Day 97: Lee Cockerell

January 5, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“What happens is your own self-confidence grows when you try things and they’re successful.  I will tell you, the first 20 years of my career, I did not have that belief in myself, and I would not try risky things.  But I’m retired.  …  You know what?  I wanted to do something else.  I wanted to do more, and I wanted to do it on my own.”

.



.
Right click here to download…
.

Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Lee, for agreeing to be part of our Project, and before we begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Lee Cockerell: I’m Lee Cockerell.  I’m the former Executive Vice President of Walt Disney World Resort.  I’m now retired and doing public speaking seminars and writing books.

Toni: Well thank you, and thank you again for being here.  The first question is, when you think about the word inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Lee: Well, I didn’t always know how to do that, and I kind of underestimated my ability to do that until about halfway through my career where I learned that I really needed to get a whole lot better at inspiring people and having people trust me.

So, I’m available for people; that’s one thing I do.  Just about anybody who wants to see me can see me.  I’m available when they need help whether it’s their personal life or their business life, to help give them direction and try to give them a new way to think about the issue they’re dealing with.

I think I’m a good listener.  I listen well.  I try to get in a position next to them and sit next to them and really try to give them some solid feedback that will help them make up the kind of decisions that will help them get ahead in their life and get over whatever difficulty they’re dealing with. And I try to do that with everybody I come in contact with.  I’ve become more sensitive to it.

I think I care more now today.  Of course, I’ve been married for 41 years.  I’ve got three grandchildren.  I see the impact of my own personal behavior on people, and I’ve learned that.  I think it’s the kind of thing I try to teach to other people is don’t underestimate your own behavior and what an impact it has on others.  You really do have influence.

Toni: I think that absolutely leads into the next question, which is, what do you do to help explore the potential in others — because you speak beautifully about how you inspire — but then how does that translate into helping them explore their potential?

Lee: Well, I try to tell stories when I speak to people and to give them … I had a pretty tough life myself, and I learned that there is potential in people.  Sometimes it’s because they just have to be introverted or maybe they don’t speak the language very well, and they have a good education from someplace else, or they just don’t fully believe in themselves.  So I try to get to know people as well as I can, and each time I come in contact with them try to get to know more about them, about their family, about what their aspirations are, about what they’re trying to achieve in their life and how I can assist them in that.

People really relate to that, because like they always say, you only know what you know and I hopefully with all my experience at Hilton, Marriott, and Disney, and being a father and a grandfather … I tell everybody I have more wisdom today because I’m a grandfather.  You might not listen to your parents and you might not listen to your teachers, but everybody listens to the grandfather.

I’ve learned … I know a lot now after 40 years of working and being married and going through all those tough times together.  I now understand that everybody has a problem you don’t know about, and you need to work with them to help them get through that.

Toni: So really, what I’m hearing that you do is you use your experience and your wisdom, everything that you’ve been through, but you also provide a space for somebody to come to the table, talk to you about their issues, and it sounds as though you almost mentor them based on your own experience and help them to move forward.

Lee: I try to do that, and I get a ton of feedback about it.  That’s kind of what turns me on is when I hear from somebody and they say “Lee, 10  years ago you sat down with me and had a tough conversation.  I want to tell you, that led to where I am today.  I am very successful, and I appreciate you telling me the truth.”

Toni: Let me ask you about you.  What do you need to be inspired?

Lee: I think the biggest payoff I get is being appreciated, frankly, and people telling me that I was able to make a difference.  I didn’t always know that.  I didn’t believe in myself when I was younger.  I didn’t know I had any talent to help people.

Obviously, at some point in my life, I probably didn’t know very much.  But as I learned over the years, I now just love to get feedback from people saying “Lee, you helped me a lot”, or “You took me through a time management course, and I use that today and I’m very successful in my own business”, or “You did this for me and you did that for me, and you really opened my eyes.”  That’s all I need!  I enjoy it.

Somebody said, “Lee, why do you give so many speeches?”  I said, “I love the applause!”

I think we all want to be appreciated, recognized, and encouraged; and I do, too.

Toni: Did you always come to the table that way, Lee?  Were you always the type of leader or man that was very encouraging, supportive, mentoring?  Is that the way you always were?

Lee: I think I was better at it at home with my son than I was in business.  We get confused when we get into business with big organizations sometimes and forget it’s all the same.  So I was pretty quiet at the table the first 10 years of my career.  I didn’t believe in myself.  I didn’t know I had anything to say.

Eventually it came to me over the years as I got smarter and had more experience and went through some difficult times myself, I learned that I did have a voice and it would help people.  I wasn’t always there, and I tell people all the time, if you went back and told my high school teachers what I was doing today, they would not believe you.  They would say “This must be some identity theft.  That can’t be the Lee Cockerell that was in our high school.”  I learned, I grew, and I have a good understanding of myself, too, so I understood when it was happening.

