Types of Minutes

● Meeting proceedings are documented in many different ways across various organisations.
The formats of the documents also vary depending on the unique preferences of a given
organisation. You can even find different formats used in different departments of the same
organisation.

Some organisations opt to use a predefined template that must be adhered to when
documenting all meetings. Others take the laissez-faire approach and allow the minute taker
to use their own discretion.

The first step in writing minutes for a meeting is finding out what format is acceptable for
the meeting and for the organisation. Let us look at the broad categories of meeting
minutes:

Agenda Based Minutes

● This is the most commonly used format in structured organisations. These minutes are
taken in scheduled meetings that have an agenda. Ideally, the agenda is pre-distributed to
the attendees, but in the event that the agenda was not given to the attendees in advance,
the Chair may read through agenda items before commencing the meeting. The use of a
structured agenda makes meetings run much more smoothly and effectively and has the
same impact on the minutes.

Informal Meeting Minutes

● Some meetings are informal in nature and therefore only require a basic output of
information. These types of minutes concentrate on summarising decisions and highlighting
the action steps identified. These minutes are usually circulated to attendees and anyone
else that might have a stake in the meeting or in the decisions arrived at. These minutes can
be written using simple templates or be produced ad hoc. The simplest minutes are just
actions sent around in an email after the meeting.

Meeting Notes

● More formal or in-depth meetings require a richer output of the notes of what happened
during the meeting and not just the decisions and outcomes. The meeting notes must on a
bare minimum have the date of the meeting, the list of the attendees, the points that were
discussed in the meeting and the actions that were agreed on. Each agreed upon action is
outlined clearly using bullets or numbers to create the notes.

Narrative Minutes
These types of minutes take the narrative approach by giving a lot of detail about the
meeting.

Narrative minutes describe the decision making process and even document the names of
the proposers and seconders. They can even note down the exact words used by the
proposers and narrate the views for and against the proposition. They also give a summary
of the information shared during the meeting and would typically contain links to these
external documents.

Resolution Minutes

As opposed to narrative minutes, resolution minutes just record the decisions made.

Resolution minutes pay no attention to how the decision was arrived at or who the
contributors were.

Resolution minutes are often relied upon when documenting meetings aimed at resolving
conflict or when negotiating common ground in business.

Action Minutes

These pay a lot of attention to who will implement a decision and exactly when the action is
expected.

Action minutes are typically written in two or three columns.

Action minutes are sent to all concerned parties and used and often used as a follow-up
mechanism to confirm the required actions have been taken.