Minutes of Meeting

Many of us walk into a meeting with expectations or preconceived notions around note-taking. Factors such as company size, departmental infrastructure, and personality can impact how meetings are run and what steps are taken to capture and memorialize information. Whether each individual takes their own notes or a project manager is present to document what is discussed, minutes of meeting can take various forms. 

What are “minutes of meeting?” 

Minutes of meeting are the documented versions of the conversation, decisions, and actions stated throughout a meeting. Examples of minutes taken at a meeting may include use of a professional minutes of meeting format, a simple meeting minutes template, or a note or two taken by an individual when it speaks directly to them. 

Minutes of meeting are a vital part of your company and process. Think about a meeting with a doctor where a big decision is being made about your health. If they are not documenting what was shared (by you or the doctor), you might be nervous about whether your time was spent well and what the result will be. What medicine will they prescribe? Will they be operating on the right part? Did they record allergies or other potentially life-threatening concerns that should be easily recalled later for use?

While you may not view your company or process to be as vital as a health diagnosis, if you have a room of people present to fix problems and make decisions, why wouldn’t you also want to ensure anything shared is utilized to its fullest potential? Each person in the room is a cost to the company and each client that those decisions affect are an investment. 

Who records minutes of meeting?

The best answer is – everyone! Anyone attending a meeting hears things different and also brings different skills, knowledge, and views to the table. While many items discussed in a meeting may seem black and white, we each have a different agenda we bring that can skew how information is interpreted to others.

While most of us learned basic skills like note taking, we didn’t specifically learn how to write minutes of meeting in school. This means some of us are better at it than others. It also can mean some take on the burden of recording minutes of meeting drafts hoping others will jump in and assist. Ideally, everyone is listening, participating, and contributing to the content, both verbally and through note-taking to ensure the critical points are captured through either an informal meeting minutes template, a minutes of meeting template with action items, a professional meeting minutes template, or a professional minutes of meeting format document.

Establishing a minutes of meeting process

Implementing or strengthening your minutes of meeting process is easier than you think! There are many ways to get started in ensuring your team understands the importance of capturing meeting activity as well as simplifying the process so that anyone in any position can participate and feel like a contributor.

Templates

If you are starting a new team or company, it may be a little easier to establish a process from the beginning by showing your staff how to write minutes of a meeting examples, providing minutes of meeting samples, sharing a staff meeting minutes sample PDF, or giving them a minutes of meeting sample PDF download. 

For more established teams, you may want to hit the reset button on meetings and explain the desire to capture more throughout each meeting. Introducing meeting templates is a great way to get things started.

A minutes of meeting template with action items sample, minutes of meeting email sample, minutes of meeting sample document, or formal minutes of meeting sample PDF, can inform the team of the desired process to encourage them to capture specific information during each meeting. A meeting minutes template document, meeting minutes template Excel, minutes of meeting sample PDF, or a meeting minutes template Google Docs can be used to inform and formalize the meeting of minutes process. 

To really put meeting minutes templates to action, use a meeting tool like Docket to create and share a staff meeting minutes template document, a sales meeting template, a one on one template, or a standup meeting template that not only gives your team a visual but also some guardrails to help make meeting minutes capturing a consistent process. Create and share any type of template that can capture minutes of school management meetings or agile process meetings. Or dust off an agenda and minutes of meeting PDF, business meeting minutes PDF, minutes of meeting format in Word, minutes of meeting format PDF, or professional minutes of meeting format PDF and build them into Docket so your team can create and share agendas, take notes, share recaps, and capture and track action items assigned to them in meetings.

Enabling others

Another way to establish a minutes of meeting process is through encouragement and enablement of process, setting a positive tone and sharing the benefits to the team on capturing notes in meetings. 

1. Encourage others to take their own notes but in an open, collaborative space
2. Enable those present to record their own action items to ensure they heard the ask correctly and can follow what they need to do in their own words
3. Save time at the end of meetings to discuss final decisions, actions, and deadlines

Putting minutes of meeting to use

The last thing you want to have happen with your minutes of meeting is have them be lost to history. It is great if you capture notes but you need to put them to use. Here are a few ways to make that happen:

1. Share a recap with key takeaways. A good minutes of meeting report sample will bring the main points to the surface so that anyone reviewing the outcome can get right to the main decisions made in the meeting.
2. Document tasks and actions. Taking time to capture tasks and actions along with specific owners while everyone is present will help ensure that the work done in the meeting will extend past the hour to put the decisions into action.
3. Use meeting history as a reference. Start every recurring meeting with a brief look back at the previous outcome or decision and any outstanding actions. This provides a way to not only get all attendees’ heads in the game but creates more transparency and alignment so everyone is on the same page before moving on to the next wave of work.

Take advantage of a meeting tool like Docket that simplifies the overall meeting process and helps your team spend their time collaborating and working together while putting the output from your meetings into 

Meeting Minutes Templates

• Customer Meetings
• Leadership Meetings
• Marketing Meetings
• One-on-One Meetings
• Project Meetings
• Sales Meetings
• Team Meetings

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