I have taken my fair share of notes as a senior coordinator (and former assistant and coordinator). For most of my career thus far, I’ve taken notes in at least half of the meetings I’ve been in. At roughly one page of notes per meeting, 20 meetings a week for five years, that’s … a lot.
Many individuals applying for jobs in this title range may roll their eyes when they view yet another job description stating: «Take notes during meetings to track important discussion points and next steps.” While it may seem tedious and, frankly, boring, meeting minutes are actually essential and ensure time spent meeting face-to-face isn’t in vain.
Personally, taking meeting minutes has significantly improved my attention to detail. When I sit in on dozens of meetings each week, there are times when my attention span and memory aren’t as strong, so it’s helpful to have an active task that keeps me focused and engaged.
Table of Contents
- What Are Meeting Minutes?
- How to Take Meeting Minutes
- Meeting Minutes Template
- Meeting Minutes Best Practices
- A Meeting Minutes Pro in Minutes
If, like me, you’re the one assigned to take meeting minutes, you should view it as an opportunity. In my experience, it forces you to listen closely to the conversation and decide what information is most important for the team to recall later.
Taking meeting minutes can also help you better understand complex concepts and processes. Research has found that taking notes involves cognitive processing and creates new neural pathways, which promote a greater understanding of the topics and better retention of information over time.
Read on for some of my tips and tricks for taking the best possible notes.
1. Assign someone to take the notes.
The best way to start is, of course, to have someone to take the meeting minutes. There are a few ways to manage this process.
First, you may have a dedicated person who always takes the note, like an assistant or coordinator. This person may be you. If so, hello and welcome!
Second, you may choose to rotate who takes notes each meeting. This is a great strategy as it relieves some of the load from an individual who may otherwise need to take notes in several meetings. This also helps provide diverse note-taking styles, making the meeting minutes more interesting.
Lastly, you can assign multiple individuals to take notes in each meeting, after which their notes are combined. This is helpful as one person may pick up on and record something another individual missed. My team typically uses this strategy, which I’ve found incredibly useful since it also provides a safety blanket if someone has technical difficulties or can no longer join the meeting.
In this guide, I will share tips for instances where one person (you!) is the sole note-taker.
2. Create and share an agenda.
There’s nothing more frustrating than joining a meeting where no one knows what they’re meant to discuss. Issues like this can lead to being inefficient and unproductive, so it’s helpful to be proactive by sharing an agenda.
I create a live, running document that I continuously update with every meeting occurrence. This Google document is linked in the meeting invite so everyone can access it on their own time.
The document includes the name of the meeting series, the most recent or upcoming meeting date, and a section at the top with the agenda, which helps guide my later note-taking. I organize the agenda as follows:
I primarily complete the agenda by emailing the meeting invite attendee list one day before the meeting and asking if anyone has any agenda items to discuss. Team members directly email me their topics, and I fill them out in the above table. The table lives in the shared Google Doc so everyone can view the information and prepare accordingly.
Another way to gather agenda items is to remind individuals at the beginning of a new meeting series to fill in agenda items in the shared Google Doc on a rolling basis before each meeting. While this puts more power in attendees’ hands, it also leaves more chance for people to forget to enter agenda items altogether.
For this reason, I recommend reaching out directly and inquiring about agenda items, especially for recurring meetings. To remember to do this, I put a recurring reminder on my calendar the day before each meeting.
This method also makes it more evident if there are no agenda items for an occurrence and if the meeting can be canceled. After all, meeting hygiene is fundamental.
3. Format the document as simply as possible.
It’s time for the meeting, and you’re ready to capture the meeting minutes! Before you get started, consider how you will organize the notes.
As mentioned, I typically create a live, running Google Doc for recurring meetings that can be added onto during each meeting occurrence. However, this isn’t how I take notes for myself.
I consider myself an erratic personal note-taker, and I typically jot things down in my iOS Notes app. While I find a method in the madness, I respect that this note-taking style isn’t for everyone. That’s why I adopted a cleaner, more organized meeting minute structure in Google Docs.
The notes come below the agenda and next steps (which I’ll get to later). It’s organized something like this:
This format works for me and my team because we can immediately see the most critical information. The meeting date, which is especially important for recurring meetings, is listed at the top of each section of notes. The actual meeting minutes have bolded headlines and are written in a bulleted list.
Pro tip: To save time creating a new meeting minutes structure, use a pre-existing meeting minutes template to keep your notes clean and consistent.
