Publication number: ELQ-42985-1
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How to take meeting minutes
A best practice on how to take meeting minutes to maximise productivity and meeting outcomes.
Introduction
Meetings are unavoidable at work👀. Who doesn’t have a meeting at least once a week, or even once a day?🤨 If they can often be time-consuming and counter-productive⏰, meetings remain an indispensable communication and collaboration tool that at the same time allows us to inform, exchange and decide🗣🤝.
However, in order to be effective, a meeting should be short, well prepared and organised with a precise agenda✅. The role of the organiser is to encourage all participants to speak and to ensure to not exceed the allotted time🤚🏽. At any rate, as soon as the meeting is finished, a detailed minutes should be drafted and given to all the people concerned✍🏼.
The meeting minutes is a very important document. Discover why it is essential and how to write it well✍🏼💪🏽.
What is the point of taking meeting minutes ?
You have just finished an effective meeting where problems were resolved and where everyone left with a list of tasks to accomplish to continue to move forward on a project👀🚩. It’s perfect.
Now, get down to writing a meeting minutes, an indispensable document that allows you to put everything that was said in writing✍🏼.
Here are the different objectives of meeting minutes⬇️:
• accurately summaries the exchanges
• formalise the decisions taken and the responsibilities of each person
• set precise objectives
• keep a trace of the discussions
• inform the participants as well as those absent
• prepare the next meeting on the same subject
The meeting minutes is uniquely effective✅. You must accurately retrace the proceedings of the meeting and the different decisions that were taken without adding or missing anything❗️. Be careful, it is not a question of transcribing the dialogues, but a summary of the ideas and the decisions taken. It will be kept in the archives📝🔐.
You must be objective and impersonal, write in a neutral tone and not include your opinion or commentary😐. You need to be clear, precise, concise and structured, and the essential elements should be clear in a glance👁.
The different stages to writing meeting minutes:
Do you want to write a good meeting minutes?🗣 Follow these 7 steps💪🏽.
- Step n°1 |
Take notes of the meeting
Evidently, in order to write a precise and accurate minutes, it is crucial to take notes throughout the meeting. In order to simplify the task and be certain you miss nothing✍🏼📝, you can record the meeting with your phone (there are apps for this) or a dictaphone📲.
This does not mean you should not take notes at the same time. To be quicker, takes notes directly on your computer💻.
- Step n°2 |
The earlier, the better
Ideally, you should write the minutes immediately after the end of the meeting⏳, while you still remember everything that has been said🧠. If you have any doubts, do not hesitate to ask for help from one of the people present in the meeting🗣.
