Why should you attend?
Taking and writing effective minutes and records of decisions is an essential skill for all public servants. Well-structured and clearly written minutes of meetings, advisory boards or consultations help all involved and especially the decision-makers to focus on the right actions and to ensure the overall effectiveness of their team and stakeholders. This one day, highly interactive and practical workshop is designed to equip public sector note-takers with the right knowledge, approaches and skills to prepare professional minutes and records of decisions
What will you learn?
- How to approach minute-taking from a structured and systematic perspective
- How to ensure that the mandate, purpose and stakeholders’ and chairperson’s needs are fully reflected in the event’s minutes
- Appreciation and understanding of different stressors and challenges to note-takers
- Different approaches and layouts to taking notes and creating effective minutes and records of decisions
- How to work effectively with the chairperson to ensure the final minutes and its key messages are clear, concise and accurate
Who should attend?
This interactive workshop will be beneficial to all individuals working in an administrative, program, project, advisory or other related positions or functions in public, private or voluntary sectors.
What will you take away?
- Presentations slides in the form of a participant notebook
- Exercises and handouts
Professional competencies
- Written Communications
Sample Agenda
| Activity |
|---|
| Introductions and Workshop Overview |
| Understanding the Mandate, Purpose and Stakeholders’ Needs Overview and discussion of diverse types of meetings, advisory and consultative mechanisms and the drivers behind their mandates and operation. The importance of working with the chairperson. Knowing and understanding the audiences for our written outputs (minutes, records of proceedings, working groups’ reports, etc.) |
| BREAK |
| Note-taking Stressors, Challenges and Remedies Stressors and challenges in taking notes and preparing minutes of proceedings: is the task clear? Common elements of ineffective meeting minutes and records of decision. What can be done to deal with the stressors and avoid the mistakes? |
| Exercise Working in small groups, participants will be given notes from a meeting (or a similar document). Each group will identify and summarize the key points, and then present its summary (précis) to the plenary. |
| Taking Notes: Purpose, Preparation and System • Purpose – what the note taker is doing. • Preparation – addressing and clarifying expectations about the content and approach to the minutes/ROD, the standard format and what it should contain. Going over the agenda before the meeting and discussing what items may involve significant discussion, contentious matters, follow-up from previous meeting and any other items that could impact upon the note taker. |
| LUNCH |
| Approaches to Note-taking Different ways of taking notes. What must be captured? Having a system for taking notes. What will be most effective? Knowing how to look for and phrase key messages. |
| Exercise Working in groups, and based on the previously prepared précis document, the participants will identify and redraft 2-3 key messages they believe are of most importance to the minutes’ stakeholders and other potential audiences. |
| BREAK |
| From Notes to Minutes of Proceeding Getting from notes to actual minutes of proceedings. How much content is enough? What must appear? An appropriate style. Using plain language principles. Conciseness and clarity. Questions to ask about the draft. Formatting for functionality, readability and ease of understanding. |
| Exercise Working in groups, participants will correct and/or rephrase a series of short texts for the final minutes. |
| Wrap-up and Workshop Evaluation |
A relaxed space where everybody felt free to talk.