Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Association held on Wednesday, November 10, 2004 at the Renaissance Hotel in Asheville.  Should you have any questions, comments or corrections, please contact Bridget Downey PHR.

Chapter Business:

Renee Anderson opened the meeting and presented the panel of officers for 2005:

          President:  Carolyn Worthington

          Past President:  Renee Anderson

          Vice President-Elect:  Kim Moser
          Secretary:  Bridget Downey

          Treasurer/Certification Representative:  Lorraine Poe

          Vice President, Membership:  Mike Neely

          Vice President, Programs:  Carol Rovello 

A motion was made to accept the revised bylaws, and was accepted by the membership.

 

Renee welcomed visitors and new members.

Frank Pomeroy introduced this month’s featured vendor:

Cookies by Design 

The Sweetest Bouquet in Town^®

23 Haywood St., Asheville, NC 28803
(828) 253-9455

Tamara Strents brought cookie gift boxes for each person attending, and gave us a brief profile of the business and its benefits for HR professionals.  Cookies can be ordered on the Internet at http://www.cookiesbydesign.com/. 

 Program Highlights:

Carol Rovello introduced Patricia Digh, a renowned diversity expert who worked with SHRM to develop their diversity program and the Mosaics publication.  Patty is glad to be back in WNC, having moved here two years ago from Washington, DC. 

The objectives for the workshop included:

·        Learn more about what culture is and how it impacts us at work.

·        Two tools to deal with cultural differences.

Patty opened the workshop with a simple exercise that demonstrated how powerful a change in perspective can be.  She spoke a little about her book based on interviews with 78 CEOs in 30 countries.  It details the competencies needed to survive in business.  She stressed the point by relating the story of  how Boeing’s CEO used his knowledge of Korea’s culture to help save lives in a crisis situation.

Using an exercise that showed the different ways we each perceive the spoken word, Patti demonstrated the importance of understanding the filters through which we look at the world.  Following an event through the different stages of input, stimulus, filter, assumption & action shows us how many different reactions can come from a single action. 

Culture is the largest filter we encounter.  We see what we expect to see.  Culture is a comfort zone.  Predictability makes us more comfortable.  Cultures with shared norms are more comfortable interacting with each other.  One useful way of looking at differences is to think, “What an interesting cultural norm.  It must represent some value I don’t currently understand.”

Cultural differences can include values, communication styles and non-verbal behaviors.  At 18 months humans begin to build values.  They are pretty much set at age twenty.  As in an iceberg, it is the stuff below the water line that causes conflict. 

Patti closed with an exercise featuring sentences with words missing, duplicated, or altered.  Most of us didn’t notice the errors, proving again that we see what we expect to see.

With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.