4. Summarize, don’t transcribe.
Not to toot my own horn, but I have a good ear (15 years of musical training will do that) and an impeccable memory, which makes me a strong note-taker. However, these two qualities also make it easy to jot down meeting minutes verbatim.
But people don’t typically want to read a word-for-word meeting transcription if they can’t join — and especially if they do. It’s easy to copy exactly what was discussed, but it takes a clever, attentive mind to note what is most meaningful.
My strategy is to copy down meeting minutes naturally and later go through and pare them down. If you’d rather not do the extra work, you can summarize from the get-go. However, you don’t want to accidentally miss some of the discussion when recording the most important information.
How best to summarize and not transcribe a meeting depends on your industry and the types of meetings you conduct. In my meetings at Nickelodeon, I search for keywords that alert me that the information being shared is brand-new to some folks and, thus, crucial to remember.
I also record the results of any debates or votes, such as if we vote on our favorite version of a new series’s key art, and any wide announcements or impending changes that need to be implemented into processes moving forward, such as the team hiring a new agency.
5. Include relevant materials.
While some meetings are strictly verbal, there are times when materials get shared. For example, someone may share a slide presentation, document, creative assets, or a link.
First, check with the team member that the materials they shared are okay to be shared post-meeting for others to view on their own time. After all, some materials may be highly confidential.
If you get the go-ahead, include relevant materials throughout the notes. I recommend uploading PDFs and other documents, presentations, or video files to your company’s preferred collaboration tool and including a link to the materials in the appropriate section of the meeting minutes.
6. Capture action items.
Most meetings I attend end with action items, barring the rare few in which we solve everything live (the best!). Action items are one of the most important things I capture in meeting minutes, as these next steps are typically the result of the conversation we had in the meeting.
In my experience, action items are also often easily forgotten, which is why capturing them in the meeting minutes is imperative.
When summarizing notes, I listen for any asks or offers to handle something beyond the meeting time. For example, someone might say, “Swetha, can you check with [Team Member] to see when the brief is due?” and someone else may later add, “I will hunt down that video file and send it to you by early next week!”
I always record those kinds of statements in my meeting minutes with clear owners, verb directives, and due dates. However, I also include them in a separate section below the agenda and above the meeting minutes near the top of the live document, as seen below:
7. Jot down attendees.
Listing attendees for recurring meetings may seem repetitive, but this point is especially helpful for one-off meetings. While people can usually view all invitees on the calendar invite, not everyone will necessarily join.
Create a list at the top of the meeting minutes listing those planning to attend the call. If someone lets you know they can’t attend the meeting, include this information, too. That way, if someone had an agenda item that specifically applied to an absent individual, they can remove it and discuss it offline to save time. For example:
This also helps guide the next steps post-meeting, as a task may be assigned to someone who wasn’t present and is unaware of their action item.
8. Re-read and revise.
Taking the meeting minutes during the meeting is only half the battle. Preparing them to be shared afterward is an essential step.
If, like me, you prefer to take notes in a manner that may only be comprehensible to yourself, I recommend initially recording the meeting minutes in a space other than the live, shared Google Doc.
I have a separate, private Google Doc structured the same way where I can take notes freely. Post-meeting, I use this document to re-read the notes with fresh eyes and make revisions.
I check for spelling and grammatical errors and re-phrase points in clear subject + verb + object sentence structures (i.e., [Team Member] shared three variations of the trailer for approval). I also make content-based edits. Some parts can be cut down while others can be removed altogether.
After the notes are in a good place, I copy them into the shared document. Then, I add new action items to the Next Steps section and update the status of existing items. Lastly, I email the meeting minutes or alert attendees that the notes are available in the shared document.
This detailed guide should kickstart your next round of meeting minutes, but continue reading for a template to make the process even more seamless.
Meeting Minutes Template
I’ve shared portions of my meeting minutes template throughout the previous section, but you will find my complete template below. I’ve used this for all meeting note-taking at Nickelodeon over the last couple of years, and I hope it provides a seamless organizational structure for you, too.
[Company Logo or Name]
Meeting Name:
Date:
Meeting Agenda
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Agenda Item |
Owner |
Next Steps
|
Owner |
Action Item |
Due Date |
Status |
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Not started |
|||
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In progress |
|||
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Paused |
|||
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Complete |
Meeting Minutes
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Date: Attended: Declined: |
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Agenda Item 1:
Agenda Item 2:
Agenda Item 3:
Agenda Item 4:
|
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Date: Attended: Declined: |
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Agenda Item 1:
Agenda Item 2:
Agenda Item 3:
Agenda Item 4:
|
If you prefer a downloadable template that works across various file formats, check out our free meeting minutes template.
