It’s performance review time for many organizations. Towards the end of a year or the beginning of a new year, many companies will hold these reviews for their employees. They look back on what each one worked on and accomplished over the last year.

On this episode, we’re discussing performance reviews from a different perspective than we have before. A listener asked how she, as an individual contributor, could demonstrate and document leadership skills to her supervisors during her performance review.

First, you must understand what leadership really is. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Leadership is about stepping up, raising your hand, and giving your opinion. It is doing whatever is necessary to make things better in your organization. Leaders take on responsibility and don’t back down from hard things.

You have to demonstrate this leadership ability to your supervisors clearly. They’re busy, so they might not notice when you do something great.

Don’t be afraid of self-promotion. If you don’t tell people something, they just won’t know. So make sure you get noticed.

Go to your supervisor and tell them of your aspirations. If you’ve gotten involved and done great work, make sure they know about it. They’ll either tell you what you need to do to get where you want to go or will remember you when a promotion opportunity arises.

If they’re not helping you advance, consider leaving. Go someplace where they will help you get what you want.

To learn more about how to get your supervisors to notice your performance at work, listen in to the rest of this episode.

This week’s episode is a special one. We’re sharing a clip from our conversation with Ron Logan. Ron is retired now, but he was the Executive Vice President of live entertainment for Disney worldwide. 

If you have ever experienced live entertainment at any Disney location, Ron had a part in it.

Even though he is retired today, his impact is still felt at every Disney park.

Ron is a man of attention to detail and creativity. He wouldn’t send anything out unless it was perfect. He even brought some of the shows he produced at Disney to Broadway, which is no easy task to accomplish. 

In our conversation, Ron talked about his beginnings with Disney. He started out as a trumpet player on Main Street at Disneyland. This led to him putting whole parades together and eventually coming back to work for Disney full-time. 

A lot of Ron’s success resulted from his interactions with his bosses. He had lots of amazing mentors, but he also had some bosses he didn’t like. His secret was to treat them as the hero.

If you have to deal with top executives in your job, make them your hero. Make their jobs easier and you’ll be in a much better position. 

Tuck away your problems with them and keep the faith. Who knows, maybe you’ll take their spot one day.

You can get access to our entire conversation with Ron inside the Cockerell Academy. There is also a lot of exclusive content from me and amazing courses that teach high-level concepts you didn’t learn in college. Find out more about the academy at https://www.cockerellacademy.com/.

Are you helping or enabling?

Do you know the difference between the two?

Listener Greg Parsons recently asked us what the difference is. On this episode, we’re breaking it down and explaining how you can tell if you’re helping or enabling.

Helping is setting clear expectations and sticking to them. It is teaching somebody how to do something and then letting them go off on their own to do it. When you work with someone to make them responsible, you are helping them.

Enabling, on the other hand, is doing something for somebody that they should have done themselves. It is not enforcing the expectations that we have set. 

When we enable, we’re giving people permission. We’re telling them that we actually didn’t mean what we said. 

In the long run, this hurts them. We need tough love instead. By helping the person take responsibility we are showing them that we care.

If you have a problem that’s recurring, you might actually be the problem. By seeing the same behavior over and over again and doing nothing about it, you’re allowing it to continue to happen. 

Stop taking the easy way out and letting things go. Instead, educate, inspire, and hold people accountable. In this way, you’re helping them.

If you want to hear more from Jody and I, tune in to our guest episodes on the podcast How That Happened. You can find Jody’s episode here and my episode here. 

On this week’s episode, we’re answering a question that came to us from Joe Fernandez. He is a Park Ranger and is wondering how to respond well to a crisis. Joe wants to know how he can continue to lead with a positive attitude during times of uncertainty.

At Disney, we were prepared for anything. We thought about crises before they happened.

You should do the same. Anticipate what could happen and make sure that you’re ready for all of it. Think about what resources you’ll need and which people you will need to go to for help. You can be ready for most things, even if you don’t know the specifics of what will happen.

When a crisis does occur, do any follow-up necessary to get back to normal operations.

At Disney, everyone who had a piece in dealing with a crisis would sit down afterward. We would reflect on what happened, what went right, and what could have gone better.

During a crisis, you don’t have a lot of time to sit and reflect. So make the space to do it after the fact. This will make sure that you respond better the next time something happens.

We’re all experiencing something along these lines with the pandemic. Use this experience to prepare you for anything else that may come along in your life or your organization.

One important key in time management is realizing that being late is a choice. 

Too many of us think it’s a phenomenon. In reality, we can make the choice to be on time or we can make the choice to be late. 

When we become that person who is always five minutes late, our reputation is damaged. People start to believe they can’t trust you. You appear unprofessional and impolite to the people who are left waiting. Your lateness starts to become a joke. You are no longer seen as reliable or credible.

You’ll get into all kinds of other trouble when you’re late. You could miss flights, let people down, make bad decisions, and miss important information.

A listener named Jennifer struggles with this exact problem. She wrote to tell us that she’s heard a lot about what to do with your time, but wants to hear about how to actually get places on time.

One key is to become more aware of what’s going on. Know the trends in traffic and the events that happen over and over again. 

It may also help to get up earlier and plan out your day. You could even consider getting to appointments an hour early to read and get some work done.

Tune into this episode to hear more advice on how to be punctual. We also teach about time management in The Cockerell Academy. Learn more at https://www.cockerellacademy.com/.