The Whole Thing reserves the right to alter dates, content, venue and the trainer for each course with reasonable notice.

CERTIFICATION

This course is CPD Certified with each day equivalent to 6.5 hours of CPD

Effective Minute Taking Practice that Records and Professionally Presents Business Meeting Discussion for Accurate and Easy Future Reference

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Secretary staff at all levels in the organisation that want to improve their minute taking competency so that they can get the very best results from their notes taken during any meeting in pursuit of effective performance, efficiency and the organisation’s goals.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Minutes taken during a business meeting provide a record of topics covered. Discussions concerning goals and processes often lead to an open exchange of ideas and solutions, making minute taking difficult at best for those not prepared. Taking good minutes during a business meeting can be a crucial time and headache saver and it’s a skill that is greatly appreciated by employers. Mastery of minute taking is vital for individual, team and organisational performance and for future reference that guide and drive business growth.

Minute Taking is a proven and very practical minute taking program that will help the secretary overcome common problems experienced and seen with minute taking during and after business meetings, including use of acceptable convention, structure, relevancy and presentation. The program also gives attention on how to avoid some of the common pitfalls of minute taking and how to put this learning into practice back at work. The program takes a holistic view of minute taking and introduces the delegate to the knowledge, skills and attitude required to behave effectively and confidently whilst taking notes, arranging and presenting notes taken at any meeting in an effective and professional way.

The program is well researched, knowledge-based and designed with the individual learner at the centre of the learning process which means that the course is extremely interactive and practical.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course delegates will be able to:

✓ Determine minute taking practice and priorities

✓ Determine a variety of techniques to ensure you have the best support when minute taking

✓Develop key note taking skills that observe accepted minuting conventions, including:

• Active listening and concentration skills so that relevant content is not missed
• Clear, concise writing style that avoids common grammatical and punctuation mistakes
• Impartial and accurate descriptions language that effectively and professionally conveys your content
• Presentation that is polished and easy to read

✓ Create an effective agenda that will help run smooth meetings

✓ Practice key skills and techniques learnt before returning to work

✓ Produce drive to self-develop in minute taking

✓ Produce positive impact on the overall performance of each delegate and the organization

COURSE CONTENT

DAY 1 • MINUTE TAKING – FOUNDATIONS 

Facilitated Group Discussion and Exercises

The following key learning points are given through facilitated group discussions where the trainer first places key learning point and then leads, guides and challenges the delegates to consider their own practice and experiences at work in these areas. These discussions and exercises are very interactive, fun and delivered in a way that provides actionable insights into how new knowledge and skills learned will be used on the job.

What should good minutes achieve?

• What benefits do minutes bring to your organisation? Who are they for? What purpose do they serve? What difference can they make?
• What sort of minutes do you need to write? What meetings do you attend? Are there legal/organisational requirements?
• What does it all mean?
  • A glossary of meeting-related terms

Effective Minute Taking

• Effective Minute Taking Practice – Individual attributes and barriers at work (challenges)
• Activity: “Self- Assessment” – Delegates identify their major strengths and weaknesses in minute taking; these results will be used later as a basis to set a personal improvement goal.

Are you listening?

• Six ways to listen powerfully
  • The difference between listening & hearing.
  • Goldilocks – An exercise in listening skills to show how we often we assume as opposed to listen to what is actually said.
• Six things that can break your concentration, and how to avoid them

Organisational hints, tips and tools

• Invent your own shorthand – abbreviations and shortcuts when note taking in longhand
  • Examples of various ways of shortening your longhand
• Minute taker’s survival kit – the essentials to have at hand
• Importance of pre-meeting preparation, who’s responsible & who actually does what?
• Managing the meeting and the Chair – constructive ways to work together
  • Responsibilities of you & the chair

What makes a good agenda?

• What is a meeting agenda? Who receives it? What is its purpose?
• Setting and distributing your agenda
  • When & how? & how often?
• What to include to help run the meeting effectively
  • Hints & tips to make your life easier!
  • Exercise in pairs to develop an agenda for a meeting

DAY 2 • MINUTE TAKING – POLISH AND PRESENTATION 

Recap Day 1

Key learning points from day 1

Facilitated Group Discussion and Exercises

Key learning points are given through facilitated group discussions; our methodology and the benefits of this process have been explained in day 1.

The right minutes for your meeting – layout and style

• What you should and shouldn’t include – recognising facts from chatter
• More formal meetings like AGMs – votes, proposers, seconders, elections, resolutions
  • Sample minutes for formal meetings
• Minuting informal meetings
  • Sample minutes for an informal meeting
• Recording decisions and actions
• Creating an action summary
  • Discussion around 3 main types of minute & when to use each type

Techniques for writing good notes or minutes

• How to word minutes – active or passive, bullets or full sentences?
• Avoid wording that indicates bias
• Plain Words’ rules for good writing
• Making Word® work for you
  • Series of short exercises to demonstrate each point above.

Polishing your prose

• The paragraphs, the sentences, the words
• The grammar and punctuation
• Proofing – how to see what’s really there
• Commonly confused words
• Things that make some people cross!
  • Series of short exercises to demonstrate each point above

Putting it all into Practice

• Activity – “Mini Meeting” using topics of common interest

Each small group will take a turn to take minutes during the mini meeting; each group will then check with each other that they recorded similar/same points; collectively they will produce a “minute” of their agenda item. And finally the whole class will agree if this is a true reflection of the item discussed.

Key Learning Review

• Group discussion and professional feedback to consolidate key learning. Delegates will leave the day with a list of development activities to improve their minute taking competency back at work.
• Quiz – recap of all 2 days with practical exercises & group discussions. Delegates will leave the course with a list of lessons learnt and development activities to improve their email writing practice back at work.

IN ADVANCE

Each delegate will be asked to complete a pre-course questionnaire to determine their individual learning objectives. These will be used by the trainer to give on track training that is focused on the individual learner attending.

ON-TRACK FOR GROWTH

The individual leaves this program with a Personal Action Plan to encourage immediate transfer of training to the job.

REGISTER FOR THIS COURSE

To register for this course please review the grey box above. If no public course is listed or the location and dates shown don’t suit you then please request a proposal for this course either as a public training course or if you have 6 delegates or more as an in-company training course by clicking on Request a Proposal.