Teryl @ Work

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel has always fascinated me.   Not least because I have never been good at languages, having struggled with both Afrikaans and Latin at school, even though I come from a multilingual family.     Back to Babel, though, and the story that the people of Shinar built a tower to reach heaven, and the Lord came to earth, and saw that people with one language could be unstoppable in their achievements, both good and bad.   And so He "confounded" their language and "scattered" the people. In South Africa, we have 11 official languages.   At  +Accsys (Pty) Ltd  I have done a rough count and have come to the view that we have around 20 languages either spoken or understood in the company. When I put out the blog on exclusion being a variation of bullying, I started to receive feedback about people feeling excluded because of language.   While a number shared that they didn't feel it was malicious, just that people a...

Workplace bullying is widespread, that is very clear from the research I have done over the past year.  I have also received mails and responses to my first article, which indicates bullying in the workplace is ongoing.   While there are many, many definitions, case studies and examples, Tim Field's (footnote) is a very clear one. Being bullied is not about one isolated incident, it is about consistent negative behaviour that damages self image to a point where the bullied leaves, and the bully remains, sometimes with greater status. South African business writer, Ian Mann, in his book "Managing with Intent" covers self image and how to manage people more effectively by taking their self image into account.  In a bullying situation, the opposite is often true.   If you have seen the Meryl Streep/Anne Hathaway movie "The Devil wears Prada" or the TV show "Ugly Betty", you will have seen workplace bullying entrenched into the business model.  ...