Toni: It’s interesting because a lot of people … the feedback that we get from people who are listening and reading the Project pages, there are a lot of people that are struggling with limiting beliefs and self-esteem and so forth, and so that’s why it’s really important to hear from someone like you who is saying “You know what?  I am this way now, but I wasn’t this way.”  It’s helpful for people to say “How did you get there?  How did you make that shift?  What happened to you that that self-belief became stronger?”

Lee: Well, that’s what I tell people.  I said “If you read my book, you’re going to feel real sorry for my wife.  I drug her all over the country.  We had our ups and downs.”

My wife actually almost died about a year ago, and we went through a long time together.  I had to take care of her.  We had a $700,000 hospital bill, but it got paid by insurance, thank God.  She was in the hospital 63 days.  I ended up with depression and anxiety, had to see a psychiatrist for 5 months.   It was a horrible time for us, and everybody’s fine now.  We’ve all recovered.  She’s in great shape.

Let me tell you what, she told me … there was a program on the other day and it was about “Is your husband the man you married?”  And she said “No, my husband’s better!”  Because I saved her life.  I literally saved her life.  I got her up every morning.  I made her eat the right foods.  We were at the emergency room every Friday.  We really grew together.  I told her “Hey, darling, I used to love you – now I’m madly in love with you.”  She said “Well, Lee, I almost killed you, but I gave you more material for your speeches.”

Toni: So it was a win-win for everybody.

Lee: It was a rough time, and it really has made me even a better man.

Toni: Wow.  Thank you for sharing that.

Lee: It’s just one of those shocks when you think you’re going to lose someone.  It’s just horrible.  Depression is a horrible thing.

Toni: I can’t imagine.  I’m really happy to hear that she came out of that okay, as well as you.

Lee: We are all back to normal.

Toni: As normal as can be, right?

Lee: We’re aware that your life can be going perfect, and it can drop off the edge suddenly.  Our life was perfect for 40 years and then, bam, one morning it wasn’t.  We got it done.

Toni: When you think about, as you said, the things that inspire you, and I would imagine what you went through last year must have been incredibly difficult but also inspiring that you’re standing on the other side of it.  And that story alone, I would imagine, would be very inspiring for other people to hear how you did that.  However, when you’re looking at exploring your own potential even today, what do you do?  What do need to keep moving forward and keep that exploration going of your own potential so that you can keep inspiring others?

Lee: I think it’s like a snowball.  Once you do something that you’re insecure about and it works out … what I’ve seen in my life, I am a fairly high risk taker today.  I will try different things because I have a pretty big belief in myself.

I’m very organized.  I taught time management for 30 years around a management system, about organizing yourself, putting priorities in your work, thinking about what you ought to be doing that won’t pay off for 30 or 40 years from now, taking risks, trying things — calculated risks.

I pretty much try anything.  Just since I retired, I wrote this book and published it in 10 languages around the world.  I didn’t know I could write a book, but I thought I could, so I did it.  I got a publisher, I got an agent.  I’m starting a national seminar business in May.  The first roll out will be in Chicago on leadership and time management.  I’m going to have an online store opening in a few weeks with merchandise.  The brand name will be Creating Magic.  Just one thing after the other.

What happens is your own self-confidence grows when you try things and they’re successful.  I will tell you, the first 20 years of my career, I did not have that belief in myself, and I would not try risky things.  But I’m retired.  I retired at 62, and people said “Why did you retire?”  And I say “You know what?  I wanted to do something else.  I wanted to do more, and I wanted to do it on my own.”

I love what I’m doing now because I’m the boss.  I have full authority.  I don’t have to check with anybody on anything.  Let me tell you, authority is a wonderful thing.

That’s it, I think.  Being organized, believing in yourself, and going out and trying things.  Everything hasn’t worked just perfectly, but most things I’ve tried have been working real well so far.  I have a lot of good people who help me.  I must say, getting my online store, there’s a guy who is an expert in that.  He’s doing all the heavy work getting it up there.  The seminar business, I teamed up with a guy who’s in that business, so he’s helping me.  I’m just writing the material right now.

Getting experts around you, getting help.  People like to help.  I think if you helped others … I helped others my whole career, and they came out of the woodwork when I needed them.  And people are just helping me right and left getting speaking engagements, seminars, and that’s the kind of thing, you know … you have to help people, too, and not just start manipulating them two weeks before you need something.

Toni: Absolutely.  That’s a great point to make here.

I have to tell you, Lee, you have given so much information in such a short amount of time between how you inspire but also what you need and what you’ve been through personally.  To be retired and to do all of the things that you’re doing now and not having thought you would have done that 20 years ago, I think that is a great message.  And I can’t thank you enough for giving your time now to us.  This was unbelievable, and I am incredibly grateful.  Thank you so very much for helping us out.

Lee: You’re welcome, and I’ll look forward to talking to you again.

Toni: Thanks Lee, take care.

Lee: Good luck!

___________________________________________________________

For more information about Lee Cockerell:  www.leecockerell.com

.