Download HubSpot’s meeting minutes template for free.
Meeting Minutes Best Practices
1. Prepare ahead of time.
I admit I’ve occasionally found myself guilty of being underprepared for meetings. Meeting minute preparation often gets pushed to the back burner when my bandwidth is low. However, as the recorder of meeting minutes, it’s essential to go into meetings knowing the meeting purpose, topics of discussion, and key decisions to be made.
Meeting preparation only takes a few minutes, which can make a huge difference later. Set aside time to email attendees about agenda items the previous day, and set up the meeting minutes document with the meeting date, attendees, and agenda items, so that you’re ready for go time.
2. Understand how your team prefers meeting minutes to be taken.
While I prefer taking notes on the side during a meeting and revising them later to be shared, I’ve also had to take live meeting notes in video conferencing calls. This means I would share my screen with the meeting notes document and take notes for all attendees to see.
I know — this sounds daunting. While there is some added pressure with this method, it does have some pros. It helps me stay even more vigilant during the call so I don’t miss any pressing information. In addition, it helps me use correct spelling and grammar and write clear, concise notes from the get-go, rather than writing in shorthand and adapting the language later.
Lastly, I typically don’t have to do any work post-meeting besides emailing the notes to attendees. Since I was on top of taking outward-facing notes during the meeting, I likely won’t need to go back and make revisions.
Find out from your superior which method is preferred. It may not be as effective for in-person meetings or those in which people share their own screens. However, it’s good to set expectations with your manager and understand how public or private your note-taking will be.
3. Write how you’d want to read.
When in doubt, I’m inclined to write more than less. After all, it’s better to include everything than miss something, right?
Wrong. The whole point of meeting minutes is that it’s a quick, easy way for attendees to refresh their memory on what occurred and, for those who couldn’t make it, to learn the most noteworthy information they missed. If you include too much of the conversation, people will probably not even bother reading the meeting minutes and instead ask you for a verbal recount.
When revising meeting minutes to be shared, I always ask myself, “What would I want to read?” I would want the notes to be less than one page long (preferably half a page for a half-hour meeting). I would want the sentences to be short and bullets to be limited under a single header. And I would want important details to be bolded, italicized, highlighted, or underlined.
Remember what you would like to see as a receiver of meeting minutes and apply these strategies to your notes. This will improve your attention to detail and ability to sort through copious amounts of information for the key points.
4. Distribute minutes promptly.
Typically, there is an urgency to meetings — hence the reason they were held. Pressing action items and deadlines may arise that need to be tackled with some immediacy.
That’s why I always send meeting minutes as soon as possible after the meeting. The deadlines I usually set for myself are:
- For meetings before noon: Send out notes by the end of the day.
- For meetings after noon: Send out notes within 24 hours.
Of course, you may have more pressing responsibilities that can delay meeting note revision, organization, and distribution. Those should take precedence as long as you clear the need for flexibility and additional time on the meeting minutes with your superior.
5. Store meeting notes in an easily accessible space.
As mentioned, I keep all meeting minutes for a meeting series within the same rolling Google Doc, linked in the calendar invite. I recommend this method because it’s easy for me and other attendees to access the document regularly.
You can also use a different cloud-based storage service if your organization doesn’t use Google Drive. Otherwise, if you don’t have access to a remote cloud server, you may keep the meeting minutes in a downloaded file attached to the meeting invite. This would be a last resort, as this requires more manual labor — you would need to continuously update the document, delete the old one, and attach the new version with every meeting occurrence.
The key is giving attendees easy access to the meeting minutes so they don’t need to prompt you. This creates an efficient, self-motivated workflow.
A Meeting Minutes Pro in Minutes
As a long-time meeting minutes taker, I’ve come to realize how important this role is to a team. We often lament the sheer number of meetings we attend and how difficult it is to keep track of discussion points and action items.
As the recorder of meeting minutes, you make it easier for attendees to worry less about remembering the discussion and to focus on the collaboration. But I know taking meeting minutes is no simple job, so I hope the tips and templates above help alleviate the pressure on you.
I want this guide to help you see the significance of what you do and how beneficial it is to others while offering you vital steps, best practices, and template ideas that can take your notes from good to outstanding.