How to Answer Wellbeing, Resilience, and Mistake Questions in a Consultant Interview

One of the traps that people often fall into when they're describing a mistake example is blaming somebody else.

Hi, I'm Tessa.

And I'm Becky, and this is the Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast, where we help you stand out and succeed in your consultant interview.

Before we get into today's episode, if you're prepping for your interview, make sure you're signed up to our free 5-day email crash course. It breaks down exactly what you need to do to stand out, and you can sign up via the link in the description.

In this episode, we're going to cover how to answer questions about wellbeing and resilience, how to share your own personal insights about your learning, and how to recover mid-answer if you're in a total panic.

Okay, let's get right into it. So first up, we're going to look at our student question of the week. This is a question one of our Academy students has. has asked us. And the question this week is, I'm not sure what to say if they ask me about well-being. I don't want to sound like I'm not resilient. What do you think about this?

Yeah, okay. So I mean, I think questions about well-being come up reasonably regularly. Uh, I think they can come up in a variety of formats. So it could be overtly about, you know, how do you maintain your own and others' wellbeing. It could be, I guess, something about motivation. It could be about staff support, but they're all kind of versions of the same type of thing. I personally don't think that talking about wellbeing puts you at risk of not sounding resilient. I think, I think we should all be kind of paying attention to our own wellbeing and that of others. I suppose what they're not asking you to do necessarily is to, you know, share a time about when you were your wellbeing took a nosedive and what happened? So that's not the question, probably.

Yeah.

So don't offer them something that's going to make you sound like you're not resilient, if that's a particular concern of yours. What you might say is, you know, I'm aware that, you know, my own wellbeing and the wellbeing of my team is particularly important, especially at the moment when everyone's so under pressure. 3 ways that I pay attention to this are, and then reel off your nice 3 strategies, ideally getting in one of your own USPs around it as well.

Yeah, I think kind of what this question suggests is that there is something that this person is worried about talking about, some sort of issue that they've had or some experience of burnout or time off or something, and so, They're worried about this drawing out something. And I think it's probably a good reminder that you don't have to tell the panel everything about your deepest, darkest past. It's an interview. You can choose what to share unless it's been mandated for you to declare it. You don't need to tell them, even if they ask you a question about wellbeing, you don't need to tell them the worst thing that's happened to you. So just if there's something that you're really worried about, which I think this question kind of suggests there is something they're worried about talking about, Just decide before whether you're going to share it or not. And if you do want to share it, and there might be a reason, if you had a period of burnout that you really felt was important to talk to the panel about, then you just prep how you're going to talk about it and the way that you're going to present it. Because you don't want it to just come out as raw emotion on the day, and then you're already stressed because of the interview. It's probably not going to come out how you want. It will be very stressful for you. So, just have a think about why you're choosing to share it and how you want to choose to share it, and whether it's appropriate for an interview or not as well, I guess.

Yeah. I think this is key, isn't it? Everything that comes out of your mouth in that interview is under your own control.

Yep.

They can't make you say anything that you didn't want to say. No. Yep. And this is why it's important to think about examples ahead of time, because if you get asked, you know, a time about, for example, a weakness or a mistake, or, you know, a time when you dealt with stress and overcame it, or something like that, which is also a kind of wellbeing type of focused question. You don't need to share anything that's personal or private to you. It's okay to share something that's interview appropriate, and also then to show that you've got some strategies for remaining resilient, overcoming stress, looking after your own wellbeing, and therefore probably helping others to do the same. So, I think the kind of things that people talk about in interview that work well with this kind of wellbeing question is maybe if you've done like some kind of wellbeing initiative at work where you've done a check-in with people or some, you know, some kind of team-building thing or a social thing or, you know, whatever you've done to develop team cohesion or something. Or maybe you talk about, you know, I regularly run debriefs. or reflective sessions or something like that to help with team wellbeing, or maybe you talk about, you know, some strategies that helped you to overcome a stressful situation, as long as that feels comfortable for you to share. So you might talk about, you know, I used my mentor, or I spoke to trusted colleagues, or whatever it might be, just recognising that you're somebody who's aware that there needs to be some pastoral support for yourself and for others.

