EP 50: The Conflict Example That's Secretly Sabotaging Your Interview

Consultants are expected to speak up even when it's uncomfortable, but how can you choose examples that showcase you in the best light for your interview? Before we get into today's episode, the Ace Your Consultant Interview Academy waitlist is now open. So if you want to have structured support with your consultant interview prep, then click on the link below and join the waitlist.

In this episode, we're going to look at whether it's okay to use an example where you disagreed with a senior colleague. We're going to break down the question on how to deal with a struggling colleague, and we're going to give you a tip on using body language to best effect during your interview.

Okay, so let's get started. We're going to look at a student question. This is one of the questions asked by one of our Academy students. And the question this week is, I've had a situation where I disagreed with a senior decision. Is it okay to use this, and how do I frame it without looking difficult to work with? So, what do you think?

I can see why this question has come up, because I think people are probably trying to show that they are somebody who can appropriately challenge decisions at fairly senior level in a safe way. And I'm sure that that is a skill that you need to have. I'm not certain it's the right example to use in an interview, because I think it may land as you being somebody who's difficult to work with. And I think sometimes we just need to remember that, you know, whilst you may have disagreed with the decision by the medical director, and, you know, you don't like it, there are times when you are required to follow that and to ensure that other people follow it too.

All times, really.

Yeah, at all times. Yes, that is true. Yes, I'm obviously not representing the views of my trust.

Yeah.

So yeah, that is a requirement of the job. So I think whilst it's— there may be times when it's appropriate for you to challenge those decisions behind closed doors and to put, you know, make an argument for your specialty, etc., I would say that this is not the example to use In an interview. There's— it's a high risk for coming across as somebody who's going to be a bit bolshy and a bit difficult to work with. And I think because you're going to have to explain it in a short space of time in the interview, the context and the nuance is going to be lost. And therefore, the bit that's going to be left is the— this is somebody who disagreed with the member of the board, and I just don't think it's going to land well.

No. Yeah, I think I know what you're trying to show, but it's not really what you want to show in your interview. You're trying to show you're a good team player, you'll be a valued senior member of the team, so I don't think this does it. Now, I suppose there could be a situation where they ask you, tell me about a time when you've disagreed with a senior decision and how did you handle it? And so then, of course, you're going to have to come up with something, I personally wouldn't be picking the medical director or the chief exec for this. I would pick a consultant in a specialty, even if it was in my specialty potentially, or another specialty when I was a reg. And then you just need to think about how, and bearing in mind what we've said, it's about how you come across to the panel. It's not actually about whether you were right or wrong and they were right or wrong. It's how would the panel regard you as a team player when you're conveying this answer. So you need to think about how you handled that. Like, how did you raise it sensitively and respectfully, acknowledging their seniority to you, acknowledging it's difficult to raise something with a senior when you're junior to them and you want to keep good working relations? So even the act of reflecting on these elements of it will make it a stronger answer and will make you come across better, rather than just, they were wrong, I was right, I challenged them, and in the end I was right anyway, isn't going to come across As well. So some of it is in how you present that.

Yeah, so I think we're saying this generally isn't the right example to use.

Yeah, unless you're forced to, I wouldn't volunteer this as an example. Next up, we've got our golden example of the week. This is an example from a student, um, and we've got an example of a conflict with a colleague this week. So what is the example that we've got, Becky?

Okay, so a patient presented to ED with fever, thrombocytopenia, and a positive malaria antigen test, but no travel history had been documented. My consultant had already spoken to the team and given advice about patient going into a side room. She then asked me to review from a malaria perspective, but when I arrived, the ED consultant challenged me directly about why a side room was needed, and their view was that malaria doesn't require isolation, so the request didn't make sense to him. So it's a conflict, I think, with the ED colleague about whether this patient should go into a side room.

What do I think? It's a bit complicated the way it's being explained. So first off, I would simplify it. So I assume this person is in a medical specialty or ID or something like that, reviewing a patient in ED. So they had a patient with malaria that they felt should be in a side room and had put the patient in a side room. But when this person was in ED reviewing them, the ED consultant came in and was unhappy that the patient was in a side room, um, and was getting angry about it, I assume, or something, some sort of conflict. And they realized they were in a conflict with a colleague. So if you just kind of take out all the extra bits and just try to distill the example to its core, you can add explanation and stuff after. But in that part, in the I, the incident, the first part, you want to just keep it as tight as possible. And it really needs to clearly end with a conflict. I think there's two— there's a few things that jump out at me here. One is, it was your consultant that told you to isolate the patient. So, you're— it's flagging immediately that you're a junior person in this conversation. And you're applying for a senior job. So, you're kind of devolving responsibility to the boss. And I'm not sure that's what you want to do. And then, I suppose the other thing is that it's a consultant and you're— the ED person is a consultant as well and you're a reg. And so there's that kind of power imbalance. And so it doesn't fulfill what we normally recommend people to do with this conflict example, which is someone of the same grade as you in a different specialty. That's not to say it couldn't be tightened up, but I think as it stands, I'm not sure I would use it. What do you think?

