A Secretary's Guide to Meetings and Minute Taking

A comprehensive one-day workshop that will enable delegates to attend meetings with confidence, including the taking, preparing and distributing of clear, concise and accurate meeting minutes. The course is highly practical, and features exercises, role-plays and case studies that are guaranteed to improve the quality of your meeting related work.

By attending this course, you will learn to:

• Demonstrate your efficiency by compiling an accurate and professional  Agenda
• Be prepared for any meeting by using a checklist of the key things you need to arrange before, during and after a meeting
• Be familiar with the preparation of various types of minutes and have practical guidelines for effective minute taking
• Demonstrate effective minute taking skills, practiced in a structured role-play situation
• Display more advanced minute taking skills through lessons learned in an unstructured role-play exercise
• Understand the most commonly used meeting terminology and jargon
• Describe various types of meetings and the roles of the people who attend them
• Differentiate between your activities at a formal vs. an informal meeting
• Know how a basic meeting should run, and how it achieves its objectives
• Appreciate the objectives of the Notice of a Meeting, write an effective Notice and outline guidelines for distributing Notices of Meetings
• Be familiar with the workings of formal meetings, such as Annual General Meetings, and the role of a Secretary at these meetings.

Delegates on this course will have the opportunity to practice the skills learned in a series of structured and unstructured exercises and role-plays. They will be able to go back to work after this course with the confidence to arrange, organise and participate in any type of meeting that you are likely to encounter.

 Minute taking at meetings, and the organisation of meetings are two roles that executive level secretaries are expected to do as part of their responsibilities. However, having to effectively summarise what is said during meetings and turn this into reader friendly action points is a skill that often only comes with time, trial and error.

Now, for the first time, CBM Training offers secretaries the opportunity to attend an intensive one-day course where delegates will be shown the secrets of arranging effective meetings and taking effective minutes