It’s my experience that assistants are generally in one of three camps when it comes to recording meetings. Some lack confidence and find it challenging to identify what and how much to record, or when attribution is appropriate. Others are confident despite not having refreshed such skills in years. In the third camp, we have assistants who periodically invest care in ensuring their minutes reflect current standards and expectations.

Are you looking for training on minutes via webinar? Please click here to see my current offerings.

Training: In person and through live and on demand webinars

Could you or your team use help with minutes? I’m here to help! You’ll find below links to some of my articles, and to my training presentation. I provide a two-hour webinar to help you build confidence in preparing quality minutes, and offer additional webinars and in person training sessions on meeting practices and business writing.

I offer a range of presentations and courses to help enhance skills in recording meetings. Please click here to see my current minutes webinar, and have a look at the following list of meetings- and minutes-related training I deliver. When presenting in person for conferences and employee groups, I customize my training to address your priorities and the length of time you’d like to dedicate to a specific learning session.

• The Truth About Minutes, and How to Elevate Yours
• How to Optimize Committee Operations and Meetings
• Rethinking Meeting Dynamics and Engagement
• Business Writing Skills for Our Hybrid World

However those who participate in my in person and webinar audiences feel about minutes before we get together, I can help. Whether you record board meetings or less formal decision making gatherings, core principles apply. I don’t promise to make it easy to prepare quality minutes, or that people will love doing so. If it was easy, people wouldn’t find the task frustrating or daunting. I do promise to help attendees remain current, reduce frustrations and enhance their skills. Participants gain deserved confidence in their capacity to meet stakeholders’ needs, and everyone wins. Workplaces will have relevant historical records, and colleagues can look forward to an elevated quality of minutes.

If you’re looking for engaging, upbeat and impactful training on minutes for your event, I encourage you to have a look at my references and contact me. Here are some samples of clients’ reactions to the minutes training I deliver on preparing minutes.

Sarah Howson, founder of the Strategic PA Network, following a network-sponsored webinar: “From templates to use, to being neutral when recording, to using adjectives, to understanding exactly why minutes are required and the legality issues behind them, understanding why they are such an important element of an EA’s role … Shelagh kindly covered so much ground in her presentation. Her energy and upbeat tempo was infectious. We loved how the chat was on FIRE throughout! A huge thank you, Shelagh – invaluable session, a brilliant end to the year!”

Additional client feedback – excerpts from webinar evaluations: “I loved the slides!” … “Shelagh turns a mundane subject into a lively presentation! Her sense of humor and creative slide images add value to the presentation. I highly recommend attending Shelagh’s seminar. I will definitely attend future seminars presented by her.” … “Sheila was an excellent speaker and brought up many relevant and new perspectives. I’ve been a EA for over 20 years …” … “The material was easy to follow, it was clear and concise just as Shelagh teaches our minutes should be. The personal examples were also very helpful putting everything into context.” … “Your advice was both practical and inspirational and, whilst I will never enjoy writing minutes I will not dread them quite so much in future and will complete them as quickly as possible.” … “I loved that Shelagh gave examples to us through out her presentation. She was well prepared and able to explain the reason behind her recommendations.” … “Thank you Shelagh for reinforcing that I am pretty much on the right track with my minutes. Having previously been lacking in confidence and motivation I feel I am in a much better place to take on my next Senior Management meeting.” … “Very good tips” … “There were many ‘a-ha’ moments during the webinar … Many things made me feel like I was on the right track and others made me glad I had taken this webinar!” …”I liked that it was what I signed up for and that there were pics and a workbook to follow up with.” … “Your slide decks are always well prepared, engaging, and informative.”

General references: Please click here for additional references.

Articles and podcast

• Are Your Minutes Objective?
• More Than 100 Verbs to Elevate Your Minutes
• Grammatical Tips
• Homophones: Watch for Autocorrect and Your Own Grammar

Drop me an email at exceptionaleas@gmail.com

or click here to begin our conversation online