Yeah, I think what, what we don't want is you to be in a situation where you're essentially saying to the ED consultant, well, my consultant said that this is what needs to happen, so this is what needs to happen. And then potentially you end up, you know, getting your consultant on the phone to talk to them.

I'm gonna call my mum.

I'm just gonna call my mum. Exactly. And what we want is for you to be able to demonstrate that you can de-escalate conflict in the moment on your own.

Yeah.

In a way that maintains professional relationships. So I think if it's a question about, even if you just distilled it down, I had, you know, an example of a time I had a conflict was when I put a patient in a side room in ED because I felt they had infection control needs, and the ED consultant disagreed with that. You know, that, that, and then if you manage to navigate it on your own, that is absolutely fine.

Yeah.

Um, but I think we, we don't want— as we talked about just now, actually, it doesn't matter whether you were right or wrong in this situation. It, it just does not matter. Um, what matters is that you can de-escalate the conflict. Um, so I think these conflicts need to be your own personal conflicts.

Yeah.

Um, ideally where somebody else was annoyed with you and then you just de-escalated beautifully. Um, I think there's probably a little bit too much around this that's flagging that you're junior and that maybe you didn't de-escalate it on your own. And, and so that's not giving us what we need to hear.

You're right that you maybe don't even need to say the malaria part, because the malaria part gets you like sidetracked on— so should a malaria patient be isolated or not? And then you're like, mind's wandering, which is irrelevant to it. So you're right, it doesn't really matter what the condition is. You think they should be in a side room, the ED consultant doesn't. And when you remove that clinical element from it, then you avoid the temptation of the, I was right because malaria should be in a side room or whatever. And because it's not relevant, it's actually about the conflict. And so yeah, Taking out all the clinical information often just helps clarify the example and get down to the core, which is the conflict or the duty of candour, the mistake or whatever it is. So yeah, that would definitely make it stronger. Cool.

As ever, distilling the story to its absolute minimum really helps you to deliver a stronger answer.

Yeah, it just gets down to the business of what it's about, avoids distractions, avoids getting sidetracked, going down clinical routes, going down the I'm right route. So I think, yeah, if you can distill the story down and it be you at a more senior role with the person in ED and not be a situation where you have to phone your boss to sort it out, potentially that may be too many things to change about this example, I don't know, but the essence is there. Next up, we're going to look at interview question of the week. This is a question that one of our Academy students have been asked. Recently. So the question we've got is, tell me about a time you had to manage a colleague who was not performing as expected. What do you think?

I quite like this question. I think it gives you the opportunity to come across well. I also think it's pretty common, you know, this coming up in some sort of way, you know, training and difficulty. poor performance, some kind of issue about, you know, they're not doing what they're supposed to do in some way. So I think you can show the panel that you are somebody who can, you know, do all of the parts of this sort of management spectrum as such, from, you know, the pastoral kind of stuff— are you okay, what's going on for you— to the, you know, making sure that Managing patient safety, you know, taking them through, let's set some objectives and work out how we can solve this problem together. And then recognising that there's potentially an escalation element here if things are not progressing after that initial kind of performance plan. So I think it's nice, you can showcase yourself as a good person who understands how we manage colleagues.

Yeah. And one of the things is this is asking you for a specific example. So this is, tell me about a time you had to manage a colleague in difficulty, or a colleague who was not performing as expected. So it could be quite challenging to think of this example in the moment. How likely are people going to have had this, and what would you do if you haven't actually done this?

So I guess you can think about this fairly broadly, can't you? Because you, you may have managed, you know, a trainee who was having difficulties, and that might have been clinical difficulties, or that might have been difficulties in their personal life that you helped them to navigate. It might have been, you know, one of your colleagues who was going through a really difficult time and needed some additional support. I suppose if you absolutely have not done it, then you could talk about, you know, what you understand about the, the policy in terms of how we support people, what, what those steps of escalation are, as, as I was talking about earlier, and then align other skills that you've got to demonstrate that you can manage that. So you might talk about, you know, how you, um, help people develop objectives, or you might talk about, um, how, you know, how you mentor or coach people, you know. So you could bring in other skills that help you to answer the question, but I think think fairly broadly because there's probably an example that you can choose, even if it's something along the lines of, you know, somebody didn't know how to do a particular clinical skill and I taught them, or somebody was consistently late and I had a chat with them about it, you know, or somebody was finding it really difficult to manage their time in clinics and I supported them to do that.

Yeah.

So I think you can, you can be fairly broad with the way you answer it.

Yeah, I think you're right, but it's bigger picture because not performing as expected could mean many things.

Mm-hmm.

