Elaina Noell > Quotes

“Employees are accountable for “the how,” and leaders are accountable for empowering employees to discover it themselves.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Employees want to put their abilities to use when the impact is seen and celebrated.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Use perceived capability as a tool to create possibility, not to ask the impossible.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Your goal as a leader should be to increase the experience of positive neurochemicals and decrease the experience of triggering negative ones.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Without values as clearly defined demonstrable actions, you’re likely asserting preferences, which are more effective at inspiring resentment than inspiring improvement.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“There was thought put into creating the values, and so too should there be thought on how to practically demonstrate them.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Without company values or leadership principles explicitly crafted and executed as clear accountability anchors, they remain to be seen as only ineffective invitations instead of Revisited expectations.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“We create patterns and loops that act as operational software, executing the program instead of remaining curious. If we expect a positive result from our effort, we are eager to engage. If we expect a negative result from our effort, we are less inspired to engage.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Approaching someone with dignity, gratitude, understanding, and, more specifically, soothing the triggered creature brain before delivering feedback isn’t parenting or babysitting. It is the most effective approach to getting the result you want. You’re not only fulfilling their needs, you’re also better fulfilling your business’ needs.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“We are inspired by those who see us as more capable or who help us believe we can be more than we are.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“We are more incentivized to invest effort and engage in required action when we understand the impact of our efforts.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Clarity in expectation becomes clarity in demonstration, allowing you to offer “You did it!” serotonin rewards, which become incentives to continue demonstrating the desired attitude, mindset, and behavior.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Worse, once triggered, the employee we want to do better actually has less ability to do so because the brain is under siege from those negative neurochemicals that reroute our impulses and zap resourcefulness. None of these responses get us closer to the results we need.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Effort isn’t inherently stressful. How confident, clear, and optimistic we feel during the effort determines our experience.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“While meanings make sense of a moment, beliefs are generalized to make sense of related moments forever, and they are applied to every future moment with a similar context.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“It’s also fairly unrealistic to think any human’s default in the middle of a stressful encounter would be to pause, evaluate the company values that could be used in the situation, figure out what they mean, and then resume action. Employees need to know exactly how to demonstrate the value before the situation occurs that requires it.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Most values are stated too generally to be useful, and undefined values get undefined demonstration.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“We want to move from labeling our interactions as confrontations and instead have conversations.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Quite differently, Inspiring Accountability empowers employees to improve by avoiding the blame and shame game. When an employee’s dignity is maintained, they are better able use the mistake as a growth opportunity.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Your subconscious notices, knows, and remembers a frustrating amount more than your conscious mind will ever allow you to “know.”
― Elaina Noell

“Vague Desired Results get vague achieved results. Clear expectations are required for employees to successfully meet those expectations.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“One can’t be productively held accountable for something they were not empowered to do.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Additionally, focusing on the past and what went wrong may seem like a necessary step to understand the problem and prevent it in the future. But similar to Albert Einstein’s suggestion that “You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created the problem,” teams and leaders that focus on problems are stuck in the same thinking that created the problem.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“To be engaged, employees always need a way to win with you”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“Natural consequences simply exist and don’t require criticism, judgment, or punishment to empower an employee to start fixing them. Natural consequences offer opportunities for the leader to empower an employee to correct a situation, whereas punishment doesn’t actually relieve or compensate.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“If a task is worth doing, it means there is valuable contribution context waiting to be communicated. What greater success is your employee contributing toward that makes it worth doing in the first place?”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“When employees get what they need, your organization gets what it needs.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“When people are in self-protection mode, the adrenaline-triggered state so commonly associated with traditional accountability, they will spend their energy defending themselves instead of discovering possibilities and rational solutions. They will fight to prove they are good enough, valued enough, and important enough. They will choose to protect their needs instead of making decisions that protect what’s best for your company and customers.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“The “feeling of responsibility” associated with guilt sounds positive, but employees don’t need to endure guilt to motivate improvement. In fact, guilt and its related companions become triggering impediments.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results

“You can imagine that it’s not likely for an employee to go above and beyond for a manager who doesn’t see much potential in them. Eventually, the employee gets exhausted trying to prove them wrong and lets the manager be right.”
― Elaina Noell, Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results