James is a partner at a local firm.
One day while James is working another partner named Brad
enters his office and
starts telling him about his night out
with some of the people from the office.
Brad tells James that Claire, a junior
associate, came out and that things got
pretty wild between the two. He goes on
to say that the next time he is going to
seal the deal with Claire. James, a bit
confused of why Brad has such an
interest in another co-worker, moves the
conversation to preparation for the
pitch all three of them have with their big client that day.
Later that day the pitch goes terribly. There's obvious
tension between Brad and Claire, and
Claire seems very down. She usually is
engaged, but today she doesn't deliver
when called upon for the numbers needed
to close the deal.
The client is visibly angry and the firm ends up losing
the client.
Back at the office, Claire vents to one of her fellow co-workers about the last 24 hour events.
She tells her how terrible the meeting went
and about last night's incident
with Brad. She says she wasn't able to
sleep all last night because of it and
that she messed up in the pitch to their
biggest client. She says she really
doesn't want to lose this job and that
she doesn't know what to do about Brad.
As Claire was saying all of this, James
was walking by. He listened in and then
walked away before anyone saw him.
Utterly shocked at what he has heard,
James walks back to his office. He thinks
for a minute about what to do, and at a
loss he decides he should talk to his mentor.
Although it looks like his mentor
is busy, James gathers the courage to ask
him for his time. James's mentor begins
to tell James a story of when he was
early in his own career. He tells about a
time when he was working for a firm and
a colleague of his was clocking bogus
hours. The colleague tried to get him to
do the same and asked him to go on
vacation while saying he was working
during that time. James's mentor says he almost did it
because his colleague was one of his
good friends. But he stayed behind
because he didn't think it was right.
Before he could decide whether to say
anything to his manager he found out
from someone else that his friend was
fired. The new member that replaced
the colleague was loyal, and since she
clocked her hours honestly, their team
culture was stronger and the company was more efficient.
After talking with his mentor, James knew what he had to do.
He called Claire into his office. Claire
was a bit nervous that she was in trouble
after the pitch went poorly.
James surprised Claire and said he knew
something happened with Brad
After the two talked about what happened, James told Claire he was supporting Brad's removal
from the firm. He told Claire
that they can't have that type of
contact on the team, and that his duty
to protect his team members and the
overall good of their team and the
organization as a whole.
Brad was replaced by a responsible
ethical partner. The team ended up
thriving because of the decision, and
they even got back their biggest client.
James chose to speak up when unethical
behavior was going on in his firm and
it influenced not just Claire, but the whole
company as a whole.
