Writing Minutes of Meetings

Have you been asked to write minutes for a meeting and don’t know where to start? Or perhaps you want to improve the professionalism of your minute writing? Action points can easily get forgotten and meetings become a repetition of the last occasion.

This course is aimed at the non-secretary (or the new secretary), the person who needs to take notes in meetings. 

You will learn how to gather the important pertinent information, summarise, write action points, remain objective, and improve your grammar in your writing. You will go away with a check list that will help you remember all the important features to minute writing.

Upon completion of the training program, participants will be able to:

• Prepare for a meeting

• Take minutes (or notes) of a meeting

• Use appropriate written language for a meeting

• Summarise information in easy to understand English

• Recognise how much information to record or to exclude

• Get essential information down before the group moves on

• Complete your meeting notes and minutes promptly

• Use appropriate formats for writing minutes

• The Purpose of Meeting

• Activity - Stop and Think of your own meetings

• Activity - Effective meetings vs Ineffective meetings

• Why have minutes at all?

• What to include in your minutes the standard format

• Analyse and Compare different minutes

• Taking Minutes – tips and practice from the agenda through to writing up

• Action Point Registers – what are they and how do they work?

• Making note-taking more simple

• Barriers to note taking

• Activity – Try out your speed-writing

• Summarising

• Practical exercise on summarising

• Common Grammatical Errors including spelling

• Active versus passive voice

• Taking minutes from a Transcript

• Taking minutes of a recorded meeting with feedback

• Summary and recap