The Secret to Handling ‘Conflict with a Colleague’ Interview Question

Hello and welcome to the Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast. I'm Tessa Davis.

And I'm Becky Platt.

And if you're a final year trainee or a locum consultant and you want to prep, not panic, then you're in the right place. Okay, welcome back to the Ace Your Consultant Interview podcast. Nice to see you again, Becky. How are you?

Great, thank you. Always lovely to be here.

Great, let's get going. So we're going to look at our student question of the week. This is a question from one of our Academy students. And this week's question is, I've been told who the college rep is on my panel. I think they're there to make sure my training is okay, I have the right experience, etc. Do I need to arrange to meet them before the interview? Okay.

So this is a good question because we generally advise people to reach out to all of the interview panel and to request a pre-interview visit. And there are multiple reasons why you should do that, and we've talked about that in a previous podcast episode. I think with specific regard to the college rep, they generally don't meet the candidates. I think if you've got their contact details, it's fine to just check in with them and ask if they're meeting people, but you can probably expect them to say no. Is that your sense of it?

Yeah, I think that we have actually had times where the college rep has met with the candidates. So I know people, a lot of people come in thinking they never meet, you've never to contact them, but it does happen. And the same as with all the panel, you don't want other people, the other candidates, to be meeting with panel members and you haven't met with them because you thought you weren't supposed to contact them, because that is going to put you at a disadvantage. And I don't think there's any harm in just asking. They will say no if they're not meeting. No one's going to be outraged that you've asked. So I would err on the side of just asking. If— I know there have been quite a— we've had people recently have had situations where they've given the email address of everyone on the panel, but not given the email address of the college rep. Then I think they're clearly telling you, don't email them.

Yeah.

So it's reasonable to follow up.

Yeah, I think so. As a rule, reach out to the whole panel, and what they'll probably just— what they should do is offer the same opportunity to everyone. So either they're meeting everyone or they're not meeting anyone.

And the college rep's role there is to check that the candidates are suitable against national standards, so to make sure that appropriate people are being appointed, but also to make sure that the process is fair and it's inclusive and open.

open.

So it's thinking about good employment practice on behalf of the college. So it's kind of a double-edged thing of making sure you're okay and making sure the appointment process is okay from the lens of someone being suitable from a college point of view in that role. Shall we look at the example of the week? So this is an example that's been submitted by one of our Academy students, and we'll talk about whether we think it's a good example to use or a bad example to use. We've got one this for Tell Me About a Time You Had a Conflict with a Colleague. What have we got this week?

Okay, right. So this— the colleague— the example is, I had a disagreement with the cardiology registrar regarding cardiac versus pulmonary causes whilst evaluating a breathless patient in ED. The cardiology registrar felt that it was bronchopneumonia. And my view was that of acute pulmonary oedema due to valvular heart disease. Haven't quite finished. I just, I tried to justify my diagnosis by pointing the salient feature in favour of it, which was very sudden onset, and I could hear a systolic murmur, and requested an echo and cardiology to take over. What do you think?

Well, it's very long, is the first thing that jumps out, and it's got a lot of complicated detail that makes it hard to follow because what you're doing is thinking about the clinical stuff, right? You're trying to follow, is it a heart problem? Is it a lung problem? And what does that mean? And, you know, yeah, I think it's very distracting for the panel 'cause they're humans listening to it just like, you know, anyone else listening to it. And it's thinking, what are you actually thinking about there? You're not really thinking about the conflict when you listen to that, are you? You're trying to understand the clinical elements. And so that suggests there's too much detail.

Mm-hmm.

And it's also gonna take up a lot of the time you have answering the question, explaining this. So, definitely would be cutting out a lot of the clinical stuff here, and a lot of the length as a first point of call for this.

Yeah, because I think what we don't want is the panel sitting there going, so what would that have made me think of? Bronchopneumonia or heart disease? We don't need that.

It's not relevant.

Essentially, this is a conflict about a referral. So we could distil it down and say, I had a disagreement with a cardiology registrar over a referral, which I felt was appropriate, and they disagreed.

Yeah, and it's so much more relatable, isn't it? Because then it's just a referral to a specialty. I assume this is an ED person who's asked this, but this is a referral to a specialty. And the specialty doesn't want to. You think it's a cardiac problem, the cardiology reg doesn't, and they're refusing the referral. And that's a conflict, and that's very relatable. And it doesn't really matter what it is, because yeah, then you're not having all this distraction.

Yeah. So I think there's a couple of points. So the first thing is, was this actually a conflict?

Or—

That's true. Because actually it says there's a disagreement, but sometimes we do have you know, we think one thing and another specialty thinks another, it's not necessarily a conflict. Now look, we don't have to be shouting at each other and, you know, hurling abuse across the department, but there does need to have been some level of conflict. So that, that's the first thing, just if there was a conflict, frame it as such, um, and keep it simple. And then we would just want— all we want to hear about is the de-escalation process.

Yep, I agree. And there's an element of the proving right, proving that you're right here, I think, that's being hinted at, which is, you think it's a cardiology problem or cardiac problem, they're saying it's not, but you're saying, actually, it is, because there's a murmur, and I'm gonna get an echo, and the echo's gonna show that there's a problem. And then, they haven't quite gone as far as to say the outcome, but I think we all know that the outcome here is gonna be that they're right, and the cardiology registrar is wrong. And we've talked about this in a previous episode, where it's also a distraction. Even though I'm sure it's true, and I'm sure you were right, and all of these things, it's not what you're trying to show. You're not actually trying to show that you can clinically diagnose whatever the thing was. You're trying to show that you can resolve conflict. And that is independent of being right or wrong about the original disagreement.

