to hate doing minutes of a meeting

[CaptSkippy]

Last week, due to the absence of a person who usually does the minutes, I was asked two minutes for before a meeting started to do minutes.

I hate doing minutes. I can't keep an accurate record of a meeting and participate in it at the same time. People also talk too quickly for me to take notes of all that was said. The end result is that I always end up with scores of complaints any time I have taken minutes. It also takes me a really long time to write them up afterwards and if things are busy with my main responsibilities people keep pestering me for them when I really have no time to write it all out and share them.

These days I make sure that minutes are not part of my job repsonsibilities anymore and I refuse to even consider a job where that is a requirement.

I told the person who asked that I am no good at doing minutes, that I never end up with anything useful and that I only jot down a few things for myself. Despite my telling him this, he came back later and asked me what I got. I got all of two lines of the two hours meeting. I hope his own notes were more useful, but I never agreed to do them.

So was I being unreasonable?

20+ years in IT at all levels I’ve had this many times. Agree you can’t chair/actively be involved when taking minutes or even actions.

I had a boss who insisted I could. I used to stop the meeting to capture the action that really wound him up but it was something I had to do

I have actually volunteered to take actions on Monday as PMO for 2nd time in 8 months is off. I happily offered to take actions as my male boss did it himself couple of months ago and didn’t automatically ask me

Is usually a female thing

Now, she can't just record and type afterwards, she obviously doesn't have time to do so and there isn't any reason why it would be (repeatedly) her work.

Wow. It makes me feel a bit grateful, that my job does this right - on customer calls we have two people from our side and the one who isn't the main presenter takes the notes. So on Friday, it was my boss who did take the notes, as I was the main presenter For stuff meetings we originally had a rota, but find out the most efficient way is to ask the speakers to just put their points to a shared minutes document before the meeting, and the chair does adjustments if necessary (or ask the speaker to do so).

That being said, I volunteered to take minutes of several meetings in my volunteering work, when it was a hard topic, nit many conclusions, just many unhappy people blaming each other, and I really wanted the minutes to capture hard facts, not someone's interpretation.

I do agree that there is a touch of misogyny.

I can think of several teams I've been in where the men never ever do the 'admin' work of arranging meetings or taking minutes. It's always left to a woman to do. 100% of the time.

There are some men in my office who have never been asked to do this, while other women around them do it all the time. They get away with it by being so incompetent that no one would ever ask them to do anything - but thinking about it, it's quite canny because it means they get away wtih never having to do anything.

I know this is an old thread, but I'm coming back to it because I've just taken my first minutes in my cosec role.

My director has reviewed them and basically cut out about 90% of what I had written - he doesn't think that any of the discussion needs to be minuted. I thought I had already made it quite short, and only noted the important points made!

Is that usual? To make minutes really, really brief to the extent that they don't really leave much of a record of the meeting? I have no idea what is best practice and what is just his personal preference!

On the other hand it will make note-taking at the next meeting much much easier now that I know that 99% of what is said doesn't need to be written up...

I am rubbish at minute taking, however I find it much easier if I use my laptop because I can type faster than I can write.

It depends on the purpose of the minutes.

If they are a regulatory requirement to document all discussion for public record then they need to be detailed.

If they are internal only to keep a record of the below then they can be very brief.

• who was there
• what has been agreed and by who
• what are the actions, who owns them and deadlines.

As a PA - minute taking is a skillset.

You do not have to write everything word for word - it it not meant to be a dictation of every conversation in the meeting,

Why do the meetings need minutes - would action points not be a better solution?

As previous posters have said it totally depends on the purpose of the meeting and why it’s being recorded. Short action points are fine in some cases, particularly internal or team meetings. But if you e.g. work in a regulated industry or listed company and these minutes are supposed to be capturing Board resolutions and the discussion and decision-making process behind them, then as Co Sec it’s your duty to push back to your director and make it clear that the content needs to note particular things for governance purposes. I remember the first time in my first big Co Sec that I had to challenge a major NED and it was terrifying, but you soon get used to it!

