Taking Minutes of Meetings

How to Take Efficient Notes that Make Sense and Support Meetings that Matter

Joanna Gutmann

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749486181
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Taking Minutes of Meetings guides you through the entire process of minute taking: arranging the meeting; writing the agenda; creating the optimum environment; structuring the meeting and writing notes up accurately. The often misunderstood role of minute-taker is one of the most important and powerful in a meeting, and this book will help you excel at this crucial skill, allowing you to build your career and credibility. Taking Minutes of Meetings is an easy to read 'dip-in, dip-out' guide, providing hands-on advice about the sections of a meeting as well as tips on how to create an agenda, personal preparation, best practice advice on taking notes and how to improve your accuracy. Fully updated for 2019, this 5th edition now features even more practical exercises, useful templates, and top tips, as well as guidance on using technology effectively and minutes for different types of meetings. The Creating Success series of books...
Unlock vital skills, power up your performance and get ahead with the bestselling Creating Success series. Written by experts for new and aspiring managers and leaders, this million-selling collection of accessible and empowering guides will get you up to speed in no time. Packed with clever thinking, smart advice and the kind of winning techniques that really get results, you'll make fast progress, quickly reach your goals and create lasting success in your career.

11

The minutes

Minutes, like all business writing, have changed in style over the years. As with letters and reports, the drive is towards plain English with short sentences and paragraphs, and a clear, reader-friendly style. Your minutes are likely to be read by one or more of three groups of readers:

• The current group (who may well use them to fill in gaps in concentration).
• Someone in the future who remembers something from the past and needs more information.
• An ‘investigator’ in the future who is looking into something that has gone wrong.

In the case of the second and third groups, by the time they need information, those who were part of the decision-making may have left or be unable to remember what went on at the meeting. The minutes are the only record of what was decided and how it was put into place (or not).

Minutes have become shorter. In most cases two pages that are read are preferred to ten pages that are filed. There are, however, still some conventions that are followed; generally, these have survived because they are sensible, serving a practical purpose.

Heading

The heading of the minutes should follow the style of the agenda, whether that be the traditional paragraph style or the more modern centred layout.

The agenda showed the planned start and finish times; the minutes should reflect the actual start and finish times. The agenda gave enough detail about the venue to get the participants to the right room. The minutes can be less detailed – whether it was Room 3 or Room 4 is unlikely to matter.

Who attended

The names at the start of a set of minutes are often thought of as ‘who was there?’ In fact the priority is ‘who are the group?’ They are simply arranged according to whether or not they attended, and in what capacity.

For a group that meets regularly, there are seven headings that can be used. Few need all seven but the order of those used should remain the same.

Present

The names of those who make up the group are shown. The chairperson is usually listed first with the others following in alphabetical order. Avoid any order of hierarchy, or differentiation like clinical/managerial or uniformed/civilian, as this highlights differences between members of the group that are usually discouraged.

It is advisable to put the people in context by giving their job title, and the department or organization represented. For example, Helen Graham might be attending the meeting to represent the finance department, the Manchester office, the organization, the union, women returners to work, etc. Just giving her name under ‘present’ is not really enough to be useful to future readers.

Usually names are listed as first name and surname. It is not necessary to show the initials in brackets unless they are not obvious; even then it is better to use full names for action points and no names in the minutes.

Where someone has sent a representative or substitute, the name of the intended participant should be listed under ‘present’ but it should be noted that they were represented by X (see Figure 11.1).

Figure 11.1 Show where a member sent a substitute

Representatives can present a problem for the minute-taker because the person wasn’t there, but their views were given. The issue here is demonstrating ‘for the record’ who was responsible for the decisions made, and there is no one simple answer. This is best illustrated by an example (Sally Smith is the committee member and Tom Turner is the person she sent on her behalf):

• If Tom was sent to simply watch and report back, he should be listed under ‘Observer’. You could note ‘on behalf of Sally Smith’, or their department.
• If Tom attends in his own right (because Sally wasn’t there), putting forward his own views and opinions, he should be listed as ‘In attendance’. In this case though, he is not representing the committee member as his views are his own.
• If Tom is sent by Sally to represent her, he is, by definition, there to give Sally’s views, argue her corner and generally delegated to ‘be her’. This is where the problem lies:
  • If you list Sally under ‘Present’ it would not be true or accurate as she wasn’t there, hence why it is important to show ‘Represented by Tom Turner’.
  • If you list Tom under ‘In attendance’ it would not be accurate because he wasn’t there as himself; he was there to be Sally, giving her views and committing to decisions on her behalf. You can, of course put ‘Representing Sally Smith’ after his name but there is the risk that in the future, someone looking to see if Sally was there would simply look down the ‘Present’ list and find that she was not when, in fact, her views had been put to the meeting and, through Tom, she was responsible for the decision that was made.
  • Sally should not be listed under ‘Apologies’ because, three years down the line, someone looking for her name would see she wasn’t there when, in fact, her views were put to the group via Tom. It would look as though a decision was made without input from a particular department.
  • The key point here is whether Sally influenced and took responsibility for the committee’s decision, and if she did, she should be listed under ‘Present’. In the representative situation, she does this by delegating to Tom; so it is shown as ‘Sally Smith, represented by Tom Turner’.

For some meetings, there is guidance for this laid down in the terms of reference. Ultimately, what matters is that it will be clear in the future who influenced and who made the decisions.

For a one-off or general meeting, those who attended are generally listed under ‘Attendees’ or ‘Attended’. This indicates a one-off meeting, whereas ‘Present’ is used to describe a core group.

In attendance

For those who are attending on a one-off basis, generally the name and department or organization are shown. You can also choose to show when they attended. This is done by noting the item number after the name. If you do this, those with no number are assumed to have attended the whole meeting. An example is shown in Figure 11.2.

Figure 11.2 Information that should be included under ‘In attendance’

The minute-taker is listed under ‘In attendance’ with either ‘minute-taker’ or ‘secretary’ after the name. Although it is a minor difference, minute-taker implies that you took the notes and typed them up, whereas secretary indicates that you organized the agenda, booked the room, etc.

The key difference between ‘Present’ and ‘In attendance’ comes historically from the days when decisions were proposed, seconded and voted upon. Those listed in ‘Present’ could vote and thus were responsible for the outcomes. Although a vote is seldom taken, the principle r...