How to write meeting minutes LIKE A PRO [With meeting minutes example!]

Summary

This video script offers a comprehensive guide to writing effective meeting minutes, emphasizing the importance of preparation, note-taking, and organization. It outlines four key steps: preparing in advance by understanding the meeting agenda, writing the notes during the meeting, rewriting for clarity and readability, and finally, storing or sharing the notes. The script also provides examples of formal and casual meeting minutes, highlighting the necessity of capturing facts, problems, decisions, actions, and questions. The goal is to create concise, searchable, and easily accessible records that facilitate future reference and action.

Takeaways

• 📝 **Importance of Meeting Minutes**: Writing meeting minutes is crucial for tracking work, remembering discussions, and noting future actions.
• 📅 **Preparation is Key**: Prepare in advance by understanding the meeting agenda and preparing a template for note-taking to appear professional.
• 📋 **Agenda-Based Structure**: Use the meeting agenda to structure your notes, ensuring you cover all discussed points.
• 👥 **Participant List**: Include a list of participants, especially for formal meetings, to keep track of attendees.
• 🔗 **Link to Presentations**: If there's a PowerPoint presentation, add a link to it in the notes for easy reference.
• 📝 **Decisions and Actions**: Clearly document decisions made and actions to be taken, including responsible persons and deadlines.
• ✍️ **Digital Note-Taking**: Opt for digital note-taking over analog for easier sharing, storage, and editing.
• 🔍 **Focus on Key Elements**: During the meeting, focus on recording facts, problems, decisions, actions, and Q&A for comprehensive notes.
• 📖 **Rewriting Notes**: Rewrite notes post-meeting to clarify, correct spelling, and ensure they are understandable to others.
• 🗂️ **Storage and Sharing**: Store and share meeting notes in a searchable format, such as OneNote, and distribute them via email or a shared platform.

Q & A

Why are meeting minutes considered important in professional settings?

Meeting minutes are crucial for keeping track of work, remembering discussions, and noting future actions, ensuring that all participants are on the same page regarding decisions and responsibilities.

What are the four steps involved in writing effective meeting minutes?

The four steps are: preparing in advance for the meeting, actually writing the notes, rewriting the notes for clarity and readability, and storing or sharing the notes after the meeting.

Why is it recommended to prepare an agenda before a meeting?

An agenda helps structure the meeting and allows the note-taker to anticipate the flow of discussion, making it easier to capture relevant points during the meeting.

What is the significance of having a meeting minutes template?

A template ensures consistency and helps the note-taker quickly organize and format the minutes, making them professional and easy to follow.

How can including a list of participants in the meeting minutes be beneficial?

A list of participants provides a record of who attended the meeting, which is useful for assigning follow-up actions and for reference in case of questions about who was present.

Why is it important to add a link to a PowerPoint presentation in the meeting minutes?

Adding a link to a PowerPoint presentation allows easy access to visual aids and supporting materials, enhancing the usefulness of the minutes for future reference.

What should be included in the decision-making section of the meeting minutes?

The decision-making section should include the decisions made, the rationale behind them, and any notes explaining the context or reasoning for the decisions.

How can actions be effectively documented in meeting minutes?

Actions should be clearly stated with the responsible person, a deadline, and a brief description of what needs to be done, ensuring accountability and follow-through.

Why is it advised to rewrite meeting notes after the meeting?

Rewriting notes helps to correct any errors, clarify unclear points, and summarize the content, making the minutes more readable and useful for future reference.

What are some best practices for storing and sharing meeting minutes?

Meeting minutes should be stored in a searchable format, such as OneNote, and shared via email or a collaborative platform like a team site, ensuring easy access and retrieval for all participants.

How can the note-taker ensure that meeting minutes are concise and to the point?

By focusing on capturing facts, problems, decisions, actions, and questions and answers, and summarizing these points effectively, the note-taker can create concise and informative minutes.

Outlines

00:00

📝 Effective Meeting Minutes Writing

This paragraph emphasizes the importance of writing meeting minutes for tracking work progress and remembering discussions and future actions. It introduces the video's purpose, which is to guide viewers on how to write meeting notes, with examples provided for both formal and casual settings. The speaker outlines a four-step process: preparing in advance, writing the notes, rewriting for clarity, and storing or sharing the minutes. The preparation includes familiarizing oneself with the meeting agenda and possibly using a template for structure. The speaker also demonstrates a formal meeting minutes template using OneNote, highlighting the inclusion of a title, date, time, list of participants, agenda, decisions, and actions with assigned responsibilities and deadlines.

