Taking Minutes
As an inexperienced secretary, I hated taking notes and writing minutes. As I progressed to more senior roles, I eventually got the hang of it and have, since 2000, been helping other PAs, EAs and administrators to resolve their concerns. Here are some hints.
If you’re responsible for handling meeting minutes, make the process smoother for yourself, while also working to produce a succinct, accurate document. Fortunately, these two things go hand in hand. With the right process and tips, anyone can be a meeting minute pro.
No minute-taking training is complete without some “Gotcha!” warnings. Do you ever make theses mistakse?
You feel you’ve almost got minute-taking down, but there’s still that tiny flutter of apprehension going into a meeting. See if our Q&A soothes your mind.
Unless you’re a trained stenographer, keeping thorough minutes can be a challenge. If you’re responsible for taking minutes, here are three tips to help you improve your skills.
Gail Taymor loved her new admin job at a big architectural firm—for exactly nine days. Then her boss asked her to take the minutes at the monthly board meeting.
People talking a mile a minute, not staying on topic, moving on to the next issue when action items are still clearly hanging … these things are just plain going to happen when you’re a minute-taker. But you can’t exert a whole lot of control over the unruly group in that conference room. What you can control is the structure you’ve set up well in advance to handle any meeting.
16 widely varied questions about taking minutes answered.
Poorly written notes from a meeting may result in confusion over who is supposed to do what moving forward. To keep assignments clear and concise, follow these tips.
These days you can choose a note-taking tool that fits your work style. Consider these options from members of the Young Entrepreneur Council.
High-speed presentations, rambling discussions, unclear decisions, and vague action items at meetings without agendas make life hard for meeting note-takers, writes Lynn Gaertner-Johnston. Here are a few of her tips for organizing meetings that are easier to record.
If you find yourself repeating the same words over and over when you take minutes, Executive Assistant Nickey Christmas, who blogs all things PA, EA and VA related on her Practically Perfect PA blog, offers a good list of verbs “that you can slot into the minutes as and when you need them.”
For some people, a computer will never replace a pen and paper for note-taking during meetings. But for others, electronic notes may make more sense, especially if they have to share them electronically anyway. Here are three questions to determine which way is best.
