Meaningful Partnership at Work:

Ensuring Mutual Accountability and Success Between Leaders and Teams…

“All of us work with others.  Sometimes those professional relationships are important enough that we call them a ‘partnership’.  But what does partnership in the workplace really mean?  What makes some of our partnerships exceptional while many are mediocre, frustrating or even a disaster? And why do these work partnerships matter so profoundly to our well-being and success, regardless of our level or role?” (p. 12, Introduction, Meaningful Partnership at Work)

This two-hour on-line session will explore three ideas from our co-authored forthcoming book, Meaningful Partnership at Work: How The Workplace Covenant Ensures Mutual Accountability and Success Between Leaders and Teams (Productivity Press/Taylor & Francis).  The first idea is the mindset of ‘meaningful’ partnership and how it differs from routine work associations.  The second is the conceptual model that underlies this idea, ‘ERTAP’, which stands for empathy, respect, trust, alignment and partnership.  The third idea is what we call ‘The Workplace Covenant’, which is a practical yet transformative relationship-building process between any two parties at work, that ensures ERTAP through on-going mutual support and accountability.

Participants will find this session highly useful because it will delve into a number of factors that we often take for granted in the workplace (e.g. how people work together, the expectations we all have of colleagues, the importance of a manager to team success, how to repair broken work relationships, etc.), and explore how to make these more transparent and hence effective.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the three core ideas from the book and how they relate to the health and effectiveness of our new workplace.
• Learn the model, ERTAP, the research related to it, how to measure the elements, and how it can be used to help managers and teams.
• Know how to apply a new OD tool, The Workplace Covenant, to ensure ongoing ERTAP

About Our Presenters:  Drs. Seth Silver and Timothy Franz

Dr. Silver is the principal of Silver Consulting, Inc., an independent consulting practice, where he has worked for over 20 years with numerous clients in health care, higher education, high tech, government, business services, manufacturing and non-profit.  His consulting focuses on two key areas: developing and improving leadership; and creating high engagement, high performance workplaces.  He provides such services as executive coaching, leadership training, team development, conflict resolution, building effective workplace partnerships, strategic planning, and organizational/team diagnosis.

Dr. Silver has developed a unique business process called The Workplace Covenant, which helps parties in any organization to exchange and agree upon reciprocal obligations and expectations so as to ensure trust, feedback and alignment in their relationship. He has recently co-authored a book, entitled Meaningful Partnership at Work: How The Workplace Covenant Ensures Mutual Accountability and Success Between Leaders and Teams, to bring the concept to a wider audience.

From 2000 to 2014, Dr. Silver was a part-time Assistant Professor and taught Masters level students in Human Resource Development, teaching first at St. John Fisher College, and then at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Dr. Silver holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Toronto, a Masters degree from Cornell University, and a Doctorate (Ed.D.) from The George Washington University.  He has served on the Board of Directors for several non-profit organizations in the Rochester area, and is a citizen of both the US and Canada.

Dr. Franz is an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist at St. John Fisher College. He is a Professor of Psychology as well as Chair of the Psychology Department and past Program Director and Chair of the graduate 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. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Seth Silver, is titled Meaningful Partnership at Work: How The Workplace Covenant Ensures Mutual Accountability and Success Between Leaders and Teams 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) and 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 has designed selection tests, employee development instruments, and custom organizational surveys as a contract consultant for Custom Solutions, A London House Consulting Group.