Meaningful Partnership at Work

Seth R. Silver, Ed.D., Organizational Consultant Dr. Silver is the principal of Silver Consulting, Inc., an independent consulting practice, where he has worked with over 200 client organizations 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. Timothy M. Franz, Ph.D., Professor, Consultant and Author Tim Franz is an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist at St. John Fisher College. He is a Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Psychology and past graduate Program Director of the graduate Human Resource Development program. He works as an organizational consultant through his consulting organization, Franz Consulting and GLI. Prior to his work as a professor, Dr. Franz worked full time as a human resources consultant. He earned his Ph.D. in Social/Organizational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, his M.A. from the University of Buffalo, and his B.A. from SUNY Oneonta. His areas of expertise include applied research in organizations, individual and team decision making, improving team performance, improving team leadership, and using teams to drive organizational change. Many of his ideas about improving teams are published in his four books, titled Meaningful Partnership at Work: How The Workplace Covenant Ensures Mutual Accountability and Success between Leaders and Teams (August, 2021), Making Team Projects Work: A Resource for High School and College Educators, Making Team Projects Work: A Resource for High School and College Students (September, 2021) and Group Dynamics and Team Interventions: Understanding and Improving Team Performance (2nd edition in 2022). More information about his work can be found at TeamBuildingProcess.com.

Introduction. Chapter 1. The Need for Meaningful Partnership. Chapter 2. What is a Workplace Covenant? Chapter 3. A Covenant Story. Chapter 4. What is ERTAP? Chapter 5. Another Covenant Story. Chapter 6. How the Process Works. Chapter 7. ShowMe the Evidence. Chapter 8. Covenants in Times of Crisis (and During Virtual Work). Chapter 9. Other Applications for Workplace Covenants. Chapter 10. What Could Go Wrong? Chapter 11. Wherever You Arre, How Do You Start? Chapter 12. A Last Covenant Stroy. Chapter 13. Final Thoughts. Appendix I. Slides to Run a Workplace Covenant Session. Appendix II. Measuring ERTAP.