Tell me about a moment with a colleague you'd handle differently today. What did you do then, and what did the repair take?
Why this works
The rehearsed conflict story casts the candidate as the reasonable one; this asks them to be the problem. What they did after the moment — the walk back, the apology, the changed habit — shows whether they can own an interpersonal miss without a script for it.
Follow-up probes
- When did you realize you'd gotten it wrong?
- What did you actually say when you went back to them?
- What does that colleague get from you differently now?
What good looks like
A real misstep rather than a humble-brag, a repair they initiated promptly and in person, the colleague's side of it described credibly, and a specific behavior that has changed since.
Red flags
The "mistake" was being too honest or caring too much, the repair was skipped because time heals, the realization only arrived when someone complained, or the story ends before the repair starts.
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