Yep. So, this is a fairly common type of question, is the summary. And it's fine to share some of yourself, but you get to choose which parts of yourself you share. And the important thing is remembering that this is not a therapy session. This is a job interview, and you want them to give you a job. And so, you are presenting yourself, but you're presenting the best bits of yourself. That's the whole point. And that's okay. That's fine. It's a formal interview. So yeah, just have a think about what you want to say before you go into that situation. Okay. So we're going to then look at a student example of the week. We've got a mistake example this week. Do you want to run us through what the suggested mistake example is?

The example of the mistake is, I had taken some samples from a pleural aspirate and I had labelled it, but then I was called away to another emergency. So I passed the samples to a junior for them to send it off to the lab. Then I realised the next day that the samples had gone missing because there were no results received on the system. I checked and the junior had dropped it to the porters, but they had no idea where the specimens had gone after that. Had to repeat the procedure again because there was a suspected cancer diagnosis, and the learning is I now hand-deliver samples myself to the lab to make sure they don't go missing.

Okay.

What are your thoughts about this? This is a mistake example.

Okay, well, I guess, yeah, I think there's a few things to say about this. It does fall into some common traps of mistake examples that I think could be avoided. There probably is a mistake in there, but it needs a bit of tightening up, is my overview. I think the first thing that jumps out at me is that there's a lot of detail here explaining what happened. You got called away, this happened, you handed this to them, they went to this, you couldn't find— and so it takes quite a long time to— it's going to take a long time in an answer to explain this, and you're at risk of the answer being taken over by explaining the story instead of getting on with the resolution and reflection. So I think that is the first thing to say, but you could cut a lot of that out, um, if you, if you wanted to. And, you know, you could cut out stuff that isn't relevant and still have a good explanation of the story, I think. So, that is solvable. I think the bigger thing here is that essentially they're blaming the junior because it's the junior's fault, and their resolution or their learning is don't trust a junior to take your samples. You have to take them yourself. And I'm not sure that's really what the vibe you want to give across in your interview. So, that is the biggest problem with this for me.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So, the whole kind of summary is, well, I mean, if I hadn't given it to that unreliable junior, this would all have been fine.

Yeah.

I appreciate that, I'm sure, is not the look they're going for. No, I'm sure it's not. And this is why we've got to think about how these examples come across. Remember what you're trying to achieve in a mistake example, which is to Demonstrate that you've made a mistake that pretty much anyone could have made, that, you know, if you put a group of your peers in the room and describe this mistake, they would either go, yeah, I've done that, or, oh gosh, I can see how that would happen. And you need to be able to own it, and you need to be able to rectify it, ideally yourself, and then there needs to be some kind of learning, certainly for you and maybe for the wider team. Um, and so that, that, that's the kind of vibe we're going for there. What we absolutely do not want to do, thinking about that ownership, is to kind of make out that, I mean, it was a mistake, like it technically was my mistake, but really, um, you know, I delegated it to somebody else and they just didn't do it.

Yeah.

Um, that, that's not what we're going for here.

No. So, you could own the mistake and say, I don't know, is there a way you could own this mistake then without— the mistake was you took the sample and you did not ensure the sample got to the lab, um, and you should have because it was an important sample, and therefore it had to be repeated. It got lost and it had to be repeated. That, that would be more ownership, you taking more ownership. You're not punching down. And, uh, yeah, you can actually reflect like you should have taken it to the lab. Do you think that would work?

I think it potentially would. I suppose there are going to be some questions in that sort of reflection about, you know, how making sure that this mistake doesn't happen again, because you're still kind of opening the door to accidentally say, I mean, I did give it to a junior, or maybe the porter just lost it. Yeah. I think be cautious with it.