05:03

🖥️ Writing and Rewriting Meeting Notes

The speaker advocates for digital note-taking over traditional methods due to ease of sharing and storage. They discuss the benefits of writing notes in real-time during meetings to capture facts, problems, decisions, actions, and questions and answers. The paragraph also stresses the importance of rewriting notes post-meeting to ensure clarity and comprehensibility. The speaker suggests focusing on key points and summarizing information to make the minutes concise and accessible. They also recommend using a platform like OneNote for easy searchability and accessibility for team members.

10:03

💌 Sharing and Storing Meeting Notes

The final paragraph discusses the methods of sharing and storing meeting notes. For casual meetings, the speaker suggests summarizing key points and emailing them to attendees. For more formal settings, they recommend using a centralized platform like a team site or SharePoint to archive the notes. The paragraph concludes with a call to action for viewers to subscribe for more work-related tips and ends the video on a positive note, wishing viewers a great week and promising to see them in the next video.

Keywords

💡Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes are written records of a meeting, capturing the key points, decisions, assignments, and actions discussed. In the video's context, they are crucial for tracking work progress and future actions. The script emphasizes the importance of preparing in advance, writing, rewriting, and storing or sharing meeting minutes effectively.

💡Agenda

An agenda is a list of items to be discussed at a meeting, providing a structured outline for the discussion. The video suggests including the agenda in the meeting notes to ensure the notes follow the meeting's structure, as indicated by the speaker's recommendation to 'put it in the meeting notes in advance'.

💡Template

A template is a pre-designed format or guide that can be used to create documents consistently. The video mentions preparing a template for meeting notes to ensure a professional appearance and ease of use, as exemplified by the speaker's demonstration of a formal meeting minute example.

💡Participants

Participants are the individuals attending a meeting. The script highlights the importance of listing participants in the meeting notes, especially for formal meetings, to keep track of who was involved in the discussions and decisions, as suggested by 'then you have the date and time, and then you have the list of participants'.

💡Decisions

Decisions are the conclusions or resolutions reached during a meeting. The video stresses the need to document decisions clearly in the meeting minutes, including the rationale behind them, as indicated by 'write out any decisions that were made during the meeting, and any notes regarding that decision'.

💡Actions

Actions refer to the tasks or steps that need to be taken following a meeting. The script advises noting down actions with assigned responsibilities and deadlines to ensure follow-through, as exemplified by 'add them into the actions right which person is responsible to complete the action and what the deadline is'.

💡Digital Writing

Digital writing involves recording information using electronic devices rather than traditional pen and paper. The video advocates for digital note-taking for its ease of sharing, storing, and rewriting, as mentioned by 'writing digitally is so much better than writing in an analog way'.

💡Rewriting

Rewriting in the context of meeting minutes involves reviewing and refining initial notes for clarity and accuracy. The video emphasizes the importance of this step to ensure the notes are comprehensible and professional, as highlighted by 'you really need to rewrite them in order for anyone else to understand them'.

💡Summary

A summary is a brief statement or account of the main points of a document or meeting. The script suggests writing a summary of the meeting to highlight key discussions, as indicated by 'write some kind of summary about what was said, just highlight the most important things'.

💡Storage and Sharing

Storage and sharing refer to the processes of keeping and distributing meeting notes, respectively. The video discusses various methods for storing and sharing notes, such as emailing or using collaborative platforms like OneNote, as exemplified by 'then it's time to share and store them'.

Highlights

Writing meeting minutes is crucial for tracking work and remembering discussions and future actions.

Meeting notes can be improved by preparing in advance, using templates, and ensuring clarity and readability.

Agendas should be included in meeting notes to provide structure and a reference for note-taking.

Templates for meeting minutes can be formal or casual, depending on the meeting's nature.

Meeting minutes should include titles, dates, times, participants, and agendas.

Linking to presentations within meeting notes can provide easy access to visual aids discussed.

Decisions made during meetings should be clearly documented with rationale and any necessary explanations.

