Minute Taking Techniques for Board Meetings

Minute taking is a very important and useful function of any board meeting, but not all board member enjoy it and not all will be any good at it. Board meetings have to be recorded. If they are not, they basically don’t exist at all, in any meaningful sense of the term. The board meeting is about much more than ‘the board talking shop’. A board meeting is, after all, a legal, official record of a meeting of the board of directors of an organisation or business    the record, in fact, of an activity that has a life outside and apart to and from the activity itself, it serves, in fact, as a marker, a tracking device.

Very likely, in your workplace, you have someone who takes the minutes of the meeting because they are there already, or their minute taking skills are long in the tooth, or they have no skills at all in how to minute levels of a meeting,  because they’ve never had to do it before. A minute taking course will show a person how to prepare the template to practise writing their minute on, what to look out for to prepare the individual for the meeting;  what to look out for when the meeting is in session;  how to rephrase what is said in a discussion at a meeting as a series of points written down. Whether you are an experienced minute taker or not and completely unknown to minute taking; have the courage to add it to your skills set taking Minute taking workshop will help you to take your minutes well.

If you’re a secretary, executive assistant or have been asked to take minutes at your next board meeting, some of the following information may help you.

Prepare For the Meeting

As you will discover, there are subtly different formats for minutes taken and each organisation is different to the next. Ask your CEO or your Board Chair if there is any expected format or is anyone already using a format to use for your meeting minutes. Possibly you can ask to see the minutes from the last meeting and to template yourself on this for your minutes from the next meeting. Minutes will be read out to all the members and your minutes will have the following information listed on your agenda; whose present   add in the names of attendees, speakers and any guest. This can be used as your minute taking template to help write your minutes. Preparation is key to well organised minutes.

Taking Minutes at a Board Meeting

The group can either take the minutes by typing or writing them or record it on a device and produce the record afterwards. Decide which makes most sense for your organisation. It may be that your organisation has rules, so ask what these say is required in the record of a meeting, but basically the most important things it needs to cover are;

• Welcome and Apologies
• Directors Declaration / Register of Conflict
• Quorum
• Minutes of the Previous Meeting
• Matters Arising
• Different reports (i.e., CEO / Executive)
• Matters for Decision
• Matters for Discussion
• Other Business
• Meeting close

You will need to know how long the meeting lasts and if people are allowed to interrupt the discussion, etc. Be on top of what your current organisation has needed with respect to processes, so that you can find that out at the meeting. If a lot of time is spent at the meeting on a particular issue, then note some key arguments and include those in the minutes. And, as with all minutes, be neutral; anything that is said or done in the meeting that is personal is not written down. It has to be an official document.

Write The Official Record of Board Meeting Minutes

Make sure that everybody is still with you at the end of the meeting, then check back through the agenda and, finally, double check. Fill in anything you think you may have missed because then you will know that you have taken the minutes properly. Then, keep the minutes short and readable and edit them there for the final minutes under the brand.

Completing Your Meeting Minutes

(Now you have typed minutes. Good work!) Next, they need to be signed by a Board Chair. Every organisation has its own conventions for what happens to the body of minutes in the long term, so go with the flow for your organisation (as we are now) and then do whatever your organisation does to store minutes. I back up minutes via hard drive or hard copy of minutes in case I do lose them, which is not out of the question, unfortunately. Once signed, the official minutes now need to go to the secretary as they are the one tasked with distributing the minutes as well.

Take A Minute Taking 1 on 1 Training Session

You may also notice that many minute taking courses has been issued that some are face to face courses and others taking place online. Some may choose to go for general minute taking than what will be required at work specifics in terms of information but at the same time be focusing on how they are going to take minutes and others may give specific subjects like board related that may requires one to be specific in taking minutes outside the generalist meeting. should also consider picking a minute taking class that will help you in understanding what will suit your kind of meeting.

As well as providing templates for agendas and minutes, a minute taking course will support you to;  Understand how to prepare for a meeting in advance   e.g. the short objectives of the meeting. It will help you to avoid some of the usual pitfalls of meetings. Perhaps use the meeting papers to cross reference what someone has said in the team meeting and what has been written in the notes so you can quickly fill in the draft minutes accurately. Effectively this means when you are learning what works, you can write up your meeting and run your meetings more pro-actively; increasing the power and benefit of your job and others you work with.

This training 1 on 1 is for you! It provides you personalised assistance and can be delivered anytime from Monday to Saturday for 4-6 hrs. No travel required. Australia Wide & Online.

Ideal for secretaries, executive assistants, personal assistants or even if you are going to be taking the minutes for the next board meeting. Contact us for details or to be registered for the next session.