38+ Sample Team Meeting Minutes

What Are Team Meeting Minutes?

Team meeting minutes is a formal or informal documentation of everything that transpired in a team meeting. It can follow a certain format; although in some cases, the minutes may also be informal and written in free form.

According to an online article published by the Harvard Business Review, meetings can be classified by size into three major categories. First, the assembly refers to 100 or more people who generally do not do much except listen to a main speaker or a series of speakers. The second is called the council, this consists of 40 to 50 people who listen to a speaker and may ask questions or contribute something on their own account. Lastly, up to 10 or 12 people may form a committee- all of whom share equal footing under the leadership or control of a chairman. 

How to Improve Team Meetings

Meetings are not always successful. Too often, meetings can go around and around in circles without actually accomplishing anything in the end. For team meetings, time and energy are of the essence. So if you want to improve the quality of your team meetings, take a look at some key tips below. 

Prepare an agenda. It pays to be prepared. Whoever is organizing the meeting should be ready with a planned agenda. The last thing you want is to waste everyone’s time with useless ad libs and unnecessary chatter. A clear agenda is perhaps one of the most fundamental requirements in any meeting, not just for staff or team meetings. If you need to reach out to other departments or access information prior to the meeting, make sure to do that not at the last minute. Again, time is a vital resource and team meetings mean that everyone’s time matters. It is best to maximize the time allotted for the meeting. Learn to listen. One common pet peeve for a lot of professionals is when an important meeting is dominated by just a single person. Yes, that person or persons may be the department head or a senior executive. But the purpose of a meeting is to align goals and clarify matters so everyone’s work and input should matter. A lively and dynamic discussion is important; and having that means other member’s ideas ought to be heard and acknowledged with respect. A healthy exchange of views and feedback is crucial to any effective and worthwhile meeting. Hold an open forum. In relation to good listening skills, having an open forum or Q&A at the end of every team meeting is another important tip. This allows the entire team to raise questions and offers them a chance to speak up or raise concerns. Again, a healthy exchange of ideas is critical to effective dialogue. Holding an open forum after the agenda points are tackled may help prevent any potential miscommunication or misinformation in the process. All employees will benefit from the open space awarded to them. It can empower them and allow them to feel heard and recognized. Keep meetings brief. No one enjoys meetings that drag on and on without any clear agenda. Time is of the essence and people have other important matters to attend to. So if you are an organizer of a team meeting, learn to respect other people’s time and schedules as well. Do not make the mistake of assuming they have nowhere else to be. It is best to keep meetings brief and direct to the point. Of course, there may be some exceptions. Some important meetings and conferences will obviously need more time wherein a couple of hours may not be enough to cover the entire agenda. In cases like these, the importance of pacing is crucial. Allow short breaks in between these long meetings so as to allow team members to regroup and regain energy.

Tips on Building and Strengthening Teamwork

Teamwork is an essential trait if one is to succeed in the workplace. If you cannot learn to get along and work in a team, it will be difficult for you to achieve any significant success. The best ideas and plans are born out of collaboration, solidarity, and collective effort. There are several tips that can help you and your team strengthen both your professional and personal ties with one another.   

Hold team building sessions. The importance of team building cannot be stressed enough. Not only does it contribute to work-life balance, it builds and strengthens office relationships. It is important to interact with teammates in a non-professional capacity as well. Of course, this is not required from each person. But professional ties will be more enriching if there is some degree of personal interaction as well. Team buildings do not necessarily have to be held externally. However, it would boost enthusiasm and excitement for the team if sessions were held outside of the regular work environment. Encourage an open office environment. Teamwork can prosper more naturally if there is an atmosphere of openness in the workplace. A welcoming and tolerant environment can help ease any tensions and promote higher positivity among colleagues. Teamwork and collaboration can thrive more in healthy work environments. If people are placed in an excessively competitive and distrustful environment, suspicion and hostility will naturally arise. To prevent and counteract this, openness and transparency must be promoted constantly. Share meals together. One of the most fundamental bonding experiences is sharing a meal together. For professionals and adults, it can be quite easy to fall into the pattern of focusing solely on one’s career to the point that even lunch breaks are taken in one’s solitary cubicle. If you want meaningful relationships in the workplace, you need to exert the effort. Sharing regular meals with other team members can positively build relationships. It may seem like a simple act, but if done regularly you will realize that it makes an enormous difference in people’s interpersonal and social interactions. Resolve conflict and disagreements quickly. Conflict management is crucial in all organizations. Especially for teams and departments, it is important to resolve internal conflict and arguments quickly. It is in everyone’s interest to not let disagreements simmer for too long. If conflict drags on longer than it should, it could negatively affect the dynamic and quality of the entire team. Healthy arguments are necessary because they can help people learn, grow and move forward. But when arguments are petty or become too personal, it ends up not benefiting anyone in the team.

