"In the ten years I have worked with my current team of field technicians, our solid relationships and ability to function as a team have made us such a highly productive team. We are all friends and know each other personally very well and I really love working in this environment. I experienced the only downside to this type of environment a few years ago when a colleague of mine was blatantly disobeying several company policies and the disregard was harming the well-being of the organization. I considered this colleague a personal friend and when I noticed that he was using work time to handle personal business on a regular basis and taking company property home, I first addressed my concerns directly with him to give him the opportunity to correct his actions on his own. When things didn't get better after a month, I approached our manager with what was happening. My manager was very appreciative that I had first approached my colleague first. After a brief investigation, I was sad to hear that the colleague had been terminated from his job. In the end, I believe in doing what is right and stealing from the company warrants harsh consequences. I felt I did what is right by giving the colleague the opportunity to correct it first, and he obviously wasn't ready to do that."

"Early in my career working as a Sales Rep for a small distributor of food products, I was asked to fire sale some products that were very close to their expiration date. The direction from my manager was to try and get them onto the orders of regular customers and to just discount the pricing on the invoices. I immediately objected and let my manager know that I thought our customers should be aware. My idea was to approach high-volume customers that could turn the product over on short notice and I had an idea of the customers I could approach with the fire sale pricing. My manager agreed that this was a much better approach and it really worked out great with a few high-volume customers. Since that day, I've never hesitated to question things that I didn't think were ethical and I always take this approach to my work in sales."

"When I was volunteering, I had a colleague who was very negative and constantly complained during team meetings and projects. It was affecting the team's morale, and others began joining in. I felt like I had a good relationship with this colleague, for the most part, so I asked her to have lunch together one day. I asked her how things were going both at home and work, and she shared a lot of frustrations and problems she was having. I was gentle but honest with her about how others perceived her and the impact she was having on the team. I let her know that as a senior volunteer on the team, others look up to her and often follow her lead and attitude. I wasn't sure how she would take it, but I felt like I had to have an open conversation with her and give her an opportunity to self-reflect and make changes before going to our manager. I feel like she appreciated me coming to her one-off and having the courage to have the tough conversation, and by talking about it openly and in a non-confrontation way, it did improve our team."