• If a meeting is worth holding, it’s worth recording properly
• Minute taking isn’t just for secretaries or office juniors
• Accurate minutes are easier to understand and follow up
• Good minutes don’t embarrass you with omissions or mistakes

From the Top
Taking minutes is a task not just confined to secretaries and PAs these days. Sometimes it gets dumped on the most junior person at a meeting, regardless of ability, experience or knowledge of the meeting subject.

No-one considers taking minutes to be pleasurable, but it has to be done – and done well - if the result is to be useful to all interested parties, as well as those who actually attended the meeting. In some cases, there may be financial implications or statutory requirements that depend on the accuracy and clarity of properly-drafted minutes.

If you are not a shorthand-trained secretary or PA, it can be difficult to keep up with what’s being said. When it’s also a less than interesting meeting – and let’s face it, they do happen - it can be hard to maintain your attention so you don’t miss something. And then when the meeting’s over it’s all got to be typed up and circulated – and most people think that’s about as much fun as watching paint dry!

You might well find it hard to believe we can make the job of minute-taking enjoyable, but after this workshop, you will not only know how to write minutes that are beyond reproach, you will even enjoy doing so! And that’s a promise.

We offer a choice of one-day and enhanced two-day workshops for minute writing skills

On the one-day workshop we will show you how to:

• Enhance your listening skills to ensure you hear all key points

o Sitting in a meeting and listening is easy enough, but actually hearing what’s being said is not just a matter of concentration, it’s about filtering the discussion so you can note the significant details. We’ll give you tips on effective hearing - with both ears.

• Develop an effective partnership with the meeting’s chairman

o The chairperson manages and directs the meeting, but needs to work in harmony with the minute-taker so that the flow of the meeting is noted properly. On occasions, this will require assertiveness from you – we show you how.

• Improve the layout and grammar of your minutes for greater clarity

o Research suggests that 16% of the adult population has literacy problems. We’re not suggesting that includes you, but today’s organisations can no longer assume that employees come to them fully-equipped to write grammatical English. Where help with the basics is needed, we provide it.

• Condense your minutes down to the essentials, without losing the flow of the meeting

o Different audiences have different needs and expectations from minutes. A CEO may just want an executive summary, while a project team may need to see detail. We’ll show you several methods of filtering your notes so you can zoom in on what needs to be included in the minutes.

• Maintain your concentration during the meeting, regardless of subject

o This is a tough one, especially if you’re not directly involved in the subject of the meeting. You may not even understand the terminology being used. Relax: our special techniques for improving concentration will help you breeze through the meeting - without dozing off!

• Improve your note taking, with a variety of methods to suit your style
 

o Ideally you write up meeting minutes straight afterwards. In practice, it could be a couple of days before you get round to it. By that time, the meaning of some cryptic comment with arrows pointing to a doodled diagram may have evaporated. Once you start applying one of several note-taking methods we’ll show you, such nightmares will be a thing of the past.
 

• Deal with technical subjects and jargon so that your notes are meaningful
 

o Where the meeting includes a lot of technical jargon and detail, it’s easy to lose track. There are ways around the problem, however, so even if you’re a complete technophobe we’ll make sure you’re covered in glory when your minutes are circulated.
 

• Manage all stages of preparing, holding and following up a meeting
 

o There’s more to a meeting than just arriving and sitting down to the coffee and biscuits. Knowing who’s attending and their expectations, for instance, will help you a lot when it comes to taking the notes you will turn into minutes that are a model of clarity. It also helps if you’re involved in the preparation of the agenda and invitation of the delegates and we will help you get up to speed with optimising these tasks as well.

The two-day workshop goes into the above topics in more detail and, with the addition of extra topics, is more substantial than the one-day course. Greater emphasis is placed on taking the right notes, with improved accuracy, and then transcribing them into concise, high-quality minutes. The two-day workshop also allows more time to practice what you have learnt and includes a forum where feedback can be exchanged. You will also benefit from interactive one-to-one coaching with your trainer

In addition to the one-day workshop content, the two-day course will help you:

• Learn how to be a better note-taker by planning how the meeting will go
• Get in the swing of minute-taking by taking notes at a simulated meeting
• Match your minutes to your audience – the right tone and style ensures your minutes get read
• Pause for thought – and turn your notes into actionable minutes, once you understand what they need to achieve
• Make your minutes crystal clear by writing concisely in plain English, with the help of Word
• Enhance the depth and quality of your minutes by getting input from other attendees

Courses and workshops by indiquo are designed to engage and entertain, as well as inform – that’s how we can promise to make what can seem to be the dullest of subjects interesting. Our trainers have real-world experience at all levels of the organisation, so they speak your language and understand your issues and problems. And because they have ‘been there and done that’, they know how to get straight to the heart of every subject.

Our trainers ensure they keep right up to date with cultural and procedural changes in office life by engaging closely with course participants and building relationships with workshop attendees that endure long after the courses are over.

At Your Venue - Talk To The Trainer
Training your people at your venue creates substantial cost and time savings. We train nationwide. Complete the form below and the trainer for this course will contact you within 24 hours. Or call 020 7622 2400.

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