Meetings provide you with an opportunity to raise questions that require discussion and receive input from a wide range of individuals. However, you can’t just put people in a room and expect them to talk through all your concerns.
Effective meetings start with a clear agenda, expand upon expected outcomes, and end with consensus surrounding next steps. Beyond the actual meeting, meeting minutes serve as a reminder and guiding force for your team moving forward.
In this article, you will learn what meeting minutes are and what to do before, during, and after meetings.
Meeting minutes are a written record of the discussions, decisions, and action items from a meeting. Good meeting minutes ensure alignment with value and hold individuals accountable for what was discussed. You can also use meeting minutes to fill in team members who were unable to attend the meeting.
The success of a meeting starts before the meeting even begins with good preparation.
If you find yourself responsible for a meeting, you need to create an agenda that you distribute to all your attendees to set expectations for the meeting. You should share the agenda before the meeting, allowing enough time for it to be reviewed and any pre-meeting actions or considerations to be completed:
For the meeting minutes, you should ensure that you have captured essential details such as the meeting date, time, and location, as well as identify attendees and note any notable absentees and the reasons for their absence:
As the meeting progresses, you’ll work your way through the agenda covering the topics that need discussion. Because you’re responsible for the meeting, you’re also responsible for the meeting minutes.
The meeting minutes are a record of what was discussed and agreed upon, as well as what you plan to accomplish in the future.
In order to write clear and accurate meeting minutes it’s essential for you to actively listen to discussions and conversations.
The notes you make shouldn’t be an exact transcription of every word (most of the video conferencing software tools can do that for you), but instead should capture the essence of what was said.
As you’re listening, you’ll be looking to note any of the following elements:
You may also find it useful to periodically review your notes during the meeting to ensure accuracy. It’s better to clarify any points when people are in the room than rely on a potentially inaccurate recollection after the event.
It’s also beneficial to summarize discussions when appropriate, highlighting key points and outcomes so that all parties are clear on what is being recorded.
After the meeting, some of your team members might begin to forget what was agreed upon, or question who was assigned what. This makes meeting minutes all the more important for ensuring alignment.
The aim of the meeting minutes is not just to record what happens, but also ensure that attendees can easily review and act upon them, so it’s essential to write in a clear and concise manner, using short sentences and bullet points to convey information efficiently.
The meeting minutes shouldn’t be a transcript of the entire meeting, so much as a distillation of the key discussions and decisions. It’s also essential to write your meeting minutes using action verbs in order to convey a sense of motion and responsibility.
For example, “decided,” “approved,” or “assigned” provide clarity on the outcomes of the meeting, whereas “discussed” and “shared” are more passive and don’t indicate closure or agreement.
Meeting minutes are intended to be opinion neutral, so only record the facts and seek to avoid inserting your own opinions as you write.
If there are presentations, reports, or other documents discussed during the meeting, then these should be attached to, or linked from, the meeting minutes for future reference.
Finally, it’s important that you proofread meeting minutes for accuracy, clarity, and completeness. Correct any errors or unclear passages to ensure a polished document.
You should aim to distribute the meeting minutes as soon as possible to ensure that the information is fresh in everyone’s minds. This also allows you to seek clarification on any information or decisions made during the meeting and for attendees to provide feedback more accurately.
Taking effective meeting minutes requires a combination of preparation, active listening, and organizational skills. By following these guidelines, you can create meeting minutes that serve as valuable references for both current and future endeavors.
You can find a meeting minutes template here that you can copy and use for recording your own meeting minutes.
Featured image source: IconScout
LogRocket identifies friction points in the user experience so you can make informed decisions about product and design changes that must happen to hit your goals.
With LogRocket, you can understand the scope of the issues affecting your product and prioritize the changes that need to be made. LogRocket simplifies workflows by allowing Engineering, Product, UX, and Design teams to work from the same data as you, eliminating any confusion about what needs to be done.
Get your teams on the same page — try LogRocket today.
A project baseline acts as a reference point so you can compare project progress against your intended plan.
Kunal Thadani shares necessary qualities of a full-stack PM, including being resourceful, process-driven, and willing to wear many hats.
A data product manager (DPM) is a type of PM who specializes in managing products that are heavily reliant on data.
Dan Lawyer, CPO at Lucid Software, talks about his philosophy that without autonomy, there is no leverage as a leader.