? Am I spending time with people to get to know them personally? Do they know what’s expected of them? And am I spending time to let them know how much I appreciate them?
Nicole: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And so I want everybody to pay attention to this word expectations that Dan just used. I had a master coach, when I was coming through my training. And he said to me, Nicole, write this down. So everybody get a pen. So this is what he told me, he said, un-communicated, expectations are a premeditated opportunity to be disappointed. And I was like, that’s genius. And so I wrote it down. So you might want to write that down. We’ll put it in the show notes.
But that is absolutely the truth. I mean, if people know what’s expected of them, it actually makes them feel safe, right? Because they’re like, if I just fill in, if I just color in this box right here, I’m going to be good to go. So I think that’s really important. And so I love what you said about strengths finders, and so I’m pretty familiar with that assessment myself. So what were some of the traits? You said, collaborative? What were what were some of the traits that you look for? Because I bet you there are some leaders listening to this, who are also very customer focused, very customer driven. What were some of the traits on strengths finders that people needed to have in order to work with you guys?
Dan: Yeah, I would say that, you know, we would, we would look for people with backgrounds all over the place because we needed, you know, strategic thinkers we needed people who had futuristic thinking, but the the lion’s share of roles we have at Walt Disney World are in operations. Executing the plan every day with customers with guests, taking care of them. So a lot of the Strength Finders, that whole relationship category was really important. And I can’t remember off hand all mine, but four out of my five or three out of my five landed in relationships. And so, you know, people take these assessments and they say, okay, you know, I have I have positivity, I have arranger is one of them. And then they optimism is one of them.
But then you look at you say, okay, that’s fine. I know that now. But what am I supposed to do? And so I translated my Strength Finders into okay, Dan, if relationships is where you thrive, you better be with people a lot. Because your relationship skills, you don’t get to exercise that muscle unless you’re with others developing relationships. And I learned about myself, the more I was with people, I was more creative. That’s how I got my energy, I was more motivating to people I get came up with better ideas. I like to interact with people. So I took it to a very practical level. And I looked at my calendar every week and see how how many hours a week was I not with people. And I was always trying to maximize being in meetings with people or walking in the park or spending time with people because I knew that’s where all the pot all the value is going to come.
So for me, every moment I was in my office doing emails, administrative work was necessary, but not it was it was not a value add it was just a necessary evil I had to do to make sure we keep the wheels turning of the administration. So um, that piece of it was extremely important that I knew where to be spending my time. And so what we did was and this is going to be kind of a it’s it’s funny, when we start first start doing research with Gallup, we started to look at okay, what are the what are some of the roles and so we said, okay, we we need housekeepers, we have 30,000 rooms, we have lots of competition in Orlando, but we want the best housekeepers. Because if you don’t have a clean room, it doesn’t matter how many times you see Mickey or what. That’s it, that’s a price of entry. If I don’t have a clean room, and I don’t feel safe and comfortable in that environment. It’s a non starter. So that was a big deal.
Nicole: If there’s hair in the bathtub. It’s over.
Dan: Forget it. Yeah. And so I worked in I worked in hotels for six years. And one of the hotels I worked in was an all star resort that has 6000 rooms, set the all star, if 99% of your rooms are cleaned correctly every night, you still have 60 dirty rooms. And that’s just not acceptable. 60 dirty rooms. If you if you get 99.9%, right, you have six dirty rooms, which that’s six families that we made a promise to. So it was really important that we put inspection processes in place and accountability and all that.
But once again, if you don’t hire the right people to clean these rooms, you’re never going to get there. So we started to interview in collaboration with Gallup, our best housekeepers, because we were trying to figure out what is it about the best housekeepers that make them the best housekeepers. And where we landed was, we said, Well, what do you do in your spare time? What’s important? And you know what they said? They did in their spare time. What do you think they do in their spare time? Great housekeepers do.
Nicole: They clean their homes.
Dan: They clean their homes! They have a personal issue with disorder, and that that’s what they’re passionate about. And they get
Nicole: A little OCD, right?
