Posts filed under ‘Life’
Is your boss a bully? Here’s how to deal
By Alina Dizik
The wrath of a bullying boss is something many workers will face during their career. In a 2010 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an organization devoted to raising awareness about bullying in the workplace, 35 percent of workers say they’ve experience bullying firsthand and an additional 15 percent have witnessed it. Most of the time it’s same-gender harassment.
Bing: Know your workplace rights
“A manager who is overly watchful, aggressive and unreasonable in his or her demands can be a workplace bully,” explains Stacy Harris, director of human resources at Bersin & Associates, a research and advisory services firm.
Is your boss the bullying kind? Here how to deal:
Acknowledge the problem
Making excuses for your boss or blaming yourself for the problem can prevent you from taking steps to solve the problem. Acknowledging that there’s a problem and that it’s not your fault are important first steps. Understanding that you did not invite the problem is crucial, says Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute.
Don’t let go of your self-esteem
“People who bully feel weak and vulnerable. Making other people feel small makes them feel bigger,” says workplace consultant Esther Derby, president of Esther Derby Associates in Minneapolis. With constant pressure from your boss, it can be easy to forget how difficult bullying can be on your psyche. Spend time with friends and family, volunteering or participating in projects at work away from your boss and department. Seeing your value outside of your bullying boss will give you more strength to address the problem.
Have a measured response
Before speaking up, it’s important to build your case. Take notes to catalog the specific incidents and find out if others have complained about this person. Get a well-rounded picture. Additionally, be sure to manage your own aggression or hostility. While it can be easy to act unprofessionally toward a bullying boss, having a measured response will help you build a stronger case. “Meeting aggression with aggression can cause the situation to spiral out of control. You don’t want to turn into a jerk to tame a jerk,” Derby explains. “Accept that you can’t change the person and change your response.”
Present your problems to the right person
Knowing whom to turn to in the case of a bullying boss can be tricky. Unless your relationship with your boss is completely strained, it’s better to build your case and first let your boss know that you are unhappy with the way you’re being treated. Remember to document the response in the form of an e-mail or your own notes.
If the conversation did not have the results you hoped for, it may be time to turn to someone higher up at the company. Don’t start with your boss’s superior, who has likely seen another side of your boss, Derby says. “Many bullies behave very differently when they aren’t in a position of power, so their manager may see a very different sort of behavior from that person,” she says. A human resources representative can be another wrong turn and may simply tiptoe around the problem. “HR’s job is to protect the company’s interests, not the individual employee’s interests,” Derby says. “The higher in the management chain the abuser is, the less likely that HR will take action.”
Instead, opt for the highest-ranking official who would be able to hear you out in a respectful manner. It can be difficult to find the right person, but starting with a vice president or senior manager who can have an impact on personnel issues may be your best bet.
Consider switching gears
If there’s no way to work out a solution, it may be up to you to leave the company, which is common for those dealing with bullying bosses. “People who have options usually leave rather than put up with a bully boss,” Derby says. “Often the people who stay are the ones who are too beaten down to see other options for themselves.”
Alina Dizik researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues for CareerBuilder.com. Follow @CareerBuilder on Twitter.
Copyright 2011 CareerBuilder.com. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without prior written authority.
Ethiopian Church Burnings Incited by Extremists, Meles Says
By William Davison
March 14 (Bloomberg) — Church burnings in southwestern Ethiopia that left at least one person dead were incited by an extremist Islamic group, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said.
Evangelical churches in Assendabo, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa, and other towns in the Jimma region were torched earlier this month. At least 46 of the churches belonged to the Kale Heywot faith and 23 more to other groups, according to Kale Heywot Church General Secretary Tesfaye Abadura. A Kale Heywot bible school and office have been destroyed and as many as 7,000 people have been displaced, Tesfaye said in a phone interview on March 12.
Those responsible for inciting the attacks are believed to be preachers from the Islamist Kawarja group, Meles told reporters in Addis Ababa on March 12.
“We believe there are elements of the Kawarja sect and other extremists who have been preaching religious intolerance in the area,” Meles said. “In previous times, we have cracked down on Kawarja because they were involved in violence. Since then they have changed their tactics and they have been able to camouflage their activities through legal channels.”
The attacks began when Christians were arrested after an unidentified Muslim individual accusing them of flushing a Koran down a church toilet, Tesfaye said.
