Tell me about a time you overruled your team and used your authority to force a decision through. What did that cost you?

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.

• 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?

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.

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.