Dan: Absolutely. They get a personal satisfaction out of this. And I learned, I learned over time when I started, you know, as a GM of a hotel, you inspect rooms every week, you’re out in the operation. And what I realized is you’re not you’re not, I can’t as one person, decide if we have a clean hotel by you know, we get that through surveys from guests and everything. But if the GM doesn’t show up to show that it’s important to spend this time looking at rooms, people are not going to think it’s important, and that priority is going to go down. And what I learned was when I went out and inspected rooms, a lot of the housekeepers would be on their balconies, Dan, come inspect my rooms. I’m like, I would do that. But I realized quickly, the people asking you don’t need the rooms inspected, it’s the people who are not asking you because they’re proud of that.
They go home every night, they clean 18 rooms a day. And every night they go home with a sense of satisfaction, that there’s 18 families that are going to come back to the rooms tonight. They’re clean, maybe there’s a towel animal, they’ve created some magic, and they close. And sometimes I thought to myself, man, maybe I should get into housekeeping. So I go home at night. My job just keeps going. I’m doing emails and all this. I’m like, I think they have the lucky jobs. So while this is very common sense, but the hard part is how do you interview and get these people into your organization? And the more you can understand about what they’re intrinsically predictively good at and passionate about, the easier it’s going to be connecting with the environment that you’re managing.
Nicole: Yeah, and I love what you’re saying about how you know maybe attention to detail is the housekeeper’s number one, you know strength, but I also had great bosses. Along the way, don’t you think that’s important? The leaders along the way, listen to that people like, you know, he said, I had a leader that sent me to this training program. Okay, so you have to send your people out for training, you got to let them get other experiences. Well, I had the same thing happened to me.
And I don’t you probably can tell me, Dan what these are called. But when I probably in the early 2000s, I got sent to like this day with Disney or something. And they got up and they had different speakers come out and talk about how Disney does it. And one of the things that just like flooded back to me as you’re speaking, is they talked about how they have housekeepers that will realize that like a family’s going to stay in this particular room, they’ve been there, you know, they’re going to be in there for four nights or five nights or something.
And they were telling us how the housekeeper would like find a stuffed animal and another stuffed animal. And they would like set up a little vignettes where the stuffed animals were having a snack or something, or they were tucked in the bed, and that the housekeepers not only do they vacuum and clean and scrub the toilet, but they also are dreaming up. You know, what, what can I do in here so that when the children come back, they’re absolutely delighted with the experience. So that just came back to me so that that’s the kind of people that you hired in Disney, correct?
Dan: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, you just hit on something that is really important. So we hire people like that. But then we also have something and once again, I think this is unique to companies that are able to execute consistently as we you know, Disney has a vision, a vision and a mission. And every company does, most people don’t know what it is. But we have something we created called the common purpose. And the common purpose, every single employee, we train from executives all the way down to frontline employees, your common purpose. So basically, what we tell people is your your role is a housekeeper or a ticket taker or a parking lot attendant, or your role is loading Pirates of the Caribbean are working in quick service, everyone has a different role, a different job, everyone’s common purpose, everyone’s purpose is the same, to create magical memories for guests.
So when you start to tell people that you say, Look, your job is what you do. But your purpose is why you’re here. And when you tell everyone that’s what they need to be doing. You’ve empowered them to start to think differently. And and when you do that, you have these only at Disney moments, only at Disney are you going to find a custodial cast member that’s painting Mickey Mouse images with a pan and broom with water during their break only at Disney are you going to do a sing along with a bus driver. Because we’ve given them permission to say, look, we know you’re going to drive that bus, you got to drive it safely. You got to drive it efficiently.
But you know what you are here to create magic also. And usually people say well, okay, I can’t do that. Not in my job. And it’s when you give people permission, they figure it out. And that’s where incredible things happen. And executives are never going to think of this stuff. It comes from the front line. But you got to give them permission to say your job isn’t just to keep this place clean. It’s that plus, and that’s where we have great people doing that.
Nicole: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so common purpose. All right, everybody write that down. All right, well, the next thing I want to ask you about is, you know, you said, you know, one of my top strengths was relationship building. And you know, I think even if it’s not one of your strengths, finders strength that pops up on your list, as a leader, you do need to be able to build relationships. So even if it’s not your natural cup of tea, and it is your natural cup of tea. So Dan, tell us, how do you build relationships? Like what did you exactly do? What were the skills you use when you were wandering around building relationships?