“After that Muslims came together and burned the churches, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’,” he said.
Seid Asmare, spokesman for the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council, said he couldn’t immediately comment because he was in a meeting when called on his mobile phone today.
Incidents of religious strife in Ethiopia are rare, though there have been fatal sectarian clashes in the southwest in recent years. Ethiopia’s population includes 34 percent Muslims and 63 percent Christians, according to the CIA World Factbook.
A report on the church burnings by the Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia will be delivered on March 16, Zerihun Degu, general secretary of the council, said by phone today.
–Editors: Paul Richardson, Karl Maier.
To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa via Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
Ethiopia outsources telecom management to France Telecom
By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia signed an agreement late on Thursday to outsource the management of its sole telecoms provider to France Telecom as it seeks to improve coverage and service.
The agreement marks the first foray by a foreign company into Ethiopia’s state-owned telecoms industry, which remains one of Africa’s few remaining government monopolies in the sector.
The management of Ethio Telecom will be taken over by the France Telecom for two years, in a deal worth 30 million euros for the French company, the state-owned monopoly said.
“France Telecom will strive to improve and modernise Ethio Telecom’s overall business aspect by implementing a new organisational structure,” it said in a statement.
Ethiopia has the second highest population in Africa after Nigeria but has one of the least developed telecoms industries on a continent where mobile phone use is exploding.
Mobile phone usage is about 5 percent out of a total population of more than 80 million people. In neighbouring Kenya, mobile penetration is more than 50 percent.
The Ethiopian government has invested heavily in its telecoms industry in the past few years in a bid to boost communication flows and reduce rates, including an 80 Gigabyte fibre network via the Port of Sudan landing station.
Chinese telecoms equipment maker ZTE bagged a contract from Ethiopia in 2008 to build next-generation telecoms networks in 14 cities.
The Horn of Africa nation, however, has so far shrugged off calls by the International Monetary Fund and other agencies to liberalise its telecoms sector.
© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
Ethiopia feeding the world but not its own
Photo: Marguerite Pettit
The African nation of Ethiopia has struggled with war, famine and drought for decades, yet today’s government is aggressively pursuing a policy that is seeing large tracts or fertile land sold to foreign entities with little or no benefit to Ethiopians. Ethiopia’s Ambassador to India Gennet Zewide is encouraging investment in agriculture at a cost to private companies she describes as ‘negligible’.
Ethiopia’s Constitution prohibits private ownership of land, instead it vests ownership and control in the State. However the Ethiopian government is offering long term leases to foreign owned entities, essentially forbidding their own citizens from land ownership while encouraging foreign possession.
The economic advantages to Ethiopians from this style of investment may be just as negligible as the cost of investment. In a country where 13 million people still rely on food aid, and the conditions for growing crops are fragile, exporting food to India and other countries will entrench existing problems.
A recent report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization et al warns that although land in Africa may seem abundant and available existing land users often lack the means to register title or claim the land they are using. Many land users are marginalized from mechanisms allowing them to demonstrate ownership.
Understanding the scale of the development is extremely difficult due to the overlapping regional and national registers as well as the likelihood of undocumented land deals. The Oromia state investment promotion agency revealed 22 actual or existing land deals, while their national counterpart boasts 148 deals.
Indian firms are certainly not the only ones buying up valuable land in Ethiopia, the Saudi’s are also heavily investing in the region. What is troubling is that the government’s eagerness to secure such investment may come at the price of securing its citizens basic human rights to food, water and shelter. Given Ethiopia’s Constitutional view that private property rights do not exist, their willingness to lease their land to foreign owned entities is worrying.
Ethiopia is in the bottom 5 in Global hunger index
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide, released its annual 2010 Global Hunger Index. The report notes; whereas some strides have been made to curb global hunger, “the index for hunger in the world remains at a level characterized as “serious.””
With over “one billion hungry people” around the world, the report offers an interesting look at the “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which include a goal of reducing the proportion of hungry people by half” by the 2015 deadline (i.e. in five more years). “Low government effectiveness, conflict, political instability, and high rates of HIV and AIDS” are cited as “among the major factors” perpetuating the problem in Sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Eritrea exhibit an extremely alarming level of hunger, another 21 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have an alarming hunger level.
