Five levels of note-taking in meetings

level 0: no one takes notes

Few things confuse me as much as being a meeting with no one taking notes. Is everyone’s memory so much better than my own? Is what’s being said just not that important? Are people fine with only retaining a few things and nothing else?

Luckily I’m not alone. Johanna Rothman seems to agree with me, at least for essential meetings:¹

If a meeting is essential, it will have an agenda. It will have minutes. It will have a list of action items, and someone will manage them so that people are accountable for their action items.
- Modern Management Made Easy by Johanna Rothman

That’s why it’s level 0. There’s no reason to ever be at this level. Borrow some pen and paper. use your phone. The least you can do is take notes for yourself.

level 1: take notes for yourself

There are multiple reasons I like to take notes for myself during meetings. Often enough I have trouble staying focused during a meeting. Taking notes helps my mind not to wander off.

Taking notes also helps me remember what important things where said during a meeting. I have learned from experience that relying only my memory won’t be enough. Taking notes helps with remembering in two ways. First of all, the act of taking notes helps my memory - even if I never return to my notes again. Secondly, for what I don’t remember, I can refer to my notes both during and after the meeting.

Which brings us to a key skill for note-taking. The ability to listen to being what’s being said, to identify what’s of importance and then to write that down. And then to do that in parallel, because people are not going to stop talking, just for you take your notes. It’s an interesting thing to notice yourself doing. It’s more about letting your mind and body take care of things, than of actively being involved in doing it.

Another benefit I experience from taking notes for myself is that it helps me to listen to understand, rather than listen to respond. I need to understand what someone is saying to be able to take note(s) of what they just said. I also don’t need to keep track in my head of all the things I wanted to say. The things I want to respond to, are in my notes. So I can just mark those or even add a few words to my notes as a reminder.

So in short, taking notes for myself allows me to engage more fully in the meeting. I can participate in the moment, because there’s a lot less I need to consciously keep track of.

level 2: one person takes notes and shares afterwards

One step up from taking notes for yourself is one person taking notes and sharing those with the other participants afterwards. It’s far from great, though, because of the power dynamics it creates.

Note-taking tends to be seen as a low-status job. It’s what important men hire women for to do for them. So being the person who takes notes, makes you the least important person in the room. You’re no longer participating in the meeting, you’re serving the meeting - and thus the people in it. So if you ask who wants to take notes, you’re asking if someone wants to reduce their status in the meeting. And if you volunteer to take notes…

As someone who ticks almost every privilege checkbox out there, I’m not the best person to speak to this topic or share experiences. In most situations I can afford to be the person taking notes. And if I want to be a good ally, I have two options. Volunteer to take notes and try to give it more status. Or change how the meeting is run and move the note-taking to one of the levels I describe below.

Now you might say that with note-taking comes a certain kind of power. Deciding what gets recorded and how. While that’s definitely true, I don’t think it offsets the low status of note-taking at this level. Rather, the power in note-taking is part of the power of facilitating the meeting. Which is something that happens in the next levels, but not really on this one.

level 3: one person takes notes and shares during

Another thing that confuses me in meeting is when people don’t share things. Instead of using a whiteboard, they talk about what they see in their head. Instead of sharing their screen, they talk about what they see on their screen. Instead of sharing the notes as they make them, they keep them to themselves until after the meeting. It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you share your notes as you’re making them, they become a shared tool. They become an active part of the meeting. Participants can see how the notes are taking shape. They can ask to include or exclude certain things. They can ask for something to be phrased differently. They can refer to the notes, when they want to comment on something.

level 4: collaborative note-taking

A small but significant step up from the previous level, is taking the notes in a collaborative tool all the participants have access to. It turns the notes into a shared responsibility. The notes become something you work on together as part of the meeting.

That’s not to say everyone should equally contribute to the notes. Some people might not be comfortable doing so. Perhaps they can’t type that fast or accurately, especially in public. Perhaps they’re dyslexic. Perhaps they have bad experiences with being volunteered to take notes. The reason doesn’t matter. As long as there are several people involved in taking the notes. The test for this level is that when you’re taking notes and then start to say something, someone else takes over taking notes.

level 5: note-taking is part of the meeting

The difference between this level and the previous one can be subtle, but it is there. At this level the note-taking is an integral part of how the meeting works. Think of writing post-its, either of the physical or the virtual kind. Or of several people collaborating at a whiteboard.

The notes become more than a tool for recording what was said, they become a tool to structure the meeting. They aid in giving shape to what’s being said and how. That does mean that sometimes it’ll take some effort to turn these notes into something that’s useful long-term. To me, that’s worth it, because the more a meeting resembles a workshop, the better the meeting usually is.

Facilitating the work is part of the work

In her post “The Mental Load of One Meeting” Elizabeth Zagroba² writes:

a lot of work is the work of noticing what work needs doing.

Showing up to a meeting ready to say things, is not enough. That’s not noticing a lot of the work that goes into a good meeting. Tending to the environment in which the work takes place - facilitating the work - is part of the work.