Tell me about a conflict with a teammate: how did you handle it?

• That you address the problem face to face. Consulting teams live under pressure and at close quarters, and a conflict left to fester is costly. The person who goes and talks to the other, calmly and early, is the one people want to work with.
• That you can describe the other person fairly. How you talk about an absent teammate signals how you will talk about future colleagues.
• That you see your own part. In almost every conflict, both sides contributed. A candidate who sees no responsibility on their side is a worry.

1. 1

   Pick a work disagreement

   A conflict over method, the split of tasks or the standard to aim for tells well. A purely personal conflict is trickier and gives you less to show.
2. 2

   Present both points of view

   Explain what the other person wanted and why, as they would put it themselves. Then your position. The interviewer should be able to think that both were defensible.
3. 3

   Tell the conversation

   Who took the initiative, where, what you said first, what you learned by listening. This is the central moment: if you jump from "we disagreed" to "we found a compromise", the whole answer is missing.
4. 4

   Say what changed afterwards

   The result of the project, but also how you worked together after that. If you teamed up again later, that is the best proof.

"On a four-person group project during my master's, I clashed with a teammate over how to work. He wanted everyone to move ahead alone on their part and assemble at the end. I wanted short check-ins every two days, because our parts depended on each other. After a week he stopped coming to the check-ins, and I took it badly.

Rather than raise it in front of the others, I suggested a coffee. I started by asking what bothered him about my way of doing things, and his answer surprised me: he had an evening job alongside his studies, and my end-of-day check-ins fell right on his shifts. For my part, I explained that I had no visibility on his section and that it was blocking me..."

This example is made up: it shows the tone and the construction, not a script to memorise. Your answer has to come from your own experience or from the data the interviewer gives you.

• Telling a conflict where the other person was entirely in the wrong. Even if true, it shows nothing about your ability to handle disagreement.
• Saying you have never had a conflict. Nobody believes it, and it suggests you avoid difficult subjects.
• Resolving the conflict by doing the other person's work for them. That is a way of avoiding it, and it does not hold over a project lasting months.
• Going to the professor or manager as a first move. It can be the right outcome, but only after trying to settle things directly.