Tell me about a work setback that genuinely knocked you back — a failure, a lost deal, a collapsed project. What did the next month look like?
Why this works
Failure stories get told for the lesson; this asks for the recovery, which is much harder to script. The pace of regrouping, what got rebuilt first, and whether the lesson became a different way of working — rather than a better story — are where resilience is actually visible.
Follow-up probes
- What did the first week after look like, concretely?
- What did you rebuild or restart first, and why that?
- What do you do differently today that traces back to it?
What good looks like
A setback with real stakes owned without deflection, a recovery told in visible steps rather than a mood arc, and a current, checkable practice that traces straight back to it.
Red flags
A trivial setback carrying a grand resilience narrative, a recovery summarized as "I moved on", or the claimed lesson nowhere to be seen in how they describe later work.
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