Meaningful Partnership at Work: How The Workplace Covenant Ensures Mutual Accountability and Success between Leaders and Teams

Why are some work partnerships exceptional while most are not? How can we establish and sustain an enhanced level of cohesion, connection, and collaboration in the most important work relationship, the one between a manager and team? What could remedy the high levels of isolation and anxiety so many feel at work these days?

Silver and Franz explore the concept of 'meaningful partnership' in the workplace. They present meaningful partnership as a mindset where both leaders and their teams are fully committed to ensuring the support and success of the other. Then, they describe a model called ERTAP, which stands for Empathy, Respect, Trust, Alignment, and Partnership, which is the foundation for meaningful partnership. Finally, they detail a practical yet transformative relationship-building process referred to as the Workplace Covenant. This enables leaders and teams to create mutual commitments with obligatory weight that help them to feel accountable for the success of the relationship and each other.

The book includes real client stories that illustrate the dimensions of partnership and the Workplace Covenant process. Silver and Franz also outline other work relationships that can benefit from meaningful partnership, pitfalls to avoid, relevant research, and insights derived from years of consulting experience.

This book is a must-read for leaders interested in a better working relationship with their team; for teams who have critical work partnerships with other teams; for individuals who work closely with other individuals and need an exceptional 1:1 partnership; and finally for third-party experts in HR or continuous improvement who are seeking a new powerful way to help clients feel supported and be more successful.

Seth R. Silver, Ed.D., Organizational Consultant

Since 1998, Dr. Silver has been the principal of Silver Consulting, Inc., an independent consulting practice, where he has worked with such diverse clients as: ABVI-Goodwill, Alcoa, Alfred State College, Alstom Transport, American Red Cross, Bausch & Lomb, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Borg Warner, Bosch Security Systems, Canada Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU), Canterbury Woods Senior Living, Cape Cod Healthcare, Durham Region Government, Government of Jamaica, L3Harris, Klein Steel, LeChase Construction, Ontario County Government, Ontario Tech University, Optimax, Pactiv Manufacturing, SUNY Geneseo, Toshiba Business Solutions, University of Rochester Medical Center, and Xerox Corporation, to name a few. His work has included consulting to senior management on such topics as leadership, cultural change, employee engagement, and customer loyalty; working with teams at all levels to increase effectiveness and performance; providing clients such services as executive coaching, strategic planning, and organizational diagnosis; and teaching employees professional skills and strategies for workplace success.

Dr. Silver has developed and trade-marked a unique business process called The Workplace Covenant, which helps parties in any organization to exchange and agree upon reciprocal obligations and expectations so they can ensure trust, feedback and alignment in their relationship. He has recently co-authored a book on The Workplace Covenant to bring the concept to a wider audience.

From 2000 to 2013, Dr. Silver was an Assistant Professor at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., where he taught Masters level students in the Organizational Learning and Human Resource Development (OL/HRD) program. From 2013 to 2014, Dr. Silver was on faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), in the College of Applied Science and Technology, as a Lecturer (non-tenure track professor position) in their HRD Masters program, teaching international graduate students from over 20 countries.

Prior to his consulting practice and college teaching, Dr. Silver served as an Internal Consultant and Manager of Organization Development for the largest engineering division of the Xerox Corporation, in Rochester, NY. He was co-responsible for the development of leadership and learning strategies for 500 managers across the country. His responsibilities included the design and delivery of empowerment and team effectiveness training, individual coaching and counseling for managers, and conducting staff development workshops. He also co-developed the company's Technical Development Advisory (Mentoring) Program.

Dr. Silver holds a Bachelors degree in Social Psychology from the University of Toronto; a Masters in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University; and a Doctorate (Ed.D.) in Human Resource Development from The George Washington University. His doctoral research examined the relationship between leadership behaviors, engineers' perceptions of empowerment, and team and individual performance. Dr. Silver has published in Training Magazine, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Management Inquiry, Training and Development (T&D) Magazine, and the Rochester Business Journal. He has also served on the Board of Directors for several non-profit organizations in the Rochester area.

Timothy M. Franz, Ph.D.

Dr. Franz is an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist at St. John Fisher College. He is a Professor of Psychology as well as past Chair of the Psychology Department and past Program Director and Chair of the Organizational Learning and Human Resource Development Department. In addition to his academic work, he also works as an organizational consultant through his independent consulting organization, Franz Consulting.

His topical areas of expertise include team leadership, individual and team decision making, improving team performance, and using teams to drive organizational change. Many of his ideas about improving teams are published in his books, titled Making Team Projects Work: A Resource for High School and College Educators and Group Dynamics and Team Interventions: Understanding and Improving Team Performance. He is also an experienced applied researcher, specializing in conducting focus groups and interviews, designing custom surveys, analyzing data, and evaluating the effectiveness of training programs.

Prior to his work as a college professor, Dr. Franz was a Survey Consultant for the Wyatt Company (now Towers-Watson). He also worked as a consultant for Buck Consultants. In these roles, he designed and conducted custom compensation surveys and salary administration projects for clients in the Northeast and Midwest. In addition, he designed selection tests, employee development instruments, and custom organizational surveys as a contract consultant for Custom Solutions, A London House Consulting Group.

Dr. Franz is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, the Eastern Psychological Association, and the Erie Canal Applied Psychology Network. His scientific research has been published in premier journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. He received his Ph.D. in Social/Organizational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his M.A. in Psychology from the University at Buffalo.