Accountability Starts at the Top | K4B with Noelle Labrie
Noelle Labrie of Tri-Skill Consulting joins K4B to show leaders why team underperformance starts at the top — and how servant leadership, honest feedback, and daily discipline close the gap.
Hosts Bernie Franzgrote and Wayne Pratt
Noelle Labrie of Tri-Skill Consulting joins Knack 4 Business to show leaders how accountability, servant leadership, and self-awareness fix team performance. (157 chars)
GROWTH CATEGORY: Leadership & Ops
Your team keeps underperforming. You've hired, trained, and tried again.
But what if the gap isn't on the floor?
Noelle Labrie, founder of Tri-Skill Consulting, has trained leaders across the Middle East, Central America, and beyond. Her answer is consistent — team performance starts with the person at the top.
Watch the full conversation here:
WHO THIS IS FOR
- SMB owners managing a growing team
- Restaurant operators dealing with high turnover
- Solopreneurs hiring their first employees
- Leaders building systems that scale
- Corporate escapees starting fresh with people to lead
Key Lessons
Lesson 1 — Your team's performance is your responsibility
Noelle is clear on this. Not because you caused every problem. But because as the leader, you have the most influence over the environment your team works in. A psychological equation she references says behavior is a function of personality times environment. You can't change personality. But you can change the environment — and that changes everything.
If someone is underperforming, the first question isn't what's wrong with them. It's what does the environment around them look like — and who built it?
Lesson 2 — Promoting without supporting is a setup
The Peter Principle is real. Your best bartender, your top salesperson, your strongest line cook — if you promote them without giving them leadership tools, they will struggle. They were great at doing. Leading is a different skill entirely.
Noelle has seen this across industries. The fix is straightforward: when someone moves up, they need a leader above them doing what Noelle calls pouring in — giving time, tools, honest feedback, and space to grow.
Lesson 3 — Discipline is a leadership strategy
Noelle has run at least one mile every single day for over 3,800 days. She brings it up not to impress, but because it taught her something transferable. Clarity. Intentionality. Consistency. Those are leadership skills built by habit. You don't have to run. You have to find the daily commitment that sharpens how you show up — and protect it like it matters.
Practical Steps
- Run the Start-Stop-Continue exercise with your team this week. Ask them what you should stop doing, start doing, and keep doing as their leader. It takes trust to ask. It takes courage to hear the answers. Do it anyway.
- Audit your environment, not your people. Before your next performance conversation, ask yourself — what has the environment around this person looked like? What have they been given? What have they been missing?
- Identify your daily discipline anchor. What is one thing you can commit to every day that builds clarity and consistency? Build around it. Protect it. Let it compound.
About the Guest
Noelle Labrie is the founder of Tri-Skill Consulting and a learning and development expert with over 20 years of global experience. She helps restaurant operators, SMB leaders, and growing organizations close the gap between team potential and team performance. Her focus is talent, team, and training — with servant leadership as the foundation for all three.
Noelle has worked in food and beverage, theme park guest relations, and call centers across the Middle East and Central America. She holds a certification in technical writing and brings both structured systems thinking and deep human insight to every engagement.
She is based in Florida and works with clients across the US, primarily in the restaurant and hospitality industry.
Connect with Noelle on LinkedIn Visit Tri-Skill Consulting
Free tools available from Noelle:
- Personal leadership self-assessment
- Restaurant systems snapshot
Reach out through her website or LinkedIn to access both.
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FAQ
Q: Does servant leadership only work in service industries like restaurants? No. Noelle has applied servant leadership in call centers, theme parks, and corporate environments across multiple countries and cultures. The principle — pour into your people so they can serve others — works wherever people are being led.
Q: What's the fastest way to know if I have a leadership gap on my team? Look at your turnover. If good people are leaving three to six months after you hire them, there's a reason. Noelle says high turnover is almost always a symptom of a leadership or culture problem — not a hiring problem.
Q: What if I'm a solopreneur just starting to hire? Does this apply to me? Absolutely. Noelle works with early-stage business owners too. The time to build your leadership foundation is before the team grows — not after things start to break. Start with your values, your systems, and your own self-assessment. The rest follows.
Acknowledgements
Carl Richards — Podcast Solutions Made Simple
Fred Crouch — Property Wizard podcast
Jovan Strika — @Hive Community and Collab working space
Melanie Webber — Business Partner
