Minutes are crap..embarrassed to send them

[CrackersNCheesePlease]

Last Monday I was asked to minute a meeting at work. I couldn’t understand most of it and have to send them back to the chair before the end of the week. They’re crap, and I feel a fool sending such crappy notes.

I can barely sleep worrying about them. What can I do?

@coxesorangepippin says.

Also see if you find any previous minutes of the meetings as this may help you get the style.

It really is @NeverDropYourMooncup

OP it will be fine. Maybe a good idea to ask if you can record the Meeting next time.

Loads of good advice on here. If you were told in advance, then it is on you (sorry), at least record who was there and then follow OPs advice, maybe find a friendly person that was in the room to go through them to get some of the acronyms sorted at least. I have a bit of an issue with senior people that suddenly decide that the whole thing needs to be minuted at the very end of a meeting, if this is ever the case again, and it is you that is doing it, you can absolutely say "just for the record, or just to summarise for the minutes - Person A said they were going to do this, Person B said they were going to do that" - it is the actions that are important, not the chatter. And, and importantly ask yourself -whenever you are going to a meeting, what are you there to do? If you are not there to add content, then you either there to absorb content that others offer or you are there to make notes, or minutes. XX

Ask chat GPT to reword or improve the layout of the minutes. I use it a lot for written work. If chat GPT can't help just go through and reword the main points , most people will have forgotten a lot of what was said. If anyone asks just say you can't remember it being said.

I feel your pain OP! I worked in an engineering sector and was asked to take minutes once.

and never again 😂 the jargon was ridiculous. At one stage I had to write down a formula for calculating weight of soil & cement to fill a mineshaft (literally a whole discussion on the correct formula to use and was told “make sure you include this, golden!”

I gave feedback and said it was a bit silly to ask a non technical person to do minutes. I was only told to do it because I was the only female employee at the office at that time on that day.

And women apparently are the “minute takers”

Don't have any advice but to fess up. I bet they aren’t as bad as you think they are

Please don’t use Chat GPT! You might get in trouble

You should ideally be trained how to do minutes.
Is there anyone you could ask to help? I used to help someone with minutes for a notorious management meeting, I knew the subjects, protocols and abbreviations so helped that way. If I were you I would look at previous minutes to see how they are done and yes probably only one person will really read them

I am a member of a fund raising charity and take the minutes of business meetings. I always send them to the meeting chair before distributing them to ask them to be checked for accuracy.

If it is something I am not clear about I highlight the text in yellow and ask for clarification..

It isn't a failing to admit that you didn't understand something.

Or just ask them.

I do minutes for hybrid meetings (I attend virtually). Those in Teams have their names on screen, and for those in the room I just pop a request in the chat asking them to confirm names. Somebody usually obliges and puts everyone's name down.

What was the purpose of these minutes?

Are they really just meeting notes or are they actual proper minutes for public record.

You have had advice on using the agenda to structure them and putting actions In bold and looking at the last set for style.

It gets to a point where you have done what you can do, so you just have to send them to the chair and ask for comments and just highlight the bits you were unclear on.

It won't help you this time OP, but this is how I approach minutes.

I block out time in my diary - 30 minutes before to prepare myself and the minutes document (I type them directly in) and have a look at the last minutes. I don't always need 30 minutes, especially if I've had time to prepare the day before. But my first ever minutes, I got caught on another call, flew in as the meeting was starting and felt on the back foot from the off. I was also shadowing an experienced minute taker who didn't turn up, so they had to use mine 😂

Once there, I introduce myself as today's minute taker and ask if somebody can please identify the people in the room. Sometimes I do this on screen, sometimes in the meeting chat.

I also block out an extra 30-60 minutes after the meeting to finalise the minutes. I type them straight into the minute document (pad next to me just in case the tech lets me down). Then tidy them up as soon as the meeting is over while everything is still fresh in my mind and send straight to the chair.

A couple of people have suggested recording the meeting. This would be a massive no-no at my place of work. Access to the recording function is tightly controlled and even those of us that do have the ability have very strict rules on what we can record. So please do check your company policy if considering this.

was robustly discussed

I would assume that there was nearly a fist fight, if I read that in minutes.

Please speak to the meeting Chair.
Have you done minutes before? Including for this type of meeting? If not, they should train you. Anyone who thinks taking minutes is easy is fooling themselves! If you have but weren't on form for some reason please let them know. I work with 2 admin, 1 finds minutes a breeze and so sometimes over simplifies, the other finds them excruciating and includes too much. In either case I'd much rather they come to me so we can sort it together than make up reasons :)

Can you also ask, or get hold of, minutes from a previous meeting? Great advice on this thread but if you can see some earlier minutes you can check they are in the same style

They do.... I work with anal retentives that critique them. Not for much longer - yay!

I have just started working for an insane company that loves minutes, with a big boss who is ‘challenging’ and ‘direct’ and who treats me like a minion, zero direction (and I am NOT a PA, but in fairness men and women equally get lumbered with them).

I am very much saving this thread!

Even if you were a PA, you still shouldn't be treated like a minion.

I am a PA and not treated this way. It is part of the company ethos that everyone is treated fairly and with respect, whether they are head of the company or cleaning the toilets.

Case in point: many years ago, somebody quite senior was pulled up for the way they 'spoke' to me in an email. I wasn't even the complainant. It was brought to the management's attention by somebody else that was copied in.

I didn’t understand any of it. It’s not an area I knew anything about and was only provided with a very brief set of previous minutes. The chair hardly spoke and I couldn’t follow quite where we were.

In that case I would be honest and tell them that you didn't understand the meeting and the notes you took just don't make sense.

You've been in attendance at one of mine, then?

Yes, this is what I’ve done. Heard nothing back…yet.