Are you putting a ton of effort into making your team meetings more productive?

Harvard Business Review recommends directing some of that effort toward making internal meetings a quality experience for each attendee.

According to writer Paul Axtell, a quality meeting is “when employees leave feeling more connected, valued, and fulfilled.”

To make participants feel more appreciated, meeting leaders should start by thoroughly preparing for each meeting.

“Preparation allows you to relax about leading the meeting and pay more attention to ‘reading the room’—noticing how people are doing as they walk in, and throughout the meeting,” writes Axtell.

Other suggestions include demonstrating empathy by asking thoughtful questions, and slowing down the pace of the meeting so that everyone can be included and heard.

Strategic Hiring

Here's what a CEO learned from a hiring disaster.
Can your #hiring process do with an overhaul?https://t.co/LYUIY7ZEbq

— Future Value (@FVCTweets) April 12, 2017

When Baron Schwartz’s young startup was facing a tight deadline, he quickly hired a bunch of employees who ended up being a terrible fit for his company.

Schwartz shares the lessons he learned from this “painful” experience in a recent Fast Company article.

Now, he makes sure that his job descriptions are extensive and honest. “We even share which performance metrics we’ll be measuring,” says Schwartz. “This takes time and a lot of forethought, especially for newly created roles. But it’s worth all the effort.”

Schwartz also says that he requests candidates take a personality assessment, and he puts a lot of emphasis on a potential hire’s track record.

Other Links of Note

Good tweet, bad tweet. Esquire reveals the fascinating numerical way you can tell if a tweet is controversial. (Warning for the faint of heart: There’s some colorful language in this article.)

Be more efficient. Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog shares ways to integrate your email newsletter and social media strategies.

What exactly are associations, anyway? Adrian Segar argues that associations exist only in the mind.

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