Thank you everyone, your comments are really useful.

I definitely didn't do a word-by-word account of everything that was said!

I work for a smallish charity and it was a trustees' meeting. Mainly to review the financial & operational performance of the year just ended, and to approve the new budget.

So I thought that the discussions around certain areas were quite relevant. I suppose what has been left of my minutes does just about cover the rationale behind the decisions/approvals made.

I have a cosec training course coming up soon - better late than never (!) - so hopefully that will help a bit.

If you’re a charity and it was a Trustee meeting regarding financial performance then it’s really important for regulatory purposes that the charity’s Board and exec are seen to be having relevant discussions and the Board demonstrating that they have good oversight of performance and an opportunity to challenge the exec where necessary. If your director has written anything capturing that sort of discussion out then you need to advise them it must be kept in. All part of the fun of being a Co Sec.

Thanks @ComtesseDeSpair - that's really helpful.

I shall have a good look at what I wrote, and what is left, and see if I need to put anything back in!

If minutes are needed for a meeting, someone should be asked to do them who doesn't have to play any other role in the meeting, it's very hard to speak and listen and take notes all at the same time.

Anyway, there is a solution - if you use Microsoft Teams you can use their transcription service, it works really well. Or at the very least record the meeting so you can go back and check details.

But if you are in the meeting to take part, you should not also have to take minutes. That was one of the things I found annoying when I was a school governor and eventually we got the clerk to clerk the committee meetings as well as the main full governing body meetings.

Also agree it's usually women who are asked to take minutes.

I actually now ask what style of minutes people want me to take from a meeting - Minutes (record of all discussion points, plus actions); Notes (key points plus actions; or simply Actions. You'd be surprised, I got one long-standing meeting down from full Minutes to just Notes simply by asking when I joined at meeting 29!

As almost all of our meetings are now on Teams, I am expected not only to take minutes but also facilitate slides, summon people who should have attended, monitor the chat for pertinent questions and even follow and understand some of the discussion as it's relevant to my work. So the 'record' and 'transcript' facilities are my friend, I give up taking any kind of notes during the meeting to concentrate on what is happening live; and then play back later to write minutes/notes/whatever is desired.

If we go back to meeting in person, I am going to make a point of saying that I cannot facilitate (welcome, slides) because I need to focus on the discussion for taking notes. Or more likely, I'll bring a recording device :)

"I know this is an old thread, but I'm coming back to it because I've just taken my first minutes in my cosec role."

I am going to be really pedantic here, Company Secretary is a defined role and I have yet to see one take minutes for a meeting, their role is quasi legal / accounting in nature.

If I am ever taking minutes for a group to whom I am new, I always look at previous minutes to see how they have been done. Gutting them in this fashion is a control thing and wanting to make sure nothing can be challenged at a later date.

I am going to be really pedantic here, Company Secretary is a defined role and I have yet to see one take minutes for a meeting, their role is quasi legal / accounting in nature.

I’m Group Co Sec for a specialist reinsurance and legacy runoff company with holdings in 11 countries, $2.4 billion in shareholder equity, and a managing agent for four Lloyds syndicates. Taking accurate minutes of the Board meetings, which can run to four or five hours long, and where the Board and Exec discuss everything from reserving on the Disease portfolio, to investment strategy, to RITCing on a loss and how we’re going to transact through Bermuda before encumbering in Malta, tends to require the person taking the minutes to have a decent grasp of the legal and financial aspects being discussed. Hence why I, as Co Sec, do the minuting.

This sort of lack of understanding of what governance is, is exactly why situations like that in the original post arise.

I’ve always worked in secretarial / office support positions - so many times when job hunting I’ve had recruitment agencies send me job specs for CoSec roles and I’ve had to explain that office support/secretary roles are not the same just because Secretary is sometimes in the title! I wouldn’t have a clue about any of the stuff CoSec people do…but I can bind their board packs if they’d like! It’s amazing to me that recruitment agencies don’t even seem to understand what role they are recruiting for.