5 Tips for the Designated Note Taker in a Meeting

Congratulations.

Lucky you.

You have been chosen to take the notes for this meeting.

Unlike your typical attendee, you cannot zone out and think about what you’ll have for lunch during this meeting because you were chosen as the meeting’s minute taker.

You are imbued with great power.

Whatever you record will be what people actually remember from this meeting.

Now you’re starting to feel the pressure. So the question is, how to take the best notes? They can’t simply be like the notes we take for ourselves, they’re going to be public.

Side Note: If you’re especially new to this, you might be wondering if there is any official way to take meeting minutes. If you’re at a parliamentary-type meeting where motions are being put forth to a vote, Robert’s Rules of Order is short book that tells how to outline meetings for businesses and non-profits running these forms of meetings.  Worth going over.

Regardless of if you have a highly formal meeting or an informal one, the following tips can take your notetaking skills to a highly polished level that you won’t blush to email out.

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1. Know what to include:

Don’t be afraid to ask the person running the meeting to give you an agenda if they haven’t yet sent one out. If they don’t have a formal agenda, ask for what the goal of the meeting is. As a notetaker, you can have some influence in structuring and driving the meeting, which will not only help you take pertinent notes, but also keep the meeting focused and (typically) shorter.

In any meeting it is typical to record the attendees, the action items, new business, status updates and the like.

Divide the notes into the topics and subtopics discussed. If it feel appropriate use bullet points or even a numbered outline to organize the information in a concise manner. The best way to write meeting notes to share is to make a clear sentences that are short, but also convey complete ideas.

2. Make sure you record the action steps:

The most critical part of any meeting though are the action steps. If there are not any tasks assigned, than what was the point of the meeting?

Sure everyone is “on the same page” but meetings are more than just sharing information, it’s about planning the next moves to progress so that at the next meeting you’re not just writing the same notes, having the same conversations because there is a lack of accountability.

As the note-taker, it could be your responsibility to interrupt the meeting and as for clarity on an action step—who is it assigned to, when is it due? This may seem uncomfortable at first, especially if you’re used to being quiet in meetings.

3. HIGHLIGHT THE MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

Whether you put key phrases in ALL CAPS, or you want to bold, or italicize, or even bold and italicize and underline, anything that can break up the text and draw the eye will help keep your notes from being one huge blob of text.

If it helps, you can think of yourself as an artist, and the notes are your work of art—you want them to be pleasing to the eye. But also, remember to be efficient–you’re not a graphic designer (don’t kill yourself trying to format everything, and be sure to use keyboard short-cuts to save time).

The purpose of formatting information is to remind readers of the most important facts. It will especially help your readers skim the notes and quickly be able to jog their memories when going over the notes later.

If you can’t format along the way, or something seems more important after discussion, you can always spend five minutes after the meeting to spruce up your notes and make them friendlier to read.

4. Translate your shorthand:        

Make sure that all your handy writing abbreviations are lengthened before you publish the notes.

Your acronyms may seem clear to you, but not all attendees are guaranteed to be able to decrypt your oh-so-obvious shorthand. It can cause a lot of frustration and annoyance if a shorthand gets misinterpreted.

5. Proofread and Email:

Be sure to go back and proofread when all is said and done. Ask yourself if you’d be able to understand the notes if you hadn’t been to the meeting.

Finally, don’t forget to email the proofread copy to all the attendees and stakeholders who were not able to attend.

Once emailed out, everyone will be awe of your organized, clear, concise and easy to read meeting notes.

It will help make your meetings more effective if the ideas and actions stated in the meeting can be reinforced by a shared understanding—your notes!

CabuzMeeting is a great meeting-notes tool that adds attendees’ names and emails, creates action steps that populate to your calendar, and that emails the notes out as soon as the meeting is over.

 CabuzMeetings will also keep track of your meeting notes so you have an archive to go over instead of combing through your inbox for those meeting minutes last month.  To learn more, visit: www.Cabuz.com/CabuzMeeting