Dan: Yeah, so I guess a few things. One is the people who I knew I was going to work with a lot directly. So my direct reports, when I first got into a new job, I would spend time with them, we’d have lunch, and we spent a couple hours. And I didn’t make it a rule. If I said, Look, I’m not really interested in hearing about your job today and what you’re working on what you’re doing, because that’s all we’re going to talk about after today. What I’d like to talk about, where are you from? Like, tell me your background. We when you ask people about their background at Disney, they’ll tell you when they started working at Disney and move forward. I’m like, No, no, but you were somewhere before that, right? You were born somewhere and you had a family and you grew up somewhere.
And I think a lot of times we don’t pay attention to that, that history of people. And it’s incredible. We can work for people with 20 years and all sudden, one day we find out something that we probably should have known oh, you have a twin brother? Well, I didn’t know that. And so you really want to get get get that connection. What do you do on weekends? What’s your background? What are your aspirations what companies have you worked for previously, and just get to make that personal connection with them. So that’s something I invested in. Another big thing I would do with my team is after a couple of months, when I got into a new job of working together, we would do something called a stop, start continue session.
So the idea was I’d get my whole team together. I’d say All right, guys, we’ve had a couple months of runtime now. We’re still learning how to work together. You know, the other person I replaced is gone. I know there’s I lead differently and we’re working through that. But I want to now really dig into my expectations. So I’m going to talk about the things I expect. I don’t understand everything goes on here yet. But here’s here’s all the things that you can know about me how I’m wired, what I value, what I what frustrates me, what I how I think about performance, how I think about development. So I would accelerate the learning curve. So we didn’t wait a year them learning as we went, I told them, here’s who I am. And then I would leave the room.
That’s all right, I’m going to be gone for a couple hours, I want you all to put up on this. These three boards stop, start continue, what are all the things you’d like me to stop doing as a leader? I start doing and continue to, and what are the things you appreciate about what I’m doing? And I’d come back. And it’s you have to have a thick skin. Because if they really trust you as a group, first of all, there’s safety and numbers. So you didn’t have one person who they’d come to consensus. Hey, you know what, Dan? Seems like you mentioned things in meetings, but then there’s no follow through afterwards. Does anyone else see that happening? Yeah, as a matter of fact, so let’s give that feedback to them. So I think this is where you got to, you know, throw your ego out the window.
And once again, if you’re going to work towards the mission, it’s not about how you’re doing your job, it’s how you’re helping your team do their job. And if there was things I was doing, that was holding them back from doing their jobs, well, I had to fix myself too. So they had to fix what they were doing. And I was gonna do that. But I also had to take accountability, how is leading them and so that that built a lot of trust. Now, the key is, once they give you the feedback, you better follow through. Like, if you’re not gonna follow through, don’t even ask in the first place. That’s the worst thing you can do. And I got feedback. One time in a meeting, they said, Well, look, Dan, we know you love consensus, you love relationships, you love have harmony.
But we get into discussions in our staff meetings that we disagree on a topic with, you know, amongst ourselves and the only you need to be the tiebreaker. And don’t let the conversation let the conversation go too long. Just pull your the card out, go look, I’m the Vice President, and I get to decide, and here’s what it is. And they were right. And so I started to step up my courage and my point of view, and not let conversations go further, because that was frustrating them. So as a leader, you need to be open to be able to change your own behaviors. And when you can show that kind of respect to people, they start to trust you more and more.
A lot of leaders think that’s a sign of weakness or vulnerability, which it is, but it’s also it’s great to show vulnerability, because it’s the as I said, the emperor has no clothes, the stuff you’re not good at everyone knows. So instead of pretending it’s not there, to accept responsibility, fix it or get someone to help you fix it. But when you’re responsible for group of people, you need to be sure this stuff is getting done.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s awesome. And when you were talking about that, I kind of got this image of a leadership model I’ve seen before where, you know, instead of the leader, being at the top of the pyramid, you know, the leaders more at the bottom, because what I keep hearing you say, Dan, is my job is to support all these people so they can get their job done. So you know, kind of a flipped pyramid kind of model. I love that and everybody write down, start, stop, continue. And how often would you do this with your team every quarter? When you felt like they needed it?
Dan: Maybe twice a year? It’s kind of like we do sometimes some companies over survey, when you ask people for feedback too often, A it’s time consuming and B, they’re like, well, look, you asked me last month about this or last quarter? Why are you asking me again, go fix it. So yeah, a couple times a year. And I’ll tell you, it’s a great exercise, get get your frontline employees put I used to that I put frontline employees in a room and say, hey, I want you to put stop, start continue to group I’ll be back in an hour do you come back and you guys should start, you know, cleaning the parking lot at night that place is a mess.