Yeah.

I'd probably try and think of something else if I could.

Okay. I still— I would still hang on that and think that it could, because if you could say that it's a system problem, you know, like it happens, doesn't it, that things get lost and, you know, for whatever reason. But maybe it's too hard to, like, separate all of that from all of the other people that you really blame, because in reality, this person blames other people and that is what comes across. And so they are not using the opportunity to own a mistake, because they don't own this mistake because they don't think it was really their fault. And so, that's the part that comes across. So, it comes back to what you said at the beginning of when we were talking about this, which is, think about how it comes across. If you were listening to this, what would you think about the person who's telling you it? And you're trying to come across as someone who's a senior member, who'll be a senior member of the team, who's reliable, who'll cope well, who'll own their mistakes, who'll support people, who'll support their juniors, and be respectful to other colleagues. And you kind of miss the mark with the way it is currently.

Yeah.

Let's go on to our interview question breakdown. This is a question that someone's been asked recently in an interview. So, this week we've got a question which I like. I think it's a great question, which is, what would I learn about you if we got into conflict? So, what do you think about this?

I also really like it. I think it's a nice spin on the conflict question.

Yeah.

Um, it's inviting some self-reflection, um, and so we, we are hopefully really genuinely going to learn, um, not only what we would learn about this candidate if, if we got into conflict with them, but also to show that they are somebody who can reflect, um, and that has some personal insight into how they come across, and therefore they are exactly the kind of colleague you want on your team.

Yeah.

Um, I, I actually really like it.

Yeah. And there's maybe an opportunity to show an example of how— of a situation that you've helped. I don't know. I suppose you don't want to, like, dump yourself in it by talking about a conflict you got into with someone. Um, but You could, I think, show some examples of good team working and how you've managed to collaborate across teams.

Yeah, because I think there's multiple ways that you could answer this and multiple ways that you could do this well. So, I mean, because some— I think some people would even say, you'd probably learn that I don't really like conflict.

Yeah.

Um, and then you could talk through that, or you could say You could— you would learn that I'm somebody who can consistently keep the patient at the centre of everything I do, and that I resolve conflict with that in mind. And then you could talk through that. So that I think there's really several ways that you could answer this and come out well.

Yeah.

And that's what you want.

I think that the way this could go wrong is actually just that you would be surprised by the question because it's worded in a way that probably not exactly what you're expecting, because you're expecting a conflict question, like, tell me about a time you had a conflict, um, or even how would you manage conflict. But the way it's worded, what would I learn about you, it forces some sort of self-reflection that you— so you're going to have to come up with something in the moment that's more likely to be authentic about you. And so that has the potential, I think, to just overshare or fumble or not be sure how to structure it. So I think this is where you need to really just pause and think about, you know, how— what you're going to say, what you're going to cover before you launch into it, because I think it would be easy to get a little bit carried away with verbal diarrhoea here.

I mean, I think depending on what, what the conflict example is that you've prepared in anticipation of this question, you could potentially use that. Um, but just tell it in a slightly different way than you might otherwise have done.

That's true. Yeah, that's a good idea. I like that one.

Oh, thanks, very pleased. Um, you know, maybe it's something about, you know, let's go— because I think last week we talked about, um, somebody who'd had a surgeon who'd had a conflict with an anaesthetist about putting an extra patient on the list. So if, if this question came up for them, they could say, well, actually, you would learn that I'm somebody who keeps patient safety at the centre of all of my decision-making. For example, I, you know, had a, you know, a moment of disagreement with my anaesthetist colleague, but actually, once we had a conversation about it and we recognised actually what the main goal of this was and that we were all pulling in the same direction, this is what we decided.

Love that.

These steps.