And so, yeah, if you take a step back, you probably do have that experience somewhere. And yeah, you could say you don't have experience of it, but this is what you would do. That's like the second best option. So, you would still score some points, but obviously some of the scoring is likely to be around you giving an example of this. So, if you can't come up with anything, you're going to miss out on that opportunity. So, it's better to come up with something, even if it's something small, and then talk about the principles of how you addressed it. Yeah, I think it's a good question. I like it.

Yeah, I like it too.

Bit challenging, but is a fair question. Okay, so let's talk about our tip and trick of the week. So, this week we're going to talk about body language and using body language to project confidence in the room. What are your thoughts about this?

I think this is really key. I think people probably don't give it enough thought, but you can actually do yourself a lot of good thinking about the way that you interact with the panel, and you can also settle yourself down quite a lot by thinking about the way that you are portraying yourself. So I think it, you know, it's There's lots of components to this. So, you know, one of them is eye contact. Actually, you know, if you're in an in-person interview, just making sure that you maintain eye contact with the panel or particular, you know, and probably focus that towards the person who's asked you the question and, you know, give a little bit to other people as well, just so that you're building that connection constantly. And also you're getting this feedback from them about how you're doing, because they're probably there nodding and smiling and hopefully doing some things that are helping to settle you down. In an online interview, just really, really think about where that camera placement is, and, you know, how you can make sure that it looks like you're maintaining eye contact with the panel. So maybe have a practice call with somebody and check where you need to look so that it looks like you're looking into their eyes, because I think that this matters, and it's not something that can be measured, but I think people do notice it.

And what do you think about using your hands while you're answering questions and that sort of thing?

I think, don't look— I mean, I'm using my hands all the time. I think don't overthink it. If you're somebody that uses your hands when you're talking, use your hands when you're talking. If you don't, Don't. Yes. Be you about that. What I would say, don't do anything weird like sitting on your hands so that you don't use them, because that's unnecessary. The other thing I just want to say about this, actually, having done a set of interviews recently where I was on the panel, one of the things that I found was super distracting was people wearing loads of jewellery around their wrists. So, loads of bracelets. And it was caught, so, one of the candidates, I know this sounds like a small point, but it was caught, the bracelets were constantly jangling. And every time they put their hands down on the table in front of them during the presentation, it was creating a racket. And it was quite distracting.

Yeah.

So, just be mindful of stuff like that. I know it sounds silly, but I shouldn't be thinking about your bracelets in an interview. I should be thinking about what you're saying.

True.

So I think, but in, in answer to the question, just do whatever feels natural to you. I think don't try to force that, it's going to look weird.

Yeah, and I think if you spend too much time, particularly in your prep, worrying about— or, and in the day worrying about what your hands are doing or whatever's doing, it's just a distraction from the main event, which is you answering the question they've asked clearly and demonstrating your best bits. That's your goal. And so if you're spending too much time thinking about other stuff, it's not going to serve you well. And realistically, unless you're wearing a lot of jangly bracelets, a few hand gestures is not going to really bother the panel. Even if they noticed, it's not going to make a massive difference. So yeah, I wouldn't overthink it. But definitely kind of the way you show up, the way you walk in, your eye contact, I think does make a big difference because it projects something about yourself to the panel, and that first impression is really important. And yeah, it projects how you're feeling about your interview and how they receive your answers as well.

Yeah. What do you think about speech? People sometimes think about speech pacing and so on. What do you think?

I think people get very worried that they talk too fast or that they're saying um too much. You know, they notice the filler words. And ideally, you would be able to not use filler words, but it's an interview and you're nervous, and that's fine. I think, I don't think we've ever had an Academy student where we actually think they're speaking too fast, or where we've told them, you need to slow down. And that's in 2,500 students. So we've had lots of people say they feel they're speaking too fast, but that's fine. Some people speak faster than others. In the end, you just need to be understandable. I need to be able to tell what you're saying. And yeah, there's never been a situation where someone's been so fast that we can't tell what they're saying. So, it's very likely that it's more in your head than it is causing a problem. And the same as with the hand gestures or whatever, it is a distraction. If you're spending your time thinking about, I must slow down, rather than, I must give a good answer to this question, you're going to be distracted, not connected with the panel, and your answers are probably not going to come across as well. So, it just— I think it can be a distraction.

I think the only caveat to that is if you're speaking faster than you're thinking, that's a problem.

Yeah.

Sometimes people are kind of, because they're nervous, they're running away with themselves and they've all of these words are coming out of their mouth, but they don't really mean anything.

Yes.

Um, in, if that is a thing for you, then, then the pause is really your friend. Um, and you know, just, just taking that moment to work out what you're going to say and then saying it is better than starting to speak before you've Actually engage your brain to think. But other than that, just, just be you. They want to employ you. They don't want to employ some robot who can speak at a certain number of words per minute, because that's, that's not a thing.

True. Yep, just be yourself. Um, okay, great. I think we'll wrap up there. Thank you for another lovely episode, Becky. I will see you next time.

Thank you.