There’s construction out there, there’s nails and it popped my tire. And you should stop sending us these emails with our new insurance policy that we don’t understand. And so there’s so much information you can get out of there when you just ask people that and then give them the anonymity to speak up without a fear of retribution or that kind of thing.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, my next question for you is, you know, like, some leaders are tuned into this, you know, podcast because they want to get better. You know, there’s always that one group that has that growth mindset. It’s like, okay, I’m gonna listen to podcasts. I’m gonna be the best leader I can be. Now, there are other leaders that struggle and they just can’t get it. Now I know you guys always fired, you know, to make sure they sit in the right seat on the bus. They had the right Strength Finders for the right job and all that kind of thing. What do you think derails people the most when they’re leading? What what gets him in trouble? I heard one thing you just said, don’t ask for feedback and not act on it. That’s the number one way you can struggle. Well, what would be some other ways that leaders struggle?
Dan: I think ego ego is something we all have. I personally think that’s a lot of times when I saw women were often better leaders because they didn’t have this ego. I know we’re all kind of wired differently. But we’re there to understand and not prove, and I don’t know if it’s a male thing, but I know that I get in moments where I want to. And as I’ve gotten older, I have less of an inclination to do that. But you want, you have an ego and it gets in your way of listening, it gets in your way of taking responsibility for mistakes you’ve made, gets in your way of a lot of stuff.
So I think to a certain degree, and probably the path to that is self awareness. Like, is this moment really an attack on me? Or would I be better to open up and say, Look, tell me more about what you’re seeing here? Because I can, I can, you know, close the door, not listen to what you’re saying. It’s not gonna change what you’re thinking, you still have the same opinion. Just because I’m not listening to it doesn’t mean it’s not true. So I think ego is one.
Nicole: I love that.
Dan: Yeah, well, I used to see leaders come in roles. And I’d tell a lot of them, I said, Look, here’s what you’re thinking. And I know because I used to do this is you were recently promoted. And you really want to prove that you should have been promoted, and you’re going to go out and you’re going to show people how smart you are. And you’re really going to have it all together. I said, you should project confidence, there’s no doubt about that. But just know this, we know you should be promoted. Because we promoted you, you have nothing to prove, we know you’re going to be successful in this job.
That’s why we chose you. So your job is now to go help the people in the area leading, get the mission done and figure out what needs to be done. The other thing, that’s a real simple one, leadership is just having, you know, lack of discipline, you know, when you step in these leadership roles, not only are you managing yourself anymore, but you’re having to create the right environment for the people around you, and create clarity and create processes. And if you have lack of discipline, and you don’t have follow through, and you’re you can’t stay on top of your emails and make decisions, or you don’t know how to empower delegate people, that causes all kinds of chaos.
And so a lot of this is you need to work smart, you need to know yourself. But you need to be ready to work hard. If you want to step into a leadership role, you’re just going to do a lot of hard work, and no amount of apps or technology, you can’t, you can only make a certain amount of things efficient, the rest is just going to be a lot of work. And you got to be ready to do that work.
Nicole: Yeah, and that’s all in his book, everybody, let’s let’s make sure everybody knows about Dan’s book, How’s the Culture in Your Kingdom? And so in this book, he has the whole first section is about leading yourself, right. And then he goes on all the way through leading change. So you definitely got to pick up a copy of his book, of course, it’s on Amazon. Right? So I love that. Yeah. And so you know, you’re talking about ego, I have a thing in one of the speeches that I give, I say, you know, How many of y’all work with these people who are always right, you know, and like, the whole audience just goes, you know, like, I can totally relate to that.
And those are the folks with the ego, they’ve always got it, you end up on the right side of things. So I think a great struggle for people is going, oh, it’s my fault, you know, accepting fault or accepting responsibility. Like you said, that’s fantastic. Okay, so I don’t know, my guess is that you still have like friends and people down at Disney, even though you have your own consultancy now. And you know, what’s amazing me is like, I’ll be watching television while I’m cooking dinner or something. And here’s this commercial comes on, like, we’re open for business. Right? So I’m curious, what do you see out there in our crazy COVID? world? You know, how can leaders be effective when we’re working remotely? We’ve got to be super safe. What advice would you give to people working in this crazy time?
