Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture

Chapter 33. Engaged Relationships

Nancy loved waking up in the mornings with great insights. Her best ideas came, not in the shower, but in her bed while she slept. She would often wake up in the morning with a great idea waiting for her. It was as if the idea waited for her to wake up, and when she did, bam, it would pop into her head. She could trace many of her most successful marketing ideas to these wonderful morning revelations, and this morning she was presented with another gift, consisting of two words: engaged relationships. She heard the words loud and clear and was energized by their significance. It's not enough just to build relationships, she told herself as she looked in the mirror. We have to build engaged relationships. Peter had been wrong. Relationships were not the foundation for building winning teams and organizations. Engaged relationships were the foundation. The culture and employee engagement at Soup, Inc., would be enhanced by focusing on engaged relationships. Nancy then went through a series of thoughts and steps in her mind, putting together the ingredients for great soup.

Optimism and vision start the process. They energize people with the vision and goals of the organization. But to reach these goals, the employees of Soup, Inc., needed to be engaged, and to be engaged, they had to develop engaged relationships. As a leader, she needed to encourage this, and her managers and employees needed to focus on it. Communication, trust, and love create the ...