Professional Oral Communication III: Writing the Minutes of a Meeting

Intended Learning Outcomes. You should be able to:

understand the basic purposes of keeping minutes for a meeting
understand the basic sections present in these minutes

Writing a Meeting Summary

After a meeting is over, it is useful to keep a written record of it, so that group members, as well as other concerned parties, can have a list of the decisions made and the tasks assigned to different participants of the meeting in black and white. In fact, such a written record is quite common in the business world, and very often takes the form of meeting minutes.

One of the benefits of having a written record of the meeting/discussion is that we can avoid future disputes, due to a different understanding of the agreements reached in the meeting/discussion. When a meeting summary/minutes is/are written, they should be distributed to the members as soon as possible, so that they can check and see whether the summary is different from what they have remembered from the meeting. And if so, further clarifications may be in order.

While you may find that some people use these terms interchangeably, in our unit, we treat meeting summary and meeting minutes differently because the term minutes often implies a fixed format. In an informal discussion, meeting minutes may not be necessary, but nevertheless an informal summary will avoid possible disputes about the agreements/arrangement made in the discussion.

Guidelines for Writing a Meeting Summary

In most formal and corporate meetings, the rules for writing minutes are rigorous, and the minutes have to be submitted in a fixed particular format. Semi-formal and informal meetings have a varied and less rigorous way of keeping meeting records. In general, the basic principles are the same, though.

Basic Information on the Meeting

The basic information on the meeting includes:

the names of the attendees,
the chairperson,
the venue,
and the time of the meeting.

The inclusion of such information depends on the nature and the size of the meeting, as well as what the intended function of the meeting record is. If the record just serves as a reminder of what decisions have been made in a small group (e.g. 2 or 3 people), so that the members in the groups can use this as a basis for carrying out their assigned tasks, such information may not even be necessary. If the record is meant to be read by the supervisor, or if some members are absent during the meeting, then the inclusion of such details may also make sense in a less formal meeting summary.

A Short Summary of the Meeting Agenda

As a meeting summary serves as a record of the meeting and is meant to be referred to at a later point in time by members of the group, as well as other concerned parties who may not have attended the meeting, it is important to include a summary of the agenda. This will help the partcipants remember what the meeting was about, as well as inform non-participants of the nature of the meeting.

The Body of the Summary

The body of the summary is the actual record of what took place at the meeting. You do not have to note down everything that is said. The most important function of the summary is to record the topics of the discussion being carried out. In particular, you need to keep a record of the points that were raised in the discussion and the major decisions regarding these points. You also need to mention the motions that were passed, as well as who passed them. In the body of the summary, you may also want to include the agreed actions, the persons responsible for them, as well as their deadlines.

Layout and Structure of the Body

Headings help readers skim for the information they need. Here is a template you may consider using, but this is by no means the only approach to a meeting summary.

Topics & Decisions
Actions Agreed Upon

Responsibilities Assigned
Deadlines

Next Meeting

Date and Time
Location
Agenda

The following is an example of a meeting summary. Go through it and see whether you can easily identify the different sections. Once you’ve done this, click on the button below to get a visual impression of the extent of those sections.

Group Meeting #1

March 22^nd, 2012

The first meeting of the Tung Ping Chau Marine Park project was held in the general meeting room, Kowloon office, on Tuesday, March 6^th, 2012, at 6:00 p.m.

Present at the meeting were the following members:
Steven Poon (Chairperson)
Michael Lim (Networking)
Susanna Chow (Environmental Assessment)
Brian Tong (Budget and Finance)
Sandra Sin (Software)

Presented below is the summary of the meeting, organised by agenda items.

Welcome and Meeting Objectives

Steven Poon opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and explaining the objectives for the meeting, namely, to review the specifications required by the client, to respond to needs raised by the client, and to evaluate different solutions to the problems.

Review of Previous Meeting

Steven briefly reviewed the requirements and specifications provided by the client at the previous meeting, which consisted in background information on the island and the environmental limitations for the implementation of new technologies. The background information includes:

Infrastructure development to date,
Purpose of the project,
Environmental impact concerns
Initial requirements.

Steven then introduced Michael Lim, who is the Project Team’s networking engineer.

Presentation of the Proposed Networking Solutions

Michael delivered a brief presentation providing basic information about how the network installation should be conducted, and how a site survey was used to provide data for his needs analyses. He explained how Network Monitoring Units (NMUs) were used to predict where the blind spots would be with each of the router alternatives in place. He noted that the network coverage of some of the proposed router units might look small, but this was because much of the transmission power was used to penetrate some harder-to-reach areas on the island. Some units would see greater coverage than others.