Dan: Yeah, so I’ve gotten I’ve had this question a few times, I think it’s a great question. So in my, in my opinion, everything we’ve talked about today and out everything and leadership, nothing changes, you just have to be much more purposeful and intentional of how you’re going to connect with people and how you’re going to spend your time and be planful. Because at the Magic Kingdom, or in a lot of jobs, you know what, I’ll run into someone in the hallway or at the water cooler, or I’m getting a cup of coffee, and we’ll talk about it or I’ll walk down their office. Well, in the remote world today, you’re not going to run into them ever, because you’re probably in your house.
So you need to start thinking about, okay, well, how do I make sure I create those, recreate those moments virtually. So hey, guys, want one thing, my daughter with three kids and our daughters, the middle one, and she’s working for a startup. And they all work remotely. The company is based in Nashville, she’s in Denver, everyone’s all over the place. But they have something called study hall. And so a couple times a week, they all it’s a meeting and they have to log in. And they’re all on the screen, like a zoom screen working. And they’re all there. So everyone knows they’re there. And so someone may say click on someone say, hey, Margo, do you have a minute? Yeah, call me or let’s go in this chat room. I have a couple questions for you.
So they’ve recreated the workspace where they’re going to create these spontaneous interactions. I’ve been meaning to talk to you but it wasn’t able to get a meeting with you. But here you are right now. It’s like you know, professors have study hours where you can go to see them. Office Hours, finding time to connect with people out have meetings and everything. So say all your direct reports how I want to touch base with you 15 minutes a week, just to check in and see how life is how you’re doing? What’s going on? How can I help you? How’s the family doing? Is there anything you need? And you schedule those things. And so every every week, 15 minutes pops up. Yep, everything’s going good. I don’t have much on my mind. But here’s something I was thinking about. And you have a quick conversation. So communication, same thing, you have to be very intentful. Hey, you know what, every Friday, I’m going to send out a recap of the week, Monday mornings, we’re gonna have a 30 minute meeting, we’re all going to talk about what we’re working on this week. We’ll have a 30 minute check in on Wednesday. And we’ll have a closeout on Friday, again, to see what we all worked on this week.
So I think you just got to get more organized. And just don’t, don’t leave anything to chance. Because you may, it’s easy not to connect with people in this world. Because if you don’t connect with them in a chat room, or you don’t call them, you’re not going to talk to them. So I think intent and purpose and just make sure you’re making those happen. I think they’re actually there’s a lot of opportunities, you can be more efficient and a better leader with this remote work. Because you have you have this ability to connect with people, you know where people are, you can get them you don’t have any travel time. I mean, you know, you click boom, you’re in the next meeting, you can talk to people. And I know that you can overdo that a little bit. But just be thoughtful about our Do you have the right people doing the right work? are you feeding those relationships? Are you checking in on people? Are you asking those questions, clarity, expectations, here’s what you need to get done this week, here’s what we need to get done.
And then following up and rewarding them. I’ve heard from companies that the only reason they don’t like work from home is because they don’t trust that people are going to do the job. It’s like that is not a reason to do that. So I said, if you don’t think people are getting their job done, then you have a measurement problem. Because you should be able to know what people are supposed to be getting done. By the end of this week. Here’s a couple reports. Here’s a relationship. Here’s two clients to talk to you. And then the week, let’s see if you got all this done. And let’s connect. I’ve heard from companies that are like, they’ll look at what time you logged in your computer and logged out. And I think that’s just a formula for disaster. If you don’t trust people working from home, then get rid of them and hire someone you do trust. But don’t let this ongoing issue be. If I don’t see you, then I don’t have control over you. Because that’s just that’s not leadership.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah. I love what you said. So you don’t have a trust problem, you have a measurement problem. I hope y’all didn’t miss that. Okay, so he’s saying, you know, between Monday and Friday, there should be strategies happening, tactics being taken care of things being done. And you should be able to look at that and not worry about whether or not they folded their clothes on a 10 minute break today. Right. Exactly. That’s important. All right. So I’ve got two more questions for you. I think I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you a question about culture, about culture. So, you know, I know, we could probably talk for three hours or three days about culture. But you know, like, if you were gonna, like put it in a capsule for us, what’s the most important thing a leader needs to do to have a beautiful magical culture?
