How to Answer Interview Questions – Tell About a Difficult Situation With a Co-Worker
Tell me about what happened when you had a difficult situation with a co-worker.
Interviewers love questions about conflicts with supervisors, difficulties working on team projects, and difficult situations with co-workers. It tells them a lot about how you react to stressful situations. They are trying to see how you get along with others, to judge whether or not you will fit in and be productive in their organization. This behavioral interview question pokes around in your past giving a clue as to how you'll behave in the future before they invite you into their working environment.
With this question in particular, the interviewer is looking for how you deal with confrontations and problems in general and how you come up with solutions. They are looking to find out if you have good communication skills. Are you empathetic to others? Do you have emotional intelligence? Can you remain calm? Can you contribute positively to finding a solution?
You should remember to point out that you try to avoid difficult situations with co-workers whenever possible, but sometimes it happens.
It's really what you do in response to such a situation that matters to them. Keep your answer positive. For example, you can talk about a communication issue you worked through to a happy ending, or how your initiative, resilience and problem-solving skills led to the positive outcome for a particular professional challenge.
Say you choose a communication issue. Your answer might sound like this: "I think we all occasionally run into people or personalities that we don't do as well with. Once when that happened, I just reminded myself that there's a reason that person is working here and they are a valuable member of the team. Our problem was that we failed to communicate well, which hurt us both. Since it takes two to disagree, I decided I must be causing 50% of the problem, so I thought about how I could alleviate the situation. I decided to try X to address this issue; I made sure I was coming from a positive perspective, and the problem was resolved."
Always remember to keep your emotions out of your answer. This is not the time to vent feelings; you want to have a happy ending. The interviewer wants to see your thought process and know that you can be empathetic and willing to negotiate a situation in a cooperative manner with a positive outcome.
Interviewers love questions about conflicts with supervisors, difficulties working on team projects, and difficult situations with co-workers. It tells them a lot about how you react to stressful situations. They are trying to see how you get along with others, to judge whether or not you will fit in and be productive in their organization. This behavioral interview question pokes around in your past giving a clue as to how you'll behave in the future before they invite you into their working environment.
With this question in particular, the interviewer is looking for how you deal with confrontations and problems in general and how you come up with solutions. They are looking to find out if you have good communication skills. Are you empathetic to others? Do you have emotional intelligence? Can you remain calm? Can you contribute positively to finding a solution?
You should remember to point out that you try to avoid difficult situations with co-workers whenever possible, but sometimes it happens.
It's really what you do in response to such a situation that matters to them. Keep your answer positive. For example, you can talk about a communication issue you worked through to a happy ending, or how your initiative, resilience and problem-solving skills led to the positive outcome for a particular professional challenge.
Say you choose a communication issue. Your answer might sound like this: "I think we all occasionally run into people or personalities that we don't do as well with. Once when that happened, I just reminded myself that there's a reason that person is working here and they are a valuable member of the team. Our problem was that we failed to communicate well, which hurt us both. Since it takes two to disagree, I decided I must be causing 50% of the problem, so I thought about how I could alleviate the situation. I decided to try X to address this issue; I made sure I was coming from a positive perspective, and the problem was resolved."
Always remember to keep your emotions out of your answer. This is not the time to vent feelings; you want to have a happy ending. The interviewer wants to see your thought process and know that you can be empathetic and willing to negotiate a situation in a cooperative manner with a positive outcome.
Source...