Behavioural Interview Question – Tell Me About A Time You Were Part Of A Failing Team

Gearing up for a job interview takes a bit of thought and preparation. You’re going to come up against many behaviour and situation-related questions when you sit down at the table with a hiring manager.

Today, I’m going to cover an interview question that comes up a lot:

Tell Me About A Time You Were Part Of A Failing Team

I’ll teach you:

• Why interviewers ask this question

 

• Step-by-step instructions for creating your response

 

• How to wrap it all up gracefully

The reason prompts like these are used in job interviews is that hiring managers want to know how you respond to pressure.

What they’re really asking is “Will you step up to the plate in a time of need? Are you going to be a contributing team player? Do you approach your job with a learning mindset?”

For this particular question, you can incorporate a story from work, school or volunteering. The person interviewing you wants to see your ability to turn around a situation that wasn’t going well with a group of people.

 
 

 
 
Your story should start with how the team was failing and how you played a part in getting everyone together and turning it around. Your response here will demonstrate people skills, communication skills and overall resourcefulness.
 

If you’ve been tuning into my other blog posts, you might have guessed how this is going to work—we’re going to use the S.A.R.I. Formula. You might have heard this technique referred to as S.T.A.R. or S.A.R. It’s all the same, and it all works. The reason it works is that you’re developing a structured response, and the steps are easy for you to remember.

SITUATION
ACTION
RESULT
INTERESTING FEATURES

For these kinds of job interview questions, you’ll need to tell a story. And to tell a story, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end.
 

In the beginning, you introduce what you’re going to talk about.
 

The middle is the meat of the story. This is where the action happens, and you’ll want to spend most of your time on it. The middle is where the hero (you!) comes in to save the day. You’ll wrap it all up with a happy ending.
 

Interesting features sprinkled throughout the story always add appeal and make you more memorable—we’ll talk about those, too.

I’ll give you an example from my own work experience.

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“We were about to make a big office move. Everyone was frantic. Out of the 75 people there, it seemed like no one was on the same page. It was our mission to execute a flawless relocation, without any interruption of service to customers. It seemed like an impossible task, given our lack of clear communication.”

Setting the stage here means talking about the team mission and why it looked like the team was on its way towards failure.

Step 2: Action.

“I took it on as my personal mission to make sure our relocation was smooth. I knew that communication and approach were the keys to accomplishing this. I brought the team together into a meeting each week to go over key progress points for the move. In these meetings, everyone had a chance to bring up their concerns and speak together in a safe place.”

The meat in the middle describes the steps taken to get the team back on track. In your own story, you’ll want to describe the solutions you came up with and how you were able to implement them.

Step 3: Results.

“My team was able to communicate, and all of the missing pieces were put together. The relocation happened without a hitch.”

In my case, everything worked out well. What were the results of your actions? You’ll want to explain how the team came together to see the project through successfully.

Step 4: Interesting Features.

“I learned that the team wasn’t communicating enough (or at all), and consequently, misunderstandings happened all over the place. By bringing everyone together, our problems were solved.”

Whenever possible, highlight what you’ve learned from your experience. In my case, I learned that opening up communication together finds solutions to problems!

If you’d like more help with these types of interview questions, download my free situational interview guide click here: The Ultimate Situational Interview Q&A Guide

Nailing the interview questions is great! But There is a lot more to interviewing than just answering the questions.
 

In fact if all you do is answer the questions alone, you’ve already lost the interview.
 

What you’ll get inside the guide:

• Top-ten examples of stories that have proven to be impressive interview answers

 

• The S.A.R.I. formula breakdown of how to answer these questions

 

• The step-by-step of why it works

 

• Fill-in-the-blank templates for each question so, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks and get going!

 

• Now you’ll need to come up with your own stories! (You can steal the ones in the guide if they apply to you though too, I don’t mind)

 

If you are still getting stuck because you can’t think of your own stories…

I’ve included 25 questions that you can ask yourself to come up with your stories much quicker!

You’ll get all this in a beautifully designed workbook prepared specifically for you to prepare for your interviews.

By the end of working through this guide, you’ll be feeling confident and ready for any situational interview that comes your way!

Here is some feedback I’ve gotten from this guide, and I get new emails like this every day, and they NEVER get old!

By the end of working through the guide you’ll be totally ready for any situational interview question that gets thrown your way!
 

Click below and grab it now.
 

Do you know one person who could benefit from the information in this post? If so, do your friend a favour and share this info with him/her.

And remember, the current system isn’t perfect, but you can outsmart it. I’m here to prove to you that you do have what it takes.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week back here in my digital corner.
 

In Work & Life
 
I’ve got your back!
 

-Natalie Fisher