Share with us a difficult or challenging situation you have encountered and how you dealt with it. In your response, identify both the coping skills you called upon to resolve the dilemma, and the support person(s) from whom you sought advice. We suggest that you limit your essay to about 550 words\
In an organization I lead, I became best friends with another member a year younger than me. She eventually became the president after me, who I helped oversee along with the rest of the leadership team when i was in college. Her work was never perfect, but we chose her as president because of her commitment to the org for so many years. But this year, her performance started getting really bad, to the point it was damaging our reputation and organization. She didn't improve despite multiple pushes from me, and it came time to make the decision to remove her. Decision was extremely difficult because this had never been done before and we had a really close friendship. I sought advice from the founder (an adult and my mentor) who supported me on how to approach the situation carefully. He offered to break the news for me, but it was my responsibility and I felt it should come from me.
I told her, explained our reasoning, and she lashed out more than I expected. She was very emotional, all but quit from her board duties, and basically stopped talking to me. I immediately felt very guilty that i had made the wrong decision and lost a friend. But I spoke with the rest of the team and a mutual friend who agreed my decision was for the best and offered tips on how I might repair the relationship, if I wanted. Guilt turned into frustration and I had a lot of feelings about how my friend acted. I like journaling and wrote about how I felt to decide to process what i'd like to do about the situation. i decided to give her a second chance and reached out to ask fi she was okay and to explain again that this wasn't a personal judgement. We started a conversation and she immediately apologized for being immature.
Long story short, resolved our conflict, friends again, and she continues to support the organization.