Love it. Great. That would be a good way to do it. And another good reason to have a good conflict example prepped, because you will know how to present it, how you're reflecting on the conflict resolution. So yeah, I think this is a nice question. It's a bit of an unusual question, but it's actually really nice. And it does— it would bring out a good insight into what kind of a person they're going to be on the team, which is really what you're trying to work out in the end.

Yeah, exactly.

So I think it's good. Okay, now we're going to go into our tip. Trick of the week. So this week's tip and trick is thinking about what to do when you're in the interview, you're asked a question that doesn't go to plan, maybe about trust emojis, or maybe about what they'd learn if you got into conflict, and you've kind of lost where you're headed and starting to feel a bit stressed in the middle of the answer. How are you going to recover and get yourself back on track? So this is like, I think something that is a good thing to think about before your interview. And actually when the, 'cause the interview's gonna be 40 minutes, you do get tired towards the end. And also this is one that when we do our like 60-minute mock interviews with our students, I think it's a good way to like see the, feel the flow. Because when you practice one question at a time, you don't really get that flow and how tiring it is and how you need to keep your attention, you need to keep the momentum. And also, the questions tend to get harder as the interview goes on, just by the nature of the flow of the interview. So, you're going to be getting harder questions towards the end when you're tired. And it's possible that something won't go to plan, and in the middle of the question, you're going to have some sort of angst and regrets that you've not done it as well as possible. So, it's how to get back on track in that. And I think one of the key things here is just to go easy on yourself and remind yourself that one question is not going to make or break your interview. Even in spite of what you might think, like one thing you missed, one thing that didn't go well, even if you totally messed up one answer, it's very unlikely that that is going to be the reason you do or don't get the job. And so, it's going— just telling yourself, it's just one question out of however many, 10 questions.

Yeah.

You need to get back on the horse and not let it affect whatever question is going to come after that. So, I think that's the first thing that I would say. If you have a bad question, it's okay. You cannot deliver a perfect interview, and that's not your goal. Your goal is just to be better than the other also human beings who are up against you.

I think once the question is over, it's over, and you just move on to the next one, and that's your whole focus then. I think it's worth having a few strategies for this. So, you talked about, you know, keeping up that concentration and that energy. If you're somebody that struggles to do that, have a strategy for that, which might be as simple as taking in a piece of paper and a pen, and you jot down, you know, you take a few seconds after the question, you jot down 3 points that you want to make, so that if you get to the point where you're like—

And thirdly, What was thirdly?

You can just look down at your piece of paper and go, oh, thirdly, yeah, clinical audit, whatever it was. So that's the first thing, prepare for that if you know that that's a thing for you. If you just totally go blank and you don't know whether you're answering the question, you can't even remember the question, just ask them.

Yeah.

So sorry, could you just repeat the question? And then you can just have a scan back. Yeah, I am on track. Okay, that's fine. And I just wanna add this one extra thing now. And then the other thing is just take a, take a moment to compose yourself if it's all going pear-shaped. Any, you know, you'll take it, take a deep breath, just, just think, okay, it's all right. I'm just gonna reorientate myself. And then just Just go for it again. Anything that you do, you know, you'll think that you've paused for 10 minutes when you did that. You probably will have paused for about 3.5 seconds, and the panel will be fine with it. But I think just have a few strategies, and then you can just go, okay, no, that's right, I've planned for this because I've got my points written down, or I knew this might happen, and I'm just going to take a breath, feel my feet on the floor, and go for it again. And then I think, as you say, the most important thing is let it go afterwards.

Yeah, because dwelling on it, having deep regret, you can dwell on, you can think about it afterwards once you're out the interview room, but in that moment, you have to just move on, draw a line under it, move on, worry about it later, because it's just going to get a whole lot worse if that has a knock-on effect on all your other interview answers. Okay, I think we will wrap up there. So, thank you very much, Becky. We will be back next week with another podcast episode. And we're going to be talking about lots of great stuff, including an interview question about what to do if you see a consultant bullying one of the juniors. So we will chat about that next week. See you there.