Taking Meeting Minutes

Taking Meeting Minutes

Taking meeting minutes is an important skill. In theory, it seems like an easy enough task. However, if not performed properly, you will not be able to fully reap its benefits. So, lets talk about how to take meeting Minutes effectively.

When you start off with taking meeting minutes, you must go through the minutes in detail and try to figure out what was discussed. If you have any questions, ask them at this point. However, do not jump to conclusions or start demanding details from the speaker. If he or she knows that you are keen on asking questions, they might offer you some good tips on how to best approach the discussions that were held. At the end, the speaker should summarize the points discussed so you can keep track of the discussion and come back to the main topic when you are ready with your notes.

In addition, there are some things that you should avoid doing when giving out meeting notes. The first one is making generalizations. Yes, everyone has made or heard some stupid things during their lives. However, you should consider the fact that each individual at the meeting is unique and might have different concerns and goals.

So, when you are taking meeting minutes, you need to provide specifics and objective of the discussions that took place. You should also provide a description of the goal that each individual is trying to achieve out of the meetings. This way, people would have a better understanding of the activities that were discussed. Besides, if you did not include this information, the people who attended the meetings will have a hard time remembering the exact topics discussed.

Another thing that is worth avoiding when taking meeting minutes is including all the key points of discussion. Yes, it is very important to summarize each discussion that was taken place. However, you should keep it short and sweet. In taking meeting minutes, you should leave out unnecessary points. If you included all the important points discussed in the meetings, then it might create confusion on the part of the audience. It is because most people do not want to read a long account about what was discussed in meetings.

In order to avoid overlooking important points that you should include in your minutes, you can refer to the legal record. In fact, most legal documents have the minutes as a separate section. Taking meeting minutes from the legal record can be useful since these minutes can serve as references for future discussions. However, the problem arises when you are not able to find the minutes of the previous board meeting. Since it is not possible to find the minutes of every board meeting, then you have no choice but to take your own time looking for the legal record.

Also, make sure everything you are taking from the meeting notes is correct. If you are using the notes to create an agenda for the next meeting, then make sure everything you write in the note is correct. If there are any wrong words or sentences, then you should immediately change them. Since most boards usually make use of stenographic minutes, you must be careful not to make any errors in the notes. Even a single mistake can greatly impact the outcome of a meeting.

When it comes to taking meeting minutes from the legal record, there is actually no big problem. The only problem occurs when you use a different version of the minutes from the board meetings. The other option is to refer to the official printed version of the minutes. However, in cases where the board does not have any official printed version, then you will just have to make sure everything is typed out in your computer.