4 Ways Video Conferencing Inspires Leadership and Collaboration

One of the biggest trends to sweep the business world today is the emergence of the global workplace. While this may mean that you’re dealing with employees across the world, or simply across town, the idea is that telecommunication technology now allows management from anywhere in the world, regardless of geography. Whether you’re a small eCommerce startup or a large company with multiple locations, using things like video communication can increase diversity and creativity in your company’s leadership roles, as well as positively impact the way your staff works. Here are three ways that video conferencing can improve leadership and collaboration within your business.

1. Bringing Everyone to the Table

One of the most important aspects of refining and improving the way your employees work together is gathering everyone to the table at the same time. Even if it only happens once per year, it’s easy for people to branch off into their own small workplace microcosms by department or project, which is when collaboration and communication start to break down. Hosting a video conference group with BlueJeans is an easy way to get everyone together in a virtual conference room, especially if your colleagues are spread across geography, whether international or intercity. Scalable video conferencing means that you can afford the technology regardless of how large your business is. One of its biggest benefits is also that it’s very simple to join a meeting from anywhere in the world, on almost any device. Systems can host up to 25 participants, so if you’re looking for a group meeting for a small business, or just a branch, this is a great way to bring everyone together at once. Sitting people down to interact, even if just for an annual group discussion, is a effective way to get everyone on the same page and establish the same goals for the company as a whole.

2. Mining for Leadership in Nontraditional Places

One of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is limiting the pool of where they find leadership. Traditionally, an employee has to work their way up the ladder to reach higher points of leadership, but this is an outdated way of thinking. It can also prevent you from finding the most eligible and capable candidates for such roles. Entrepreneur advises that cultivating new leadership is most effective when available roles are extended to everyone across your business, creating opportunities for employees who may not have the title, but already have the skills to be effective in a leadership position.

Using video to get to know these potential leadership candidates, whether from getting feedback from managers across the board or simply inviting people to apply for jobs within your company, widens access for everyone. Even if you’re operating a business that’s large enough to have several office locations, enabling internal candidates to interview on camera for a potential move to the location of the position increases your leadership pool substantially.

3. Benefits of Multicultural Diversity in the Global Workplace

Tweak Your Biz cautions that diversity in small teams can run into cultural conflicts when working together, but the potential benefits of a multicultural team and the different perspectives they bring to the table about how to approach problem solving is invaluable. For example, a conflict might be as simple as a simple language barrier. If one team member writes an email to their colleague across the world regarding a project they’re working on, the tone of the wording may be read incorrectly. Integrating face to face interaction in addition to text-based communication is a good way to reduce avoidable cultural clashes that may occur solely due to misunderstandings. This is an especially useful tactic if your business includes both remote and on-site workers, or if you have no brick and mortar headquarters at all, as many small or eCommerce-based businesses do today.

4. An Affordable Technology

One of the biggest perks of video conferencing is the fact that you also get an excellent return on your investment. Since video conferencing providers are often cloud-based, remote, and scalable, you don’t have to worry about installing bulky, dedicated equipment on the theoretical belief that it will help you find new leadership and improve collaboration between colleagues. Today’s video technology is accessible through almost any equipment, whether a computer or mobile device, and is interoperable with preexisting teleconferencing systems you may already have in place. Video technology is a good investment since it enables a whole other level of opportunity for communication, and you also have a chance to test it out.

Leadership, vision, and successful collaboration between employees is all about quality communication. Whether you’re talking about a small team working on a single project, or a company-wide meeting that makes faces familiar to one another, the same principles apply. If you want to draw out the best leadership candidates and push collaborative efforts forward, enabling communication on multiple platforms is key.