Who Put Me in Charge…of the Minutes?

In our Leading Out Loud (Even If It’s Awkward) series, Sarah Toledo, College Director Principal, explores the subtle ways meeting roles shape who leads and who stays unseen.

It starts quietly. There is a pause, a glance around the table, that small, almost invisible moment where something needs doing and no one quite wants to claim it. Responsibility hangs in the air for a second too long, and somehow it lands on you. Me. Her.

The laptop opens, not because you volunteered, not really, but out of instinct. You hear it before you have even fully registered what is happening. ‘You’re so organised.’ ‘Do you mind taking notes?’ ‘You look ready.’ ‘Could you just capture the actions?’ And just like that, you are no longer simply in the meeting, you are documenting it. By some kind of unspoken consensus, you have become the unofficial archivist of everyone else’s ideas and opinions. Again.

Let me be clear. This is not about minutes. We have all done our time. This is about something else entirely. It is about who gets to participate and who gets to record. It’s about power.

Because the person taking the minutes is rarely the one driving the conversation or shaping decisions. They are rarely the one people remember afterwards. Instead, they are busy keeping up, writing everything down, trying not to miss anything, existing in that uncomfortable space of being half in the room and half outside of it. And if you are a woman in that room, this is probably not the first time it has happened.

It is a pattern. Not a loud one, not something anyone announces, but consistent enough to be predictable. It shows up as helpfulness, as teamwork, as ‘just pitching in.’ It sounds harmless, but it is not. Beneath it sits a quieter, more persistent expectation that women will pick up the work that keeps everything moving. The organising, the tracking, the remembering. The things that make everyone else look good.

You can be the most senior woman in the room. You can be leading the project. You can have the strongest point to make. And still, somehow, you end up scribbling down what everyone else said. Not because you are the best person for it, but because you are the easiest person to ask, or not even ask, just look at.

We are conditioned to notice what needs doing and just do it. Smooth the edges, fill the gaps, keep things moving. Organisations, whether they realise it or not, rely on that. And to be fair, it works. Meetings run more smoothly when someone is capturing actions. Projects stay on track when someone is following up. Teams function better when someone is quietly holding the threads together.

The issue is not that this work exists. The issue is who is expected to carry it, and what it costs them.

Because every time you are the one taking the minutes, you are not the one fully participating. Your attention is split. You are editing in real time, deciding what matters

enough to capture, trying to keep pace with the conversation. And in doing so, you miss the moment to challenge something, to build on an idea, or to say the thing you were actually there to say.

Visibility matters. And no one builds a reputation for leadership off the back of excellent note-taking. No one. What does happen, however, is that people get overlooked because they were not heard.

This is how it happens. Not through big, dramatic decisions, but through small, reasonable, entirely justifiable moments. ‘I’ll just do it.’ ‘It’s fine.’ ‘It’s only notes.’ Until it isn’t. Until it becomes a pattern, then a reputation, then an expectation. Reliable. Organised. Great support. Not seen as the one leading.

And we are not entirely passive in this either. We fill the silence. We step in. We tell ourselves it is quicker to do it than to make it a thing. We have been taught that being helpful is a strength, and it is, until it starts costing you visibility.

So what do we do?

We start by noticing. Who gets asked and who does not. Who automatically picks up the pen and who never does. Who does the asking. And then, uncomfortably, we interrupt it. Not with a speech or a confrontation, but with a small shift. A simple, ‘I took them last time, can someone else grab them’ or ‘I’d like to focus on contributing today, can we rotate notes?’ Enough to break the pattern.

It might feel awkward, because it is awkward. But so is the realisation, months later, that you have been present in every meeting and barely in any of them.

For those leading meetings, this requires attention too. Who do you look at when you ask? If it is always the same type of person, that is not coincidence, it is conditioning. And that is how culture gets built. In small, repeated behaviours that go unquestioned.

So change it. Assign it. Rotate it. Or better yet, question whether it needs to exist in the way it always has.

None of this is about refusing to contribute. It is about refusing to quietly disappear while you do.

So the next time the room goes quiet and the question hangs in the air, ‘Who’s taking the minutes?’, resist the instinct to fill the silence. Let it sit. Look around.

And ask yourself this: if you are always the one writing the conversation down, when exactly do you get to be part of it?

And then, if you need to, do not pick up the pen.