How To Answer: Interview Questions On Resolving Conflict

now we're going to talk about an important aspect of behavioral interviewing which is how to tackle questions around conflict when you think about conflict first and foremost it is not a question to shy away from conflict is a very natural outcome that happens in any workplace environment and often can be the impetus to push the best ideas forward and actually enhance collaboration more importantly the interviewer is really trying to get a sense for how do you go about resolving conflict and inevitably when you join their organization how will you overcome it so how might this question be asked well they might ask you about conflict between people at the same level or conflict amongst people who were at different levels in the organization they also might ask you about conflict that is direct where you had a conflict with somebody or they might ask you about conflict that's indirect where you played a role in resolving the conflict but you weren't a key player in the actual conflict and finally they might ask you about two different sources of the conflict one source is where the conflict is one a personality and they might say tell me about a time where you worked with a difficult person and the other source of conflict is one of ideas and they might say tell me about a time you disagreed with someone and what you want to do is go back to your star framework and make sure that the actions you highlight demonstrate how you personally go about resolving conflict and how you go about bringing the team together and then when you frame up the result make sure the result is not about you winning and somebody else losing it has to be about a joint and mutually successful resolution of the inherent conflict now let's get deeper on actions and there are three types of actions I want you to think about number one communication communication is a very important lever in resolving any conflict and you're trying to gather the interviewer a sense of how your communication style de-escalates conflict you're also trying to give them a sense of how your communication skill is able to clearly pinpoint the source of the conflict and how does your communication approach enhance team cohesion are you communicating in a way that it doesn't feel like they're on one side of the table and you're on the other side of the table but rather you're collectively working on something together the second aspect is empathy are you showing the other person in this story how you can see things from their point of view how you could understand why they may have come up with their point of view and how they might feel frustrated by this conflict it's very important that you recognize the emotional aspect of this as much as you communicate around the academic aspects of this and finally do you have a problem-solving mentality are you someone who's coming to the table and trying to drive this towards resolution and do you have the skill in problem-solving to take competing perspectives different vantage points and weave them together to get to the best mutually beneficial outcome let's get deeper on the results now first and foremost you want to make sure you're framing up very clearly for the interviewer the before picture when the conflict was at its peak and the after picture where the compet has been successfully resolved and when you're framing up this after picture which is ultimately the results you've outlined think about three core things number one how have the results improved the behaviors and attitudes of everybody involved do people feel more enthusiastic more excited ideally the engagement level has risen number two the actual communication and collaboration has that been improved and got to the next level ideally you've resolved this one conflict which is also helping solve endemic issues around communication or around collaboration and the third piece is you want to frame up how this impact is not just a short-term impact in solving a point-in-time conflict but how is this actually helping to improve conflict resolution in the long term and how is this a baseline that is improving all collaboration going forward so you want to make sure you think about the long-term impact and now let's walk through an example imagine if you started off your story by saying I'm gonna tell you about a time where I was a revenue analyst for a consumer and product goods company what I used to do is report on the profitability and loss of five business units and one of those five business units was a very strategic business unit it was an emerging play into consumer electronics and as a result because it was so new the economics of the group did not look very good and the head of that group told me he was going to stop giving me data and that I could not report to the senior leadership because it made his group look bad so ultimately we had a conflict in terms of me being able to get the information I needed to do my job first I took this person out to lunch to build a personal relationship with them I wanted to understand more about their personal motivations I also use that time to really understand what his core concerns were around me reporting this data after I got a little bit deeper on the undercurrents of this tension I then shared with him that if I were in his shoes I would also feel similarly I would not want my team to look subpar when compared to other teams but then I took the conversation a little bit deeper and asked him what would success look like to him if we had to provide an update to senior leadership and as we got into the conversation what I realized was this was more about setting expectations on what great looks like and less about the absolute data so we ultimately got to a mutually beneficial outcome of sharing this data but not sharing it until we got into some deep context and shared the wins of the team because it wasn't fair to them to just show the profit and loss data without actually also rewarding them for the wins that they've achieved and now let's get deeper on the results imagine if I described the results as follows well number one we solved the near-term challenge of getting data in the senior leaders hands so we can make the right decisions about the business but more importantly than that here we are two years down the line and we have a stronger partnership his business unit and my team are collaborating on a daily basis as opposed to just monthly readouts of their data we're actually working together to grow their business number three their revenue has grown 5x over the past two years and a big reason for that is the type of collaboration we've built after we resolved this conflict and finally this has been a blueprint for how other teams in the organization are collaborating and now for some guiding principles on how to answer questions around conflict number one avoid framing the conflict too much around you versus them make it more about the situation and the intrinsic of the situation that has led to a conflict number two don't frame it about somebody being right and somebody being wrong make it about mutually successful resolutions and number three make sure you are poised when answering this question stay away from reflecting on the emotions and the negative sentiment in that conflict because what can happen is those sentiments can come out in your story it can demonstrate a sense of stress on you and it's important that you demonstrate to the interviewer that this is a natural part of work life these are some of the best practices to consider when framing up your story and what we do at rocket interview is sit down with you and figure out what are the most salient aspects of your candidacy the best stories you've had in your professional career and then we weave them together to form a compelling career narrative that elevates you above the competition allows you to ace the interview and secure your dream job

Channel: AccelaCoach

Views: 264,809

Keywords: conflict question and answer, managed conflict interview question, resolved conflict interview question, behavioral questions, behavioral interview questions, interview questions, job interview questions and answers, interview tips, job interview tips, interview prep, star interview questions and answers, star interview method, star interview technique

Id: Kqssla8dazc

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2017