Here’s an inconvenient business truth for you to consider: It doesn’t matter how valuable, cutting-edge, or unique an organization’s product or service is if its people can’t connect positively and effectively with each other.

In fact, this workplace “connectedness” is one of the hallmarks of a great organization with a culture of high performance. Consider the following statements made by employees from Glassdoor‘s 2014 Top 5 Best Places to Work:

• “The people above you really want you to be successful and offer a ton of valuable coaching and feedback.” –Bain & Company, #1
• “You are surrounded by smart, hard-working people who genuinely care about the company. You truly feel like everyone is pulling the company in the same direction.” –Twitter, #2
• “Eastman cares about its people through open communication, training opportunities, career advancement, and work-life balance…I like the focus on innovation and customer engagement to drive results.” –Eastman Chemical, #4
• “Employees are…some of the smartest and dedicated I’ve worked with, and also a lot of fun to work with (seriously).” –Facebook, #5

“Best Places to Work companies don’t achieve ‘connectedness’ through grand, expensive gestures,” says Dan Prosser, author of THIRTEENERS: Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy—and How Yours Can Be One of Them. “Their success comes down to the conversations that take place every day between employees and their leaders.”

Prosser points out that business—all business—is actually just a network of interconnected conversations. In too many companies, these conversations are destructive. They spread like a virus and keep people disconnected. In others, the conversations create environments where people feel heard, mirrored, and validated.

“A small percentage of companies consistently achieve the kind of authentic dialogue that connects people, allowing them to execute through conflict, chaos, good times, and bad,” he says. “These are the THIRTEENERS. They’ve figured out how to promote conversations that contribute to employees’ feeling connected to each other, to their company’s vision, to their common purpose, and to their strategy. ”

Here, Prosser spotlights five connecting conversations happening in successful companies:

Conversations that encourage contribution.
Your employees invest a huge amount of their time and intellect on your organization’s behalf—and they want a return on their investment. And believe it or not, the return they want most is not a bigger paycheck. What they want is the chance to make a difference—to contribute something meaningful to the outcome of the organization and be appreciated and acknowledged for it.

“When you assign responsibility and allow people to provide solutions that you actually put to use, they’ll speak highly of you, and they wouldn’t think of leaving,” Prosser explains. “In fact, they’ll want to work harder to make you even happier.”

Conversations that convey acknowledgment and appreciation.
Chances are, many of your employees were wounded in the workplace before you hired them: They’ve been passed over for promotions and given insufficient compensation for hard work. They’ve been taken for granted and treated like numbers. (Maybe this has even happened within your own organization.) The good news is, you can help right these past wrongs—to your benefit.

“Your first impression might be that handing out ‘thank yous’ and ‘good jobs’ is awkward and might feel clumsy, and your employees may also feel that way at first,” admits Prosser. “However, I promise you that the rewards of your efforts will greatly outweigh your initial discomfort.”

Conversations that encourage alignment.
In Best Places to Work companies, everyone heads in the same direction—not necessarily just by following the leader, but also by making sure that when any strategic element is altered, everyone has an opportunity to contribute to changes that must take place in other areas of the business. Operations in aligned organizations have minimal confusion. There are no territorial disputes, and everyone looks out for everyone else.

“When people are aligned, they understand the business goals for the year and the role each goal plays,” Prosser notes. “They recognize there must be alignment for their efforts to affect the bottom-line success of the company.”

Conversations that facilitate continuous communication.
Even Best Places to Work companies struggle to shore up communication, Prosser confides. But in companies where there is a high degree of communication, employees hear from management about anything that happens, especially if it impacts the way they do their jobs in a timely manner.

“In many organizations, one of the first steps in shoring up the communication gap is ensuring that no one finds out about task-essential information accidentally or after the fact,” he says. “It doesn’t reach anyone first through gossip or the grapevine. Whenever possible, strive for proactive transparency.”

Conversations that encourage integrity.
What does it mean to demonstrate integrity? It begins when management says they are going to do something, and the statement is followed with authentic action. Their actions are always in step with what they said they would do.

“This is not the same as being honest, decent, or virtuous,” Prosser clarifies. “Integrity is a way of being in which management says X is going to happen, and X happens. And it applies beyond management. There is a clear and total match between what people in the organization say and their actions.”