Actions and responsibilities post-meeting should be detailed with assigned persons and deadlines.

Casual meeting notes can be taken using built-in functions of note-taking apps like OneNote.

Digital note-taking is preferred for ease of sharing, storing, and rewriting compared to analog methods.

Focus on capturing facts, problems, decisions, actions, and questions during the meeting for comprehensive notes.

Rewriting meeting notes is essential for clarity and understanding, especially after quickly jotting down points.

Meeting notes should be concise, with a summary highlighting the most important points for quick reference.

Clear identification of decisions, responsible parties, and deadlines in the notes prevents misinterpretation.

Sharing and storing meeting notes should be done in a searchable format for easy access and reference.

For casual meetings, decisions and actions can be emailed to attendees, while formal meetings may require a centralized repository.

Using platforms like OneNote and Teams for meeting notes ensures accessibility and searchability.

Transcripts

writing meeting minutes is crucial to be

able to keep track of your work it's a

great way to remember what's being said

in the meetings and what future actions

you have ahead of you maybe you've just

been assigned to write meeting notes on

your next big student group presentation

or project group meeting or maybe you

just want to be better at writing

meeting minutes in general well for both

of these cases this is the video for you

i'm also including some meeting minute

examples so stick to the end of this

video to make sure that you actually see

those i would say that there are

basically four different steps that you

go through when you write meeting notes

which i would say is preparing in

advance for the meeting actually writing

the notes rewriting the notes to make

sure that they are readable and then

storing or sharing it or whatever you

want to do with them after the meeting

so starting with preparing you should be

prepared in advance to make sure that

you can write effective notes just a

couple of minutes of preparing in

advance can make you look so much more

professional and make everything go so

much smoother so i would say that the

first step is just to write the agenda

most good and professional meetings have

an agenda and you should probably do the

meeting based on that agenda so you can

put it in the meeting notes in advance

so that you know the structure for the

whole meeting the next step i would say

is to prepare some kind of template or

do some kind of preparation for how the

meeting notes should look and i'm gonna

switch to my computer in order to show

you what my more formal meeting notes

would look like okay so here you have my

more

formal meeting minute example a lot of

companies have their own meeting minute

templates so check if your company has

one because then it's probably best that

you use that one but if you don't have

one this example is really simple and

easy to create so as you can see i have

meeting minutes in onenote which i think

is really good the first thing you

should do is to

have a title for the meeting minute

this date

is really good to use in onenote because

then you can just change the date there

and the time

and then you have the date and time

ready available you should have both a

title and a date then you should also

have a list of participants if it's a

more formal meeting

if you want to you can do a list just as

i have so you can check the people you

can do it simply by just

having this list and go to the discuss

with person checkbox it's really good to

have the agenda written out if

there has been an agenda sent out to the

meeting in advance you can just add that

there

and then it's really simple to see all

the points that were discussed during

the meeting

while just skimming over the notes if

there's been a powerpoint presentation

to the meeting i usually like to add a

link to it so that it's simple to find

it and goes quickly then of course you

should write out any decisions that were

made during the meeting

and any notes regarding that decision if

there's something that needs explaining

add that into the decision notes so that

you know the rationale behind why the

decision was made and of course any

actions that needs to be done after the

meeting anything that is

in regards to what's going to be done in

the project simple things like

john doe is going to send jane doe the

template for how to do the work all

those small tasks add them into the

actions right which person is

responsible to complete the action and

what the deadline is while you're

writing the notes i would say just use

this

notes field where you have the headline

i usually do the headlines as the agenda

items that way it's just simpler to

follow along and then after the meeting

it's really good to write some kind of

summary about what was said

just highlight the most important things

that were discussed during the meeting

so jumping into how to write more casual

meeting notes

i usually just do it like this i also

write the title of the meeting and then

of course the date and the time

and then i have this sample system

i use the built-in

functions of onenote basically to see

what actions need to be taken any

decisions made and any like questions

for me to look up and the way that i do

it is that i just have the notes

i usually divide it up based on the

agenda items as usual because it's just

the simplest way to do it guys it's so

simple

and then i just write any text and then

as soon as someone comes with an action

i just click ctrl 1 because that's the

shortcut for the to do and then i'll

just write that john

and then some kind of

goal date

there you go

not any more difficult than that okay so

the actual writing i would say that