How to Create Team Meeting Minutes

To create effective team meeting minutes, simply follow the easy steps below. If you are short on time and need a quick reference guide format, the sample templates above can prove quite useful. Simply browse the different templates and pick one that suits your needs.  

Step 1: Basic Information

Basic information should always be stated when recording minutes of a team meeting. Make sure to include the complete date, time, location, and list all the attendees. If possible, specify the team meeting by giving it a title. Depending on the nature and objective of the meeting, the title could be anything from “Team Alignment Meeting”, “Sales Team Meeting”, or “Weekly Team Huddle”. The basic information part is always direct since there is no use for long explanatory paragraphs in this section. 

Step 2: Format for Minutes 

Recording minutes of the meeting will depend entirely on the secretary or whoever is awarded the task. Most companies use standardized formats for their regular meetings. Because most meeting agendas are recurring, a uniformed format is the best and most efficient way to go. Minutes can be documented using a simple table, chart, or just standard bullet points. There are numerous applications that help organize minutes too. If you are looking for quick and predesigned formats, the sample templates above can give you a lot of ideas. 

Step 3: Meeting Agenda and Flow

A clear agenda, itinerary, or program is an essential part of team meeting minutes. This sets the tone of the meeting; and following the items on the agenda is quite frankly the overall purpose of the meeting. Of course, more informal or shotgun meetings may be called. In these cases, a prepared agenda may be absent. Nevertheless, important meetings that require ample preparation need a certain structure and a flow. The agenda may be outlined in bullet points or in table format wherein objectives, action items, and persons responsible are duly assigned. 

Step 4: Open Items

Many meetings end with clear resolutions; but others leave more questions than answers. A lot of times, meetings are adjourned but not without noting the open items or agenda that need to be taken up at a later time. These tasks or recommendations are normally reserved for  further discussion then followed up in the coming meetings. For example, the minutes of a weekly team meeting will culminate with a quick rundown of things to do or goals to accomplish. So by the next team meeting, these open items may then be closed.   

FAQs

How do you write meeting minutes for a team?

If you are tasked to take minutes of the meeting, you need to make sure your notes are accurate and organized. Minutes are usually cascaded after the meeting so there is ample time for the secretary or whoever is assigned to refine and polish the minutes. It is best to follow a format when recording the minutes. Always indicate the basic information, the agenda or program, and the action items and/or recommendations.

How detailed should meeting minutes be?

Generally, you want your team meeting minutes to be detailed but brief enough that it more or less summarizes the key discussion points in a meeting. What matters is ensuring that accurate information is documented in the minutes. On the other hand, providing too many unnecessary or insignificant details is inadvisable and can be counterproductive.

What are the qualities of a good minutes of the meeting?

According to an article by Process PA, the qualities of a good minutes of the meeting fulfills the following criteria: it records attendance, decisions and actions are mentioned, reports and other relevant files are present, a structured format is used, and copies of the minutes is distributed promptly after the meeting is adjourned.

Team meetings can be productive and fulfilling; or they can be dull and a complete waste of time. A proper agenda is needed and digression from the agenda should be minimized as much as possible. At the end of the day, the bottom line is meetings are meant to be a good use of people’s time. Browse the wide selection of sample minutes and download a template for your next team meeting!