Dan: Yeah, I don’t know if there’s one thing, but I’ve had people ask before, how do you define culture, I looked at all kinds of things you can find. But one is I found that I think is best as culture is how things are done around here. So you know, that’s what culture is. This is how this is how things are done around here. So culture comes back to once again, I’ll go back to expectations and clarity, we value let’s say, I have a company we value humility. Great. We I love, I love how that sounds. I love the idea. Now, how do I measure that I can’t walk up, I unfortunately, don’t have a device or an app that scans you and says you’re, you’re humble or not, it’s behaviors. People who are humbled, do certain things. They listen, they take responsibility, they’re empathetic. And they’re more interested in the the, the success of their team than themselves.
And so when you start defining the behaviors, then you can start training those behaviors, you can reward those behaviors you can hire for those behaviors, you can give feedback on those behaviors. And a lot of times companies stop at value, they don’t go to the next level to explain how to get there. And that’s it. It’s a lot of work to do. But man, it’s it’s it’s so great, because if I want to be I’m not I wasn’t born a highly empathetic person. I learned a lot of that. I learned to ask people questions when I meet them. Hey, where are you from? Tell me about yourself. And I am interested in that. But there’s other people that you know, I read I know, Gallup says, If you want to know someone who has empathy, find the people who they they buy your Christmas present.
You’re like, how did you know? How did you know that this was what I wanted? Well, because I’m highly empathetic. Now me, I give my wife either. She says, I love that. And she looks at me and I put an Amazon on my shopping list. I’m like, you will get that. Or I always get the gift receipt. So I’m like this is not going to be close, but I’m going to give it a try here. So anyway, defined behaviors. And the second part of that is role model. That’s another and that once people know what to do, and actually role modeling may come first, I see my leader do certain things, and that becomes what I assume as the standard. So if you are, if you yell, I’m going to think it’s wrong, but maybe it’s acceptable.
If you yell at me, if you regularly are out, and like when I was at Disney, I was out in the park all the time. So I thought being accessible and approachable as a leader was really important to know how the places running. And once I started doing that, the other general managers were like, well, Dan’s out walking around our areas and see what’s going on. I’m getting out there because I want to be out there also to make sure that we’re doing it right. And then all of a sudden, the managers are like, what my GM’s gonna be out there, I’m gonna be out there. And all sudden, people are much more in with the guests in the operation involved. It’s not just because I did it a lot.
But role modeling is such a powerful thing in raising kids and leading people. And there’s unfortunate a lot of examples, a lot of hypocrisy we see, you know, people say this, they do something else. And that just is that’s devastating when it comes to your credibility and building trust.
Nicole: Yeah, 100%. So a couple of things that are popping in my mind. And from earlier, what you said in what you just said now is, you know, it’s like this old saying, inspect what you expect. Yeah. So after that, and then, you know, there’s this book by Blanchard, the One Minute Manager, we’ve all I don’t know if you’ve got that one in your. Yeah, but one of the things in there that Ken Blanchard says is manage by walking around, you know, so I know it’s just a classic line. And I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about. Okay. So here’s my last question. And that is, if you were mentoring a single special leader, who is listening right now, what piece of advice, would you kind of like, you know, make sure they had a solid handle on?
Dan: Wow, that’s a good one. So I’m gonna go to my, there’s two quotes, I love quotes, I collect. I think quotes are really powerful. And there’s two that are my go-tos. And I think they’re somewhat motivating. They’re refreshing, they’re sobering sometimes. So the first one is more of a fun one. And there’s a song by Dire Straits, the song’s called The Bug. And it says, something that there’s a line in the song says, “sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger, and sometimes you’re the ball”. And so that is just such a great context for life. Because there’s times that I joke with people. So there’s times I drove home at night, from my job at the Magic Kingdom. And I had my music plan. And I’m like, you know, I’m a humble guy. But there’s no doubt in my mind, there’s never been a better vice president than me today. I was fabulous. I was funny, I was decisive. I was on top of it, I asked great questions. And I was on top of the world.
And literally two days later, I’d be driving home saying, how am I gonna explain to my wife that I made such a stupid decision today? And how could I just have done that I’m the worst vice president ever. So you know, life is ups and downs. And it’s just about getting a handle on that, that, that the highs are gonna end one of my bosses told me once, Dan, just think about this way, when things are going really bad. They’re not nearly as bad as you think they are. And when they’re going well, they’re probably not going as well as you think. So just keep yourself on that. Yeah, that was a good piece of advice.
