The UNC Kenan-Flagler community lives by its core values. Pick a core value that resonates most deeply with you. Identify the most challenging situation that you have encountered and how you responded while upholding that core value

Silence. The last thing I want to hear when asking for a status update on my conference call. The topic of the call is unpopular with the technicians in attendance because I’m working to standardize practices across multiple warehouses, some of which have been siloed with internal processes for years, and the technicians are unwilling to comply. To be successful, I demonstrated strong leadership, the core value that resonates most with me.

Recently promoted to Automation Engineer, I am working to improve the accuracy of an A-Frame (an automated picking machine) by standardizing the way technicians configure product on it. Since asking a group of headstrong A-Frame technicians for suggestions on how to standardize methods was not working, I developed a new plan with a colleague. We would pull statistics for each warehouse and use A-Frame performance data to establish standardized configurations; those warehouses who performed best in one area would be asked to record their settings and share them with the remaining warehouses, keeping egos and subjectivity out. While we still had tough conversations with technicians that refused to record their settings, the standardization ultimately paid off, reducing A-Frame errors across the company and improving order accuracy to customers.

This situation showed me that strong leaders must sometimes make unpopular decisions when facing adversity to create positive change, which is why leadership resonates most deeply with me. I could have given into the technicians’ wishes at the beginning of the project, but I persevered and improved our order accuracy.