Minute Taking and Meeting Management

Minute Taking and Meeting Management is a five-day senior-level professional development course delivered by Mars Training Centre in London, Dubai, Doha, Manama and Vienna — designed for executive assistants, committee secretaries, board administrators and senior office professionals responsible for the meetings that decisions are made in.

A well-run meeting and a well-written minute are quietly powerful things. They turn discussion into decision, they protect the organisation against future ambiguity, they make legal and regulatory defensibility possible, and they free senior leaders to focus on substance rather than reconstruction. The professionals who do this work well — board secretaries, executive assistants supporting C-suite leaders, committee clerks in regulated industries — are not simply scribes. They are the keepers of institutional memory, governance discipline and follow-through.

Across five focused days you will work through the full meeting life cycle: agenda design, preparation, in-room minute craft, formal versus action-based minute styles, governance and audit defensibility, and the technology that increasingly supports the work without replacing it. The cases are drawn from the United Kingdom, Europe, the Gulf and Asia, and the work is delivered by senior practitioners with board-secretariat and executive-administration experience.

What You Will Learn

• Distinguish between formal minutes, action minutes and verbatim records, and choose the right style for each meeting.
• Design an agenda that supports productive decision-making rather than just chronicling discussion.
• Prepare for a meeting in a way that makes the minutes possible to write in real time.
• Take accurate, defensible notes in fast-moving meetings without missing the substance.
• Draft minutes that are clear, neutral and legally defensible.
• Capture decisions, dissent and conflicts of interest with the right level of formality.
• Manage the post-meeting follow-through — actions, owners and accountability.
• Support board and committee governance with documents that meet regulatory scrutiny.
• Use modern meeting and minute technology without losing the judgement that paper and pen taught.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with a sharper professional method for meetings and minutes, together with a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain an administrative professional whose meetings produce clearer decisions, whose minutes withstand audit and legal review, and whose follow-through closes the actions that normally drift.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior administrative and governance professionals, including executive assistants supporting C-suite leaders; board secretaries and company secretaries; committee secretaries and governance officers; senior office managers running executive offices; public-sector administrative leads supporting senior officials; and regulatory and compliance coordinators with minute-taking duties. The seniority floor is senior professional or senior administrative level.

How the Week Unfolds

Day one asks what makes a meeting worth the minutes: agenda design, papers, purpose, and the preparation that makes a good record possible. Day two builds the in-room craft of taking notes that will become minutes, capturing substance in fast-moving discussion without transcribing everything. Day three focuses on drafting minutes that stand up to scrutiny: clarity, neutrality, and the right level of formality for decisions, dissent and conflicts of interest. Day four covers governance, compliance and the post-meeting discipline of actions, owners and accountability, including documents that meet regulatory scrutiny. Day five consolidates the week with meeting and minute technology, faculty coaching and a personal action plan.