Class Summary
SPECIAL NOTE: The April 2, 2020 session will be conducted via live online format. Participants will be contacted prior to the class date with more information.
Often required by law, accurate, easy-to-understand minutes are also critical for bringing non-attendees up to speed and ensuring that follow-up activities and responsibilities are completed.
Anyone responsible for recording minutes of meetings and/or anyone who would like to function more effectively as a meeting participant.
- Greater meeting productivity.
- Clearer outcomes and follow-up activities.
- Increased confidence in your ability to grasp and summarize key points.
- Greater professionalism—yours, the group’s, the organization's.
By the end of this program, you will be able to:
- Explain the legal and historical value of minutes.
- Discuss the most common mistakes made by note takers and how to avoid them.
- Describe methods for identifying and recording the key points of a meeting.
- Demonstrate objectivity in minutes writing style.
- Use current, up-to-date minutes formats.
- Give examples of formal vs. informal meetings and the minutes requirements for each.
- List key methods for achieving clear, concise meeting summaries.
- Describe writing techniques to ensure professional style and tone in minutes.
- Why taking minutes is an important role
- Capturing key points
- A fool-proof formula
- Exercise
- Zeroing in on the essentials
- Exercise
- Remaining objective in your writing style
- Examples
- Practice
- Organizing key points
- The mapping method
- Exercise
- The charting method
- Finished minutes–formats and examples
- Minutes formats
- Attendance records
- Voting registers
- The meeting process
- Informal to formal
- Robert’s Rules
- Writing techniques for professional, concise minutes
- Short sentences
- Exercise
- Bullet-point lists
- Exercise
- Removing “interruptions”
- Exercise
- Writing techniques for professional style and tone
- Objective language
- Active vs. passive voice
- Exercise
- Strong, action verbs
- Clarity and simplicity
- Putting it all together
- Exercise