Collaboration is a buzzword that you’ll find in almost any advice about how to get ahead of competitors, since superior creativity means new ideas that haven’t been tried before. However, collaboration is more than just having a team put their heads together and hoping for the best, or even hiring the best candidates. The fact of the matter is that collaboration can be seriously helped or hindered depending on how communication channels are implemented, and what is available. Here are four ideas that can help take your collaborative meetings to the next level that will help yield some truly original concepts.

1. Formalize Collaboration as a Job Skill

There are different types of skills listed on a job description, and the closest thing you might get to collaboration expert is someone who works well with others or is noted to respect colleagues. However, you can go above and beyond to the next step. Forbes recommends making teamwork and collaboration a skill that’s formally evaluated during performance reviews, placing it at the same level as more traditional expectations such as punctuality and leadership initiative. Putting collaboration up at the same level of importance as being on time will make all of your employees think more carefully about how they approach group projects and teamwork. While you may have a great staff who have no problems with collaboration, forcing them to reexamine their tactics can be a healthy way to inject some vitality into a system that might be functioning at a middle of the road level. If your staff knows they're expected to be collaboration experts as part of their actual job description, chances are they'll go out of their way to make it happen.

2. Create Spaces for Easy Collaboration

One of the biggest roadblocks when it comes to employee ideas and collaborative opportunities being smothered is faulty communication systems and policies. For example, if your company is rife with mismanaged meetings and poorly organized check-ins, it’s going to frustrate the able-minded people who work for you. Not only that, but a badly managed meeting puts the focus on sources of delay or distraction, such as people being late or troubleshooting technical equipment, and discourages people from focusing on the actual conversation. Using BlueJeans group video messaging is a good way to get around that and make your group meetings smooth, allowing your best and brightest stars to shine and let loose their ideas. This collaboration tactic is all about reassessing your communication tools and methods, and seeing how they can be improved. Video conferencing is a very useful tool if you know how to use it the right way and implement it across your business consistently. Most services today are very easy to use, portable, and scalable. Video conferencing caters to today’s collaborative environments, where people will be joining a meeting on their smartphone or tablet, and not concerned with wires.

3. Let the Technophobes Have Their Day

While it may be tempting to force your employees who hate being trained on new technology to learn it anyway on principle, there’s another line of thinking nowadays. Tweak Your Biz recommends choosing a user-friendly collaborative communication system, which brings employees who are resistant to new types of technology more easily into the fold. There are certain things that indulging certain members of staff in is okay, and one of those things is technology that can be more user-friendly. If you have employees who are resentful about learning new equipment or systems, investing in a user-friendly video conferencing system is worth the trouble. Of course, if someone refuses to learn new accounting software or other types of unique situations where it's necessary, that should be treated differently since it amounts to insubordination. But in this case, don't be afraid to cater to your technophobes a bit and get something that's extremely easy to use. Many technophobes aren't even that, but more likely have had frustrating experiences with technology. Put the focus back on the collaborative environment, rather complicated technology you force everyone to learn to use.

You can have the best minds sitting around a virtual conference room, but that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily get the best ideas automatically. Fostering collaborative thought takes careful leadership and the right approach to interpersonal communication. This is especially true when you’re trying to manage a large group who are all working on the same project, and ensuring that interaction happens in an orderly way is just as essential to the process as a good idea. Getting the most out of your staff means understanding how they work and how dynamics between individuals function. This is how you get the best results during collaborative sessions via video conferencing, rather than leaving the conversation up to fate. Whether you’re hosting a brainstorming session or a discussion about a project that’s currently in process, creating an environment where a certain type of communication is embraced will make a huge difference in how successful your team’s collaborative efforts are.