writing digitally is so much better than

writing in an analog way because

you probably write the meeting in order

to be able to share them or store them

or something like that and that is so

much easier to do if the meeting notes

are digital in some cases there's

probably better to write on paper like

if you were going to an interview or

something or holding an interview it

might not be so nice to throw up a

computer in the face of the other person

but still

i would say we're so used to using our

computer so

it's so much better to just take the

notes digitally from the beginning it

also saves you a lot of time when

rewriting them when you're actually

writing the notes there are a few things

that i believe that you should focus on

when writing and those are first of all

any facts that come up in the meeting

like the project will be delayed by two

weeks or that the client has contacted

one of the people in the meeting asking

for status updates those types of things

facts or things that have happened those

are really good to write down then any

problems that you're facing because it's

really important to lift those and share

them so that everyone is aware of them

and can help everyone else to solve them

one of the most important things to

write down are the decisions that are

made in the meeting especially if the

meeting is based on some kind of

decision forum like a steering group or

some kind of leadership meeting if

you're a project manager you know that

the decisions are basically the most

important thing

and having them written down is also

really important so that you can share

that this is what we agreed on because

people forget so easily why you took

that decision and that the decision

actually was made so

yeah you should also focus on writing

down any actions or next steps that

you're planning on taking any actions

that come up during the meeting that the

person should send the document or that

person y is responsible of contacting

the client again all of those things

should be written down with a clear

deadline in order to make sure that they

do them and then also any questions and

answers because if one person is asking

a question then probably a lot of other

people are wondering the same thing so

capturing the question and capturing the

answer to that question is also really

good to have in the meeting notes when

you're writing the notes in the meeting

you should try to capture as much as you

need in order to rewrite the notes and

for them to be understandable but not

include all the stuff in between and

this is really hard if you're just

starting out but it gets easier with

experience and if you make sure to focus

on those five things that i just said

facts problems decisions actions and

questions and answers the meeting notes

will be much more summarized and

comprehensive at the same time the

rewriting step is really important but i

think a lot of people skip this

especially if the meeting notes are only

for yourself

but the thing here is that when you're

writing notes in the meeting

you will be writing quickly and

you might writing spelling errors and

you might write something that is based

on how people talk and not how you would

write in text and that's a big

difference at least for me my sentences

are not complete sentences when i've

just been in the meeting notes i really

need to rewrite them in order for anyone

else to understand them so you need to

read through your meeting notes clarify

anything that is unclear

spell check

everything you should always rewrite the

meeting notes as soon as you possibly

can after the meeting because then you

have everything fresh in your head

and it makes it so much easier to

remember

what people actually meant with what

they said also try to summarize

everything as good as you can because no

one is going to read long meeting

minutes they are probably just going to

read the basic facts and the summary and

some specific things

if they're actually looking for

something

also if someone is going back looking

through old meeting notes they want to

be able to skim through it as quickly as

possible and

they don't want to skim through heaps of

text so try to make it as short and

concise as you possibly can and then

just like you saw in the template be

very very clear about the decisions that

were made and why they were made and

also any next actions who are

responsible for them and what deadline

do they have make that super clear so no

one can misinterpret that when you've

rewritten the notes then it's time to

share and store them

so you can do this in a couple of

different ways i would say if it's a

casual meeting i would probably just

lift out the decisions and the actions

and maybe a few information points and

just stick them in an email and email

the people that were at the meeting and

then they get the notes in an email

format

if it's a bit more formal you probably

want to have those meeting notes

collected somewhere like in a team site

or sharepoint site so that everyone can

read them when they need to have that

information also when you store the

meeting notes i would say to try to keep

it in a format that is easily searchable

so that is

not word

if you have the meeting notes in a

separate document it will be really hard

to search for the content that is in

that document

so i usually prefer to write my meeting

notes in onenote because it's easily

searchable

everyone can access the onenote and add

it into their own onenote and there's

also onenote available on teams as a

separate page i hope you learned some

new tips and tricks for how to write

meeting notes and found the meeting note

examples interesting if you're

interested in more work related tips

make sure to subscribe to my channel and

watch this video next have an awesome

week and i'll see you in my next video