🙄 How to Answer The Conflict Interview Question

So you're wondering how to answer that interview question, tell me about a time when you had a conflict at work. Well, you're in the right place. In this video, I'm gonna break down the exact way to answer the question and the biggest mistakes that people make that cost most people the job when they're talking about conflict. So stay tuned. I'd like to start the video with a Peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means. Ronald Reagan. So what does this mean? It means that disagreement is not a negative thing. It just means that most people are not skilled in handling it peacefully, which is especially important in the workplace. So we want to have conflict in the workplace because it means that everyone is bringing different ideas to the table. So the goal is not to ever never have conflict. That's not realistic and that doesn't happen. The goal of answering this question is to show that you handle conflict in a way that serves everybody the best. So secondly, this might surprise you. True story here, 10% of conflicts are due to a real disagreement where there's no agreeing on a certain point. And 90% are due to someone using the wrong tone of voice or the wrong way to communicate with somebody. So language triggers are very big and they can often trigger somebody else if they hear a word that they don't like. And so they end up making the conflict a lot bigger than it really is. So with this in mind, showing you how to handle conflict peacefully and professionally is essential so that you can get to your next round of interviews. So now I'm gonna share with you an example story of how you can answer this question. And it has 3 parts. So we'll start with the situation. The team wanted to use Excel for tracking events or tracking event attendees, but I wanted to use a different software. It was something I'd used in the past and found it to be a better tool, especially for this. The whole team was stuck on continuing to use Excel. It's what they'd always done and they did not wanna change. I wanted to use the new software because I believed that it would really make things a lot easier for us during the event and throughout the whole process. Step 2, what did I do? Action. So I asked if they'd be willing to hear me out. If I did a short demo presentation on the new software and I showed them a few things that we could do right away and how it could save us some time, then if they didn't like the presentation or they didn't agree with me after that, then I said I was happy to continue with Excel. I presented the data, I showed up with measurable ways that that it could help us, specifically applying it to our project. I suggested that they do a quick test drive of the software to see if they liked it or not, and then if they had any questions, I was able to help them. So the result— after hearing the demo, they loved it and they got really excited about it, and they agreed to give it a try just for this event. We still use the software today, and we've expanded to using it for other things as well, including setting our team goals and our planning sessions. So step 4 is interesting features. What was interesting about that? So a key belief of mine is to let the best idea win. So no matter whose idea it was, we leave our titles at the door and we all come in with new ideas. So what I learned was that the main thing was we were using the most efficient tool. That was the goal. If that was my suggestion, great. If it was Excel, then great. But I just wanted to make sure that we had explored all of our options. So to sum it up, good answers to this question include stories around you bringing data to a problem, running a test to get someone to see info that they maybe didn't see before, or a combination of both of those things. Plus talking, good communication with the team or the person that you disagree with, and illustrating an example as I did in this video. So the biggest mistakes when answering this question include answering it like this: I would do it my own way behind the team's back and I would prove them wrong. Bad answer. Or I would stay quiet and I would just go along with whatever everyone wanted and I wouldn't do anything. Also bad answer. We want you to have your ideas and speak them. Both of those answers, they either show that you're not a team player or that you're just not going to bring value to the table because you're afraid to speak up. So neither of those show a confident or positive person. And there you have it, the answer to the question, how to handle a conflict in the workplace. If you liked the video, give me a thumbs up. If you didn't like the video, give me a thumbs down. For bonus points, leave me a comment below and let me know about your conflict handling skills. If you want to watch another video from me, you can watch another video in this series. And if you want to watch more videos from my channel, please go ahead and click the next one. If you're interested, I also have a free guide. It's chock-full of examples just like the one we talked about today in this video, fill-in-the-blank answers, as well as questions that you can ask yourself to come up with your own stories just like the one I shared today. So click below to grab that for free, and I will see you over on the next video. Bye! Feeling pretty energized right now, but I'm only on my first video, so that might change.