a local council once asked me for ideas to help their secretaries council meetings perform better when taking minutes. the mind will struggle to stay focused. it starts to wander. often though, there is no need to take down what is said ‘verbatim’, with the exception possibly of legal cases. there is a tendency to also believe the role is passive. they organise and send out the invitations to those attending.

meeting minutes also serve to confirm the decisions made and the reasons behind them if someone questions them in the future.â  no one knows for certain why they are called the minutes of a meeting. here are details of the different forms of minutes: in the uk and most of the us, it is a legal requirement to take minutes at board meetings, and you should also perform that task during any meeting in which members vote on action points. when the secretary is happy with the minutes from a meeting, they should present them to one of the directors for signing off.

meeting minutes are the formal written notes from a meeting. a successful minute taker must be able to listen carefully, document clearly and understand the discussions, decisions and action items at the meeting. if the meeting is via conference call, use a speakerphone so your hands are free for note taking. listen carefully to all speakers in order to attribute comments to the appropriate attendees. successful meeting notes takers document most of what happens at the meeting. when putting together the meeting minutes for distribution, you can edit out or choose not to include anything that is irrelevant or duplicated. document all important points, dates, action items and decisions that occur in the meeting.

the longer answer is that there is little point in going to the time and expense of getting a group of people together if you don’t then go the extra yard and document the agreed actions and outcomes. the issue with taking minutes is that from the outside it looks like a very simple task and so there isn’t a lot of in-house training on how to do it well and correctly but doing it well is difficult. minute taking is about listening carefully, accurately recording information and then communicating it clearly to the relevant parties. the key task of minutes is to gather agreed actions and decisions from the meeting and document precisely, what has been decided, who is responsible for the actions and when the actions will be completed. in doing so they provide a great way to provide accountability for the agreed-upon tasks and decisions. in some cases, this protects employees and the company as it shows that certain items (like h&s issues) have been appropriately discussed and debated. there are essentially three key sections to taking great minutes: 1) before the meeting, 2) during the meeting and 3) after the meeting.

good minuting is a deceptively difficult and time consuming task and is often described as an art. the chartered governance institute uk & ireland has a range of authoritative resources designed to develop minute taking skills and effectiveness, including free principles-based guidance, a popular one-day training course, in-house skills development workshops and an accessible and practical handbook. this one-day course provides practical guidance on how to overcome the problems faced by minute takers and to achieve accuracy in the minute-taking process.