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Resolving Disagreements with a Coworker, Another Team and a Mentee Who Resists Direction

GoogleSoftware Engineer · Technical Screen
MediumSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenBehavioral & Leadership

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Behavioral interview questions on handling conflict: a disagreement with a coworker, a disagreement with another team, and a junior engineer you mentor who does not accept your direction. They test how you listen, use evidence, influence without authority, decide when to escalate, and develop others.

A behavioral round made of three prompts about conflict and influence at work. For each one, describe a specific situation from your own experience: the context, what you did, and how it turned out.

Clarifying Questions

  • For the cross-team prompt, is the interviewer most interested in a disagreement about technical direction, about priorities, or about who owns a piece of work?
  • For the mentee prompt, does it matter whether you formally lead the person or informally guide a junior teammate?
  • Is it acceptable to choose a story in which your own position turned out to be wrong?

Part 1 — A disagreement with a coworker

How do you handle a disagreement with a coworker? Walk through a specific time it happened.

What This Part Should Cover

  • The concrete issue, what was at stake, and both positions
  • How you understood their view, and what evidence or criteria settled the question
  • The decision, your part in it, and the working relationship afterwards

Part 2 — A disagreement with another team

How do you handle a disagreement with another team? Walk through a specific case.

What This Part Should Cover

  • The other team's goals and constraints, and where they conflicted with yours
  • How a resolution was reached: shared data, explicit trade-offs, a compromise, or escalation and when
  • The outcome, and what made the next collaboration easier

Part 3 — A mentee who does not accept your direction

A junior engineer you are mentoring or leading does not accept your direction. What do you do? Use a real case if you have one.

What This Part Should Cover

  • Finding out why they resist before responding
  • When to let them try their own way, and when to hold a firm line
  • Clear expectations, follow-up, and when to involve their manager

Hints

Hint 1

Pick real stakes: Choose a disagreement that mattered to the work, and one where you can state the other person's position as fairly as your own.

Hint 2

Start from their goals: Before describing how you pushed, explain what the other team was accountable for and why their position made sense to them.

Hint 3

Diagnose before you act: Several different causes look the same from the outside. Think about how you would find out which one you are facing before deciding how firm to be.

Follow-up questions

  • Tell me about a disagreement where the decision went against you. What did you do after it was made?
  • In the cross-team case, at what point would you have escalated, and how would you have framed it to both managers?
  • What if the junior engineer's approach had turned out better than yours?
  • How do you give critical feedback to someone who becomes defensive?