Once working and focused in tune with what they do best, your people are freed up to deliver their very best performances. They encourage others to work to their strengths too. Thus, each is far more effective. By recognising this in each other, there is another benefit. Everyone realises value that differences can bring to team, business or organisation. And that is valued - people work together much more freely.

So, by challenging each other to be honest about what others can do better than they can, all benefit. Everyone is enabled to deliver what they do best, and by elevating them to work together, bond grows as each values performances where they work best.

In their excellent book, “Now Discover Your Strengths”, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman explore hugely value-creating process which many organisations have embodied in their culture, by enabling individuals to do what they do best, more of time.

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Summary: The relationship between boards of director and CEOs are vital to well-being of any company. Many boards and CEOs misunderstand that relationship and so are locked into a "spiral of doom." The author describes spiral and ways to stop it.

CEOs And Boards Are Locked In A Spiral Of Doom by Brent Filson

American CEOs are dropping like flies. Boards, armed with new federal rules and stock exchange requirements coming in wake of corporate scandals of past few years, are getting rid of underperforming CEOs at record rates. This trend is all more notable because it's happening during an improving economy and stock market.

However, real reasons for CEO bloodbath are being overlooked. Analysts pin bloodbath on CEOs. But it's not just CEOs who are failing. Boards are failing too. Working with thousands of leaders worldwide for more than twenty years, I've learned that there is a "spiral of doom" in relationship between many company boards and their CEOs. Most boards are clueless as to what leadership skills are needed for CEOs to succeed. So they hire clueless CEOs. Clueless boards hiring clueless CEOs -- it's classic spiral of doom.

The reason boards and CEOs misunderstand leadership is that recently there has been a tectonic shift in leadership skills CEOs need to succeed. In 80s and 90s, autocratic CEO reigned supreme. Many companies were like slow-moving ocean liners with autocratic captains giving orders to mates and mates giving orders to crew. But today combination of globalization and new, differently-manageable generations coming into workforce is creating need for new kinds of leadership. CEO leadership is no longer like piloting an ocean liner but like white water canoeing that calls for flattened organizations that can change rapidly and accurately, decentralized decision-making, motivated employees, and inspiring relationships.