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Walk around any organisation and you will see people going about their daily routines. Sometimes as you walk the corporate corridors you will come across something different, something that causes you to pause and consider how you might encourage it to happen throughout the organisation. It might be an excited debate where enthusiasm and commitment is tangible. It might be an overheard conversation about a brilliantly simple idea. It might be a conference call on which, instead of being separated by time zones, people appear to be energised and working to the same goal.

For CEOs these moments are organisational magic. For all the grand debates in the boardroom, the strategy retreats, the visions, this is what CEOs strive for: the crackle of imagination in pursuit of corporate goals. I call these "hot spots". They are times when positive relationships with work colleagues are a real source of deep satisfaction. They are the times we remember and when we add the most value - personally and professionally.

Most companies have developed an environment in which any form of doubt is perceived as ignorance or weakness and questioning is interpreted as either manipulation or affront. This kills the spirit of inquiry and reduces conversations to ritualised, dehydrated talk. The first task of the CEO in creating good conversations is to institutionalise questioning and expressing doubt as a normal part of the way in which the company operates.

The ability to ask incisive questions requires careful cultivation. Spotting potential weaknesses or fallacies in an argument needs a prepared mind. To be effective questioners, CEOs need to constantly expose themselves to a variety of information and stimuli inside and outside the company so as to be able to generate independent and insightful thoughts.

To legitimise honest expressions of doubt, CEOs need to admit their own doubts and uncertainties. CEOs who believe that they must always have the right answers kill curiosity and inquiry. It takes self-confidence and courage for leaders to acknowledge their own ignorance, but nothing serves as a better reminder to others of all the things that they themselves do not know.

Lou Gerstner, in his first meeting with senior managers after taking over as the CEO of IBM, made a new rule: no overhead projectors and no slides were allowed into the room. In IBM, meetings had become totally ritualised, with formal presentations of information using well-crafted colour slides. Managers spent much time preparing the presentations, which took up all the available time during the meetings. Gerstner wanted quality conversations. Hence his new rule: no slides.

Individual habits and organisational inertia lead to the persistence of poor conversations in companies. Most leaders can think of simple rules to break habits and inertia. What matters is that the leaders consciously ask the questions: What is blocking quality conversations in our organisation? What can we do to eliminate the blockages?

Creating friendships is also crucial. It begins with the quality of relationships the members of the leadership team have with each other. Poor-quality relationships have a profoundly negative effect on the capacity of the company to thrive.

While OgilvyOne under the direction of its founder, David Ogilvy, had been a friendly place, by 1992 its original entrepreneurial culture had ossified into highly autonomous factions led by barons who were more interested in protecting their turf than in building the business. "The London office was horrible," a senior manager told me, "with constant backbiting and a lot of bad blood".

The change started with Charlotte Beers, the then CEO of Ogilvy, who invited all the business leaders to a two-day off-site meeting. Breaking with norms, she began the conversation by asking direct questions: "How do we feel about one another? Why can't we work together? Do we recognise what our relationships are doing to our clients?" Initially, the discussions were very difficult. "We simply did not know how to talk openly to each other," the same senior manager told me. "We were so used to being defensive and polite. It took two years and eight meetings and some changes in the cast of characters before we learned to deal with emotions and feelings, to be authentic … to learn the power of friendship."

In each company, there are a handful of practices and processes with which leaders must personally involve themselves, ones that are unique to the company. These are not best practices imported from elsewhere; rather they are the practices and processes that resonate with the values of the company. These are the company's signature processes, and leaders play a crucial role in defining and sponsoring them.

Exceptional leaders use signature processes to communicate their values and the values of the company. To do so requires that the leader be very clear about what the values are.

The executive role in identifying externally developed best practices is rational and analytical; in contrast, the executive role in signature processes is value-based and insightful. Best practices are necessary but they're not sufficient.

Much of our way of thinking about the role of management has centred on the rules of command and control. Supporting the emergence within organisations of hot spots requires a whole new set of rules and a new way of approaching the challenge. They need a more subtle, more nuanced and more sophisticated approach. It requires unlearning some of the old rules and embracing some new ways of thinking and working.

The new rules include creating strong bonds through relationships across boundaries. Hot spots are created in the space between people. They cannot be forced. They are fundamentally relational, whether the relationship is between close friends or business acquaintances, but they become moribund without boundary spanners, people who bring insights from outside the group. Finally, purposeful conversation is their source and conversation needs to be supported with insightful data, an emphasis on values, and space for reflection.

And the acid test? I believe the CEOs who make the shift will walk the corporate corridors in anticipation rather than trepidation.

Lynda Gratton is professor of management practice at London Business School. Her latest book is Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces and Organizations Buzz with Energy - and Others Don't (published by Berrett-Koehler in North America and Financial Times/Prentice Hall in Britain). This is an edited extract of a speech she is giving at the 2008 AHRI national convention in Melbourne today.