Best Personal Leadership Story My best leadership story came last summer while I was employed with Staples in a small town known as Brownwood, Texas. Our store consisted of a general manager, three supervisors, and five sales associates. Since I was just working for that summer, I was one of the five sales associates. One day while I was working the customer service desk, our general manager and the supervisor that were on the clock, assisted with a fundraiser event Staples sponsored. Even though I worked the least amount of time out of all the sales associates while at the same time, my boss decided to place me in charge over them. They were gone for no more than 20 minutes and chaos broke out in the store. We had about 50 customers within 20 minutes and at the same time we had our freight truck show up about 14 hours early. Already understaffed, I had to come up with a way for the customers to be happy with our service but at the same time unload the truck in a reasonable amount of time. I was able to calm down the chaos by placing people around the store in the most efficient spot while I unloaded the whole truck with the truck driver. We were able to work at the highest efficiency possible, which allowed for the customers to leave happy and with the right products they came in looking for. A week after that day, my boss received a total number of 11 complements either by email, phone or people visiting the store again. Some of the complements ranged from: “That son did a great job holding down the fort” and “I have never had as great of service as I did that day.” After my boss read all the complements and say the performance for that day, he took everyone who worked that shift out for a dinner on him. This is my best leadership story because I have never been in charge of that many employees in a work setting in my life. It allowed me to show my true colors