The report credits Ethiopia, along with Angola, Ghana, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Vietnam, for making the largest improvements between 1990 and 2010. IFPRI has a regional office based in Ethiopia. Ranked 80th out of 84 countries included in the report, Ethiopia’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) dropped from 43.7 to 29.8 in two decade’s time (it is an open question whether that is supposed to be a noteworthy progress for TPLF’s ironfisted rule in the last 20 years).According to the report, 51% of children in Ethiopia are stunted (a measure of child undernourishment that is characterized by low height for one’s age). Ethiopia is also noted as a recipient of USAID’s, Feed the Future, a U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative that aims to spend “$3.5 billion” on developing country’s investment plans to reduce poverty, improve nutrition and agriculture.
The 2010 GHI report earns yet another ignoble distinction for Ethiopia in addition to already being named;
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In the “bottom five based on access to basic education, teacher-student ratio, and educational provisions for girls” along with lawless Somalia, a disaster raven Haiti and the rogue state of Eritrea;
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And the worst place where press freedom has immensely deteriorated, if any existed.
Ethiopia is now the 5th hungriest place on Earth worse than Sierra Leone, Haiti and many other war-ravaged nations even in the sub-Saharan Africa. Zimbabwe and Sudan are tied at 58th, fared much better than Ethiopia with 20.9 GHI score.
The full Report in PDF: Click to launch the full edition in a new window.
Ethiopia defeat Madagascar 1-0
By Getachew Teklu |
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Ethiopia secured a surprise 1-0 away win over Madagascar in Group B of the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers on Sunday. The win puts them level on three points with Nigeria and Guinea who play later on Sunday in Conakry. Ethiopia lost their opening game at home when they were beaten 4-1 by Addis Ababa last month. The win revives Ethiopia’s hopes of qualifying for the tournament to be held in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Nigeria will host Ethiopia in Abuja in their next game in March next year while Guinea will travel to face Madagascar. |
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Major new energy issues are about to transform
Major new energy issues are about to transform still further the strategic balance of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, with foreseeable consequences for the global energy market over the coming decade. Soon-to-be-evident new wealth in the Red Sea/Horn of Africa region will transform the intensity of conflict there, which in turn will affect not only the region, but the world’s most important trading route: the Red Sea/Suez sea line of communication (SLOC). Read more: http://oilprice.com/Geo-Politics/Africa/Energy-and-Security-Issues-in-the-Red-Sea-Transforming-as-the-Age-of-Gas-Begins-in-Earnest.html
It’s never too late….To Plant a Tree
By Patrick Lindsay
Think of it putting something back into the earth.
Most of the time we take from it.
Help redress the balance.
Plant a new life. Nurture it.
Take pleasure in watching it grow.
After you plant one, you’ll want to plant more.
Nurture them.
Encourage others to do the same.
“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her”
William Wordsworth
Cooking Ethiopian, on Top Chef!
(TsehaiNY) – Tonight on Top Chef, the popular culinary competition reality show, contestants will be challenged on preparing Ethiopian cuisine. The show will air on Bravo, an NBC/Universal Network.
Ethiopian-Top Chef Masters 2 winner-Marcus Samuelson will judge tonight’s competition.
In the elimination round chefs will have to create a dish based on one of the foreign embassies in Washington, D.C. Established chef ambassadors and dignitaries representing foreign embassies in Washington, D.C. will be present to lend a hand during elimination round.
Source: Tsehany.com
Health Care Non-Solutions
By James Kwak
Ezra Klein makes an important point about our nation’s health care problem: it’s not just a government deficit problem. The underlying problem is that health care costs are not only growing faster than prices (inflation), but also faster than GDP (economic growth), and as a result the amount of stuff we as a nation will be able to afford, other than health care, will start to go down at some point in the future. (Picture originally from Joseph Newhouse in Health Affairs.)
This means that proposals to solve the long-term budget deficit problem by cutting Medicare benefits are not solutions: they simply shift the problem from the government to individuals–which means they shift the problem from us as taxpayers to us as old people or us as family members of old people.* If, for example, we increase the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, the government saves money, but only because people who are 65 and 66 lose money–or, alternatively, all of us lose money because their employers now have to pay more for health care. To read more visit:http://baselinescenario.com/2010/08/04/health-care-non-solutions/?
Source: Baseline Scenario