To give the members an idea of how a comprehensive coverage on the island might be realised with a combination of different routers and repeaters, the network engineering team reported on different possible scenarios, for which they had prepared a graph with a map overlay. This graph was also distributed to each member at the meeting.

Environmental Impact Report

Susanna Chow introduced the basic environmental protection requirements specified by the government. In particular, Susanna explained that trees needed to be protected and heavy machineries were not to be used as the routers and the network were installed on the island. It was agreed on that a guideline was to be put in place before the commencement of the network installation. She also requested a copy of the layout plan of the locations of the proposed networking devices as soon as they were finalised.

Budget Planning

Brian Tong reminded Susanna and Michael that the budget for the networking project was HK$ 3,000,000, which was labour and equipment inclusive. Brian queried the availability of the breakdown of the costs, which had not been mentioned by Michael in his report. Michael admitted that his team was still in disagreement about the sourcing of the equipment, and would report to Brian in 2 weeks’ time.

Actions to be Taken

After discussing all the major issues, Steven assigned tasks to the different members. The work schedule and the parties responsible are summarised in the Gantt chart attached in the appendix to this summary. Michael was asked to finalise the network installation plan. As shown in the Gantt chart, the sourcing of equipment should be completed before Apr 30^th, as it is important that the equipment list be finalised before Mar 30^th. Michael would also finalise his network plan and communicate with Susanna as he did so, to make sure the environmental safety precautions are carried out properly.

The meeting ended at around 7:00 p.m., with the understanding that the next meeting would be held in a month’s time.

Language Used in a Meeting Summary

Reporting Verbs

In meeting records, we often find people’s names mentioned. When a person’s name is mentioned, the name is generally associated with a point that the person made or a task that this person has been assigned. It is thus important to note who made the points entered in the meeting record or who was being talked about for future reference.

A reporting verb is a verb that describes what a person was trying to achieve through their speech (i.e. their speech act), e.g.

said – simply saying something
reported – providing details of a past event or facts
commented – providing views on a particular issue

The following table shows different groups of verbs that can be used in different stages of a meeting. Try to identify which speech act they are intended to perform. Also try to see whether they may occur in the sample text above. To do this, first click on an expression, which will then be copied to the text box below. Once it appears in the text box, you can click on the button next to it and check whether the expression is highlighted in the text. If it is, look at its surrounding contect to understand how exactly it’s used because words can take on different meanings in different contexts. Please note that not all expressions listed below do appear in the text, though.

Introducing an idea
announced explained mentioned reported said stated noted	offered proposed put forward suggested tabled	believed expressed the opinion felt thought	raised the issue of referred to reviewed introduced touched on mentioned brought up (e.g. the issue of...) pointed out

Expressing of views of ideas/opinions raised
argued against contended countered disagreed with disputed queried		accepted acknowledged admitted agreed conceded recognised

Drawing conclusions
received decided agreed on asked assigned

Voice

Passive voice is occasionally used in records of meetings. It tends to be used to describe resolutions made collectively where names of individuals are not important.

The following table shows some use of passive voice to achieve different purposes:

Taking note of points raised
It was noted that ...	used when the group took note without taking any action
Reporting decisions
It was decided that ...	used after a vote
It was agreed that ...	used when there has been general assent
Reporting recommendations
It was recommended that ...	used when the group only has power to make a suggestion on a particular point
Deferring decisions
A decision was withheld pending clarification of ...	used when the committee was unable to reach a decision
It was agreed to defer a decision on ...	used when the group was unable to reach a decision
Assignment of duties
Ms. Li was assigned to ...	used when a junior member was told to carry out some action
Mr. Zhang was asked to ...	used when a senior member had to carry out some action

Language Structure for Reporting

When a reporting verb is used, one or more of the following grammatical patterns can be applied.

Grammatical Patterns	Examples
Subject + reporting verb + that clause	John agreed that replacing the existing system with an entirely new one may not be a good idea.
Subject + reporting verb + to + infinitive	John offered to look into the issue within the next couple of days.
Subject + reporting verb + gerund	Mr. Wang suggested taking the modular approach to the design of the system architecture.
Subject + reporting verb + a noun phrase	Mr. Feng described the existing system being used in the company.

Note that some verbs can be used in more than one pattern, while for some, only one pattern can be used. If in doubt, look up how the verbs are used by referring to the examples of their usage in a dictionary.

Jointly write a meeting summary, based on the discussions you conducted earlier, and assuming the role of the project leader. Include a Gantt chart. The summary should not only contain the Gantt chart for illustrative purposes, but also a suitable discussion that refers to the individual stages depicted in the chart. In other words, the chart should be suitably embedded in the summary.