So I think we're saying, in its current form, this doesn't work. It may work if it's distilled down to, actually, this is just a referral problem. But then it just needs to be framed as de-escalating the conflict around that referral. And then it's probably okay.

I think it could be okay. And this is why we love students bringing their examples to us, because actually you can transform something that could end up being a really not high-scoring answer into something, using the same example, but into something that's going to be a great answer for them. And also a great example just for them to have to hand to use in their interview that they can feel confident knowing that they can use. And so it's worth going through this process when you're prepping of checking your examples, making sure you're happy with them so that you've got them right, because you don't want to be coming up with this stuff in your interview. You just won't present it in the best way. You won't come up with the best examples. So the process of going through them before is very important. We're going to look at an interview question then this week, and our interview question this week is, How will I know in one year's time if I've made the right choice by appointing you? So we've heard this be asked in a couple of different ways, so it's not— I wouldn't say it's common, but it definitely comes up in a variety of ways. How will I know I've made the right appointment? What do you reckon about this one?

On the face of it, it's like, oh no, it just feels like a bit of a nightmare question. Um, but actually There's probably a number of opportunities for you to shine in this question. And actually, I think what you, what you can do is demonstrate, you know, what your skills are, what your unique selling points are, and just explain. Maybe, maybe you've talked about transforming one of their services. They want, they want to appoint someone who can start a rapid access clinic for blah, and you've demonstrated during your interview that you were that person. So you might say, so in a year's time, I would expect our rapid access clinic to have been running for 9 months and our waiting times to have been reduced from X to Y, and this is based on data where I've done this kind of work in a previous trust and blah blah blah. So you're showing that, you know, your skill set, one of your USPs, and look, in a year this will be done, and this is what you can expect from me. And then you can probably do that in a couple of other ways. I also quite like it when people sort of use the first section as maybe, you know, in a year I'll be well settled. I would have made some good relationships. I'll have spent some time getting to know the department. You know, just showing that there's a settling-in period, a relationship-building period, and that you're not going to be somebody who's going to come in and trample all over everyone with your new ideas and your chat about, oh, when I was at so-and-so, we used to do it this way. So I think, you know, just showing some sensitivity around how you enter a team and make yourself valuable to them is important as well.

Yeah, and also, a year's not actually a long time, so you don't want to overpromise. In a year, I'll have set up this, I'll have done that, I'll have done— because it's not that long. It does go by very quickly. So, it's being mindful of having goals and knowing it's going to be part of the integration process, but having an idea of where you're going to head without over— Promising, I think.

Yeah, absolutely.

Last up, we're going to look at our tip and trick of the week. And this week, what we're going to talk about is things from long ago. How can you use things from long ago? This is probably one of the more common questions we get from students, I think, because we start to think about what are your projects, what are your USPs, and people just discard stuff that's from more than a couple of years ago, or maybe when they were— before they were in this particular specialty. And it's just dismissed that this isn't going to be suitable to use in the interview. So, what do you reckon to that?

I think it's really worth keeping an open mind about this stuff and not just dismissing it out of hand because it happened a while ago or it's not specialty-specific. Because actually, if you think about what you're trying to demonstrate with these, you know, projects and USPs is a skill set. So, for example, if, you know, 4 or 5 years ago you did a, you know, you redesigned the guidelines on X, or you made a new standard operating procedure for something, and it's been embedded and it's well used, then you can easily talk about that. Equally, what we want you to show is that you've used a particular set of skills or gained a particular set of skills through doing that project, you haven't lost those because it was a few years ago. You've still got the skill set, and so it's perfectly valid to talk about them now.

Yeah, I think it's just a missed opportunity to discount stuff. And then suddenly, you know, when you start to think, oh, actually I could include stuff, then it just opens a whole bigger realm of things. It doesn't matter how long ago you've done it. No one's going to know. No one's going to care. And yeah, like you say, it's about the skill. It doesn't matter. if it was in another specialty. Obviously, your clinical skill, if you're using a clinical skill for your unique selling point, then you want that to be relevant to your specialty. But the other stuff doesn't matter what specialty it's in. It's about the leadership, the senior-level skills. So definitely don't discard things just because of time. Actually think about, does it demonstrate your strengths? Is it something that you think you can use to showcase the senior-level elements of the project to showcase your skills? And find you have a lot more options open for you to help you work out your unique selling points.

And I think often you will have learnt some specific things as a result of being involved in these projects. So, you know, you've put together a new guideline or developed, you know, some new patient pathway, and you worked closely with a multidisciplinary team as part of that. That's an opportunity for you to talk about how to make a success of team working, how to delegate, how to hold people to account, how to navigate conflict within the team, how to set targets and deadlines, whatever it might be. And actually, if you've learned something key that you've carried forward into your current practice as a result of that, it's clearly highly relevant. And also then if you can demonstrate some impact from that project Or pathway development, whatever it was, then it's even more powerful because you can talk about some positive outcomes around it.

Yep, agreed.

I think the other thing is you don't have to tell them when it was.

No, you don't. And actually, you shouldn't. You shouldn't say the date. No one's going to say, in 2017, I did this project. You don't need to tell them. It doesn't matter. So you just say, I led a project on X. I led an audit with a team of however many people. You don't say the year. If there's things that are blatantly obvious, you know, that were when you were a medical student or something, then maybe that's too long ago for it to be relevant if you have to make it clear that you were a medical student. But most things are just projects that you did at different points in your career, and the timing doesn't need to be mentioned and doesn't matter. Good.

Okay, so keep it in.

Great. Okay, I think we'll wrap up there. We will talk about lots more great stuff next week, including How to start your prep and motivate yourself before you get a date for your interview to avoid that dreaded, oh my goodness, my interview's in a week and I haven't started yet panic. So we'll talk about that next week. Looking forward to seeing you then, Becky, and great to talk to you as always. See you soon.