And then the second one my grandfather gave me, he was a, he went to the US Naval Academy class of ’42. They graduate in three years, because they had to go to war. And he was a naval architect, and just a really impressive guy. He retired from the Navy and had like three more careers. But he had told me at one point, and he wrote this on a piece of paper, I still have, he said, Dan, here’s how I think about things. And I was, you know, I was young, I was in my, I think it was a teenager, when I heard this, and I kept it with me didn’t mean as much as the time but over the years, I thought about it. He said, You do your best. And then you forgive yourself.
And I just I think it’s a great way to live, every day you do your best, sometimes your best is going to be great. And sometimes your best is going to be a miserable failure, because your best isn’t good enough. So every day you get up and you do the best you can. And then you forgive yourself. You you go, you learn from it, and you come in the next day, and you do your best again. And when you make a mistake, when you do something you wish you’d brought you taken back, when you have a regret, you got to forgive yourself and move on. And a lot of people like to carry guilt with themselves, they carry shame around, they carry these things, the only thing that can come good at that as you learn something to learn how to deal with things next time.
So I think those are two things everyone should be thinking about. I think people are so hard on themselves. And they think they have to live up to this idea of as I was talking to someone this morning, you know, social media, which are basically the highlight reels. We think the highlight reels of everyone’s life is how we’re supposed to be all the time and it’s just not reasonable and it’s not it’s not real. And it’s it shouldn’t be that way and I think we all do that. So just remember, sometimes a Louisville Slugger sometimes you’re the ball. And you do your best and you forgive yourself. And I think those have been two expressions that have kind of helped me get through a lot of things through my career in my life.
Nicole: Yeah. So I think you hit it out of the park on our podcast today, by the way, so you can get in your car and drive around the neighborhood and come back home.
Dan: I will be mildly happy and not, you know, overdo it, because I know tomorrow is gonna be another day.
Nicole: Okay, awesome. Well, it’s been so awesome to speak with you. I’m super grateful that you’ve been on the Vibrant Leadership Podcast again, everybody. I want you to take a look right here, go on Amazon and order it. How’s the Culture in Your Kingdom? And then Dan, tell us, what could you do for us? If somebody is listening to us? And they say, I need to hang out with this guy. What? What are the ways you help people tell us about your business real quick, and how they can find you?
Dan: Yeah, so Valerie, you know, my wife, worked in retail at Disney for a long time. And then eventually was a facilitator at the Disney Institute. So we, she’s great facilitator, great, creative content. We do workshops together, and I do keynote speeches, and we’re into everything we’re working with. We’re an accounting firm, we’ve worked with healthcare companies, hospitals, hotels, we do workshops, we have a workshop called the method to the magic. And we kind of do a one day workshop on she does the part on how to really think about delivering customer service.
And I do the part on leadership, how to create the environment, to allow yourself to deliver great customer service. We do coaching, I have a couple people, I coach and talk to them once a week and talk about what they’re working on their jobs and help them as a thought partner. We have some online courses we’ve created, we created an undergrad college course we’re testing up at Suffolk Community College.
Nicole: Oh fantastic!
Dan: Keynote speeches online. So we basically we’ve realized that the material and the experiences we’ve had between us, we have a lot to talk about. And then when we just talked to clients, and we just figured out once again, clarity, what is it you’re trying to solve for? And what is it we have that’s going to help you solve whatever you’re solving? Are you trying to deal with? You know what I need to look at processes to rebuild my business because my customer service is suffering? You know, because, you know, Walt Disney was a big machine, lots of processes. And then once you get the process in place, then you have to motivate the people.
So we’re at cockerellconsulting.com our cell phone numbers are on there, our emails, we like to be accessible and chat with people. And a lot of times I’ll chat with someone and we’ll conclude that you know what, I’m probably not the person to help you. But I know five people who have a skill set to help you. And so we’ve realized over time, that’s the key to building businesses. I’m not here for you to hire me. I’m here to help you. And if I happen to have the skill set that’s going to help you then great, maybe you’ll hire me.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. All right, everybody. It has been a delight to be with you and I hope you’ll tune in next time for the Vibrant Leadership Podcast.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com, and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TED talk.
