The Need for Meaningful Partnership

Workplace relationships are the threads of the fabric the we call our organization. Many employees, in fact at all levels, finish work feeling unsupported, unappreciated, and frustrated. On the one hand, smart organizations typically care a great deal about their customer relationships and have many processes and practices to ensure those interactions begin well and stay positive. Yet, on the other hand, most of these organizations seem almost indifferent to the quality of their manager-team relationships, despite the importance. If team members are to be happy and fully effective, then managers have to make sure their team is their primary customer. In practice, this means that both the manager and the team must be focused on genuinely supporting each other and helping one another to achieve. They both must have the mindset of meaningful partnership.