Writing Agendas & Minutes of meeting

Writing Agendas & Minutes of meeting
What is a meeting?

¨A meeting is a gathering of two or more people that has been convened for the purpose of achieving a common goal through verbal interaction, such as sharing information or reaching agreement.

¨Meetings may occur face-to-face or virtually, as mediated by communications technology, such as a telephone conference call, a skyped conference call or a video conference.

Class Task

¨Think of the meetings that you have attended before.

¨Was there any writing/ reading involved? What was it about?

¨1. Before a meeting – agendas

¨2. During a meeting – using agendas

¨3. After a meeting – minutes 

 Writing an Agenda

¨An organized meeting needs a well-written agenda.

¨To write an agenda for a meeting, you can create your own from scratch, work from a template, or make the most out of one you already have.

¨Regardless of the method chosen, a well-written agenda should outline basic identifying information about the meeting and summarize both the objective and schedule of the meeting.

¨By sticking to a detailed yet flexible agenda, you can keep your meeting streamlined and focused, ensuring that you meet all of your goals for your meeting in the shortest amount of time.

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Start by giving your agenda a title. From the most

beautiful literature to the driest spreadsheet, nearly

every important document needs a title, and meeting

agendas are no exception. Your title should tell the

reader two things: First, that s/he is reading an agenda, and second, what topic the meeting is covering. When you've made a decision, place your title at the top of your blank document. The title doesn't have to flowery or complicated — in a business context, simple and direct titles are usually best.

•Resist the urge to use fancy or large fonts for your title. In most situations, you'll want to use a plain, dignified font like Times New Roman or Calibri and to make your title the same size as the rest of the lettering on the document (or only slightly larger). Remember, the purpose of your title is to inform readers of what they are viewing, not necessarily to amuse or distract them.

2 Include "who?", "where?", and "when?" information in the header: Identification Lines

¨Following the title, meeting agendas usually have a header which can vary in detail depending upon the level of formality your workplace encourages. This header is usually located about one line below the title. Generally, in the header, you'll want to include brief factual information about the meeting that doesn't have to do with the topic being discussed. This is so that people who aren't at the meeting can tell when and where it occurred and who was there. Below are some of the things you may want to include; regardless of the information you choose, be sure to clearly label each piece of information (bolding the label text works well here):

¨Date and time. These can be grouped together or in their own separate sections.

¨Location. If your business has multiple locations, you may want to write the address, whereas if it has just one location, you may want to name the room you're meeting in (e.g., Conference Room #3).

¨Attendees. Job titles are usually optional and not required.

¨Special individuals present. These may be special guests, speakers, or meeting leaders.

¨

¨ ¨Meetings that don't have a clearly-defined purpose risk wasting precious time as attendees decide what to talk about. Skip a line after your header and use bolded or underlined text to label your objective section with a title like "Objective" or "Purpose", followed by a colon or a line break.

¨Then, in a few concise and to-the-point sentences, describe the items of discussion for the meeting. Aim to write about 1-4 sentences here. For instance, if you're looking to write an objective statement for a budget meeting, you might use this one: "Objective: Outline key budget goals for the 2014-2015 fiscal year and discuss long-term, cost-cutting measures. Additionally, R&D Director Marcus Feldman will present the results of a recent competitiveness study."

¨ ¨Schedules help combat a common flaw: business meetings often run far, far too long. Skip a line after your statement of the objective(s), give your schedule a bolded or underlined title, then begin making entries that correspond to the main topics of discussion in your schedule. For ease of reading, start each entry on its own line.

¨Label each entry with either the time you plan for it to begin and end or the amount of time you plan for each entry to take. Pick one system or the other and be consistent — mixing and matching looks unprofessional.

¨ ¨If any guests are coming to your meeting to discuss topics of importance, you'll want to devote a chunk of the meeting time to these people. Plan on assigning each guest a single schedule entry even if s/he has more than one topic of discussion. This way, each one will be able to organize his or her topics as s/he sees fit. It is best to contact the guests ahead of time to figure out how much time each one will need for their discussion topic. This helps to avoid embarrassing scheduling conflicts.

¨ ¨During this time, people can ask for clarification about confusing topics of discussion, offer their own adjunct opinions, suggest topics for future meetings, and make other comments. You can make this Q&A time explicit by including it as the final entry in your schedule or you can simply bring it up yourself after the final element of the meeting.

¨If you reach the end of your meeting and no one has any additional questions to ask or comments to make, you can always end the meeting early. Many of your attendees will likely be thankful for this!

¨ 7 Check the agenda for errors before distributing it.

¨Because some attendees may end up relying heavily on the meeting agenda, it's wise proofread it for errors and completeness before giving it out. Doing so isn't just a courtesy to the attendees — it also reflects positively on your attention to detail and the respect you have for them.

¨ Additionally, ensuring there are no errors in your agenda can save you time and face.

¨ Sample Agenda

Class Task

¨Write an agenda of a meeting with your colleagues that you want to conduct about the discipline policy in your office. You can include issues of attendance, signing in and out, office decorum, up coming projects and any other issues. 

 

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