Tell me about needing real work from a team that didn't report to you and had its own priorities. How did you get it?
Why this works
Most working life happens across teams that owe you nothing. The question surfaces the candidate's actual currency — relationships built before they were needed, asks shaped to the other team's interests, or authority borrowed from above — and whether the cooperation outlasted one favor.
Follow-up probes
- What did your request look like from their side?
- What did you change to make helping you easy?
- What did you do when they first said no?
- Would that team help you again today?
What good looks like
The other team's constraints understood and spoken to, the ask reshaped to fit their world, a no answered with a better approach rather than a louder one, and a relationship left healthier than before the request.
Red flags
Escalation as the opening move, cooperation extracted once with the bridge burned behind it, the other team cast as an obstacle throughout, or a manager did the actual getting.
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