Tell me about a time you solved a conflict with a co-worker.

Focus your answer on a real conflict that you experienced and ultimately resolved. It is important to tell the story succinctly. You want to share enough information to fully explain the conflict without getting so mired in detail that your answer runs long. In your answer, you want to explain what happened, what you did to resolve it, and the ultimate outcome of the situation.

The goal of your answer is to acknowledge that conflicts will arise at work. How you resolve conflict demonstrates your professionalism and emotional intelligence. You want to leave the interviewer with confidence in your ability to solve problems.

A recent example of conflict that I experienced was working as a team to building a PowerPoint deck for our client to use at an industry conference. I was partnering with another graphic designer and a copywriter to build the deck. My roles was to create icons that the other designer leveraged to design each slide. Frequently, we would finish building a slide only to learn that there were changes from the copywriter that resulted in us having to redesign it. The designer and the copywriter were both getting very frustrated with each other. It occurred to me that if we changed our workflow so that we were getting the final content versus draft content from the copywriter we wouldn't have to redesign so often. We shifted the workflow and it saved us so much time. I learned a lot from this conflict. Now, when I start a new project, I ask a lot of questions to help determine the best workflow.