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

This book explores how to foster and improve partnership in the workplace with a focus on leaders and their teams. The ingredients of these successful partnerships are contained in the model -- ERTAP (Empathy, Respect, Trust, Alignment and Partnership). It describes in detail a relationship-building process, The Workplace Covenant, how it creates ERTAP and partnership, and provides true stories to illustrate key benefits. In short, the book is one part conceptual and three parts practical/how-to so that readers can improve their own workplace partnerships or help others to do so. Research shows that the quality of our professional relationships is important. It is not only important to work satisfaction and many measures of performance, but also to life satisfaction. Unfortunately, the research shows that many employees are dissatisfied with the relationships they have their immediate supervisor. As it turns out, many leaders are also dissatisfied with the relationships they have with the members of their team. It's a two-way street of frustration. To reduce the frustration and create a great workplace, keep great staff, and achieve great results, the foundational relationship between a leader and team needs to be a meaningful partnership. The authors use the term ‘meaningful partnership’ because the relationship is substantial and rewarding to both sides. It represents an elevated level of cohesion, connection and collaboration. They describe how both the leader and the team must be interdependent and mutually accountable to ensure the other feels fully supported and can be successful in the work they do together. The book focuses on creating meaningful partnership through an easy-to-use process called The Workplace Covenant -- a practical relationship building process that equips any two parties who have an important work relationship to establish and continuously improve their connection and collaboration. By exchanging obligations and expectations, refining these into respective covenants, and using these covenants in various structured ways to provide routine praise and feedback, both parties periodically adjust to help the other feel fully supported and be successful. Hence, The Workplace Covenant helps to create meaningful partnership. The term “covenant' does not imply any religious connotation. Instead, it means an honor-bound commitment based on personal and professional integrity. It refers to commitments that have obligatory weight. The authors