Tell me about a time you overruled your team and used your authority to force a decision through. What did that cost you?
Why this works
Sometimes consensus fails and rank is the tool left. The signal isn't whether the candidate used it but whether they knew its price — trust spent, dissent driven underground — and paid it deliberately. A leader who reports no cost either didn't notice or overrules too often to feel it.
Follow-up probes
- What had you tried before pulling rank?
- How did you deliver the decision to the people who disagreed?
- What did you do afterward for the relationship — and did it work?
What good looks like
Persuasion genuinely exhausted first, the overrule delivered with reasons and without triumph, the cost named honestly, and deliberate repair afterward — including revisiting the call when the team turned out to be right.
Red flags
Rank as the first resort, "no negative consequences" delivered with a straight face, dissenters recast as not team players, or a decision that never really stuck because nobody believed in it.
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