The conversations of leaders

It is well established across the leadership literature that good communication is paramount if the desired outcomes from indi-viduals and teams are to be achieved. Timely, constructive com-munication is recognized as fundamental to effective leadership; research commonly claims that successful leaders spend a sig-nificant proportion of their time conversing with their team and significant stakeholders. As highlighted in a previous editorial (Henderson, 2015), leadership advice emphasizes conversations about creating a vision and inspiring the workforce; yet, equal attention should be devoted to maintaining and sustaining the created vision and the associated embedded values. For this to occur, leaders need to encourage and continue constructive be-haviours that reinforce agreed values. High level interpersonal skills that faciltate engagement in conversations that share, model and reinforce behaviours reflective of these values are in-tegral to everyday practice of successful leaders.