Minute Taking Course

Minute Taking Course - information at a glance

• What is this course about?
• Who would benefit?
• Course objectives
• Minute Taking Training - key topics covered
• Duration
• Venue
  
  

The benefits

• Gain greater minute-taking confidence and ability to control agendas
• Learn effective techniques to ensure content and structure of meetings are captured
• Practice producing structured agendas and produce a clear, concise set of minutes
• Develop techniques to achieve greater accuracy and speed

 

What is this course about?

When attending meetings, participants have different roles to play.  One of these roles is to record the meeting accurately and produce minutes.  This one-day minute taking course is designed to help the minute-taker / secretary take minutes which are accurate, and to do this with speed and confidence every time.

Who would benefit?

Anyone who needs to take records of meetings and wishes to improve their minute taking skills.

Course objectives

At the end of this minute taking course participants will have:-

• Considered what preparation is needed before the meeting
• Understood their role and that of the person chairing and other participants
• Considered the purpose of minutes in their group or department
• Sharpened their listening skills
• Reviewed different methods of note-taking
• Drafted minutes of a meeting
• Decided best practice for themselves

Minute Taking (Top)

Minute Taking training - key topics covered
 

1. Preparation and understanding responsibilities

• What to do and when
• Clarifying the role of the Minute-Taker's role
• Working in co-operation with the person chairing the meeting
• The agenda and its link with producing the minutes (A.O.B options)

2. The use of minutes

• What the minutes are used for
• Level of importance
• Who needs them - distribution list
• Important factors in their writing

3. Concentration

• Hearing, listening and paying attention
• Overcoming barriers to listening
• Developing active listening skills
• Interrupting - the right to do so and how to do it
• What to do when you are also the contributor

4. Methods of note-taking

• Range of minute formats
• Deciding on a suitable format
• Choosing the most suitable way to take notes
• Keys to accuracy and identifying main points
• Recording dissent
• Converting notes to the first draft

5. Writing the minutes

• Cover sheet - details of the w's
• Grammar - sense
• Reported speech - tenses, third person
• Variety in verbs
• Active and passive voice
• Spelling and punctuation checks (homophone reminders)
• Techniques for paraphrasing / summarising
• Bullet points
• Positive language

6. Making a positive contribution

• Getting commitment from others - persuasion
• Efecting action - prompts
• Making it easy to extract information

7. Practical minute taking

• Taking minutes for a sample of typical meetings

Minute Taking (Top)

Duration

1 day

Minute Taking Courses - Overview