Tips On How To Take Meeting Minutes

Any meeting requires proper meeting minutes to ensure proper documentation of decisions and clarity on actions to be taken. Good meeting minutes need to comply with a number of soft and hard criteria, which are summarized below:

1) Preparation:
Make sure that you sit next to the chairperson, so that you can easily clarify or confirm items. You should also have the agenda printed on paper in front of you. Collect the material to be presented in advance, this will make it easier to understand the contents and you don’t need to collect them after the meeting which can cause delay in distributing the minutes.
In case you have to take the minutes for a large meeting where you do not know every person, it is good to circulate a paper, where everybody inserts his or her name.

2) Use a Template:
Using a template has the advantage that all meeting minutes have a similar look making it easy to read and understand them. It also improves the quality of meetings since it is less likely that you forget some formal aspects of the meeting minutes. As a minimum the template should include the following information:

•Name of the meeting
•Date and time of the meeting
•Location of the meeting
•Minutes submitted by (your name)
•Minutes submitted on …
•Participants
•Participants which are absent or arrive later
•Status: Draft / Final
•Agenda item
•Agenda item number
•Name of topic owner
•Category (Task, Decision, Information)
•Due Date (for actions)
•Person in Charge (for actions)

3) Categorize Items:
Each item in the meeting minutes should state if it is for information, for decision or for action.

4) Include Attachments:
Make sure that all material presented is included in the minutes. If you want to check minutes much later it will be much easier since everything is stored together.

5) Confirm Your Understanding:
Each time an agenda item is closed you quickly jump in and confirm what you included into the minutes. With this method you make sure that everybody is aligned and reduce future corrections of the minutes.

6) Circulate The Draft First:
Before you send out the final minutes you should share the draft with the participants so that they can correct it. After this has been completed, you can send out the final version.
In case your meeting room allow to fix a second projector, you can write the minutes on the second screen during the meeting and ask the participants to confirm the contents on the spot. The minutes are completed when the meeting ends and you can immediately distribute them.

7) Store The File:
Store the file with the minutes in a common place. Ideally the file name includes the date, so that the files automatically sort chronologically.

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