Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 29. Relationships

When Nancy walked into Grandma's Soup House, she heard the employees behind the counter call out, "Welcome to Grandma's!" Clearly, this was a group that was engaged by their work. When she asked Grandma and Peter what they knew about engagement and how to enhance it, she wasn't surprised to hear that Peter was well versed in the concept and that they used their own informal way to measure their engagement ratio. With only 20 employees, it was easy to figure out whether they had an 8 to 1 ratio of engaged to actively disengaged people. However, Peter and Grandma used their own terms for identifying engagement:

• Hot, for someone who was engaged

• Lukewarm, for someone who was disengaged

• Cold, for someone who was actively disengaged

Grandma shared that, to her, engagement was all about relationships and treating people like family. "Relationships are the ingredient that gives life and work meaning, flavor, and texture, and they are necessary to create great soup."

"Relationships are everything," Peter added. "Although this seems like common sense, believe it or not, there's an effort by a lot of managers and leaders in the business world to keep the professional and personal separate; but the fact is that relationships in the workplace are personal, and they are necessary if you want to enhance engagement and create success. Think about it. Gallup's research shows that employees who think their managers care about them are more loyal and productive than those who ...