Give me an example of a time when you disagreed with the direction taken by a group that you worked with and how you managed to deal with the situation.

• Present a situation where you had a different plan (not just that you disagreed with the direction taken)
• Make clear that objections to the direction taken were voiced at in the appropriate forum
• Demonstrate a willingness to put forward best effort in spite of opposition to the  direction taken
• Show success

Why I ask this question:

I use this question for two reasons.  The first reason is to determine if you are a team player who will give a full effort to a project even if you do not think that it is the best idea.  As a manager, I have been in the uncomfortable situation of knowing more about the future strategic direction of an organization than the people working for me.  Occasionally, as a result of this additional knowledge, I have had to steer groups away from what seemed like a great idea at the time.  I need to know that the people working for me will follow through to the best of their abilities even if they believe that another different direction would be better.  The second reason is to hear how you voiced your disagreement with the direction taken.  I believe that strong companies should encourage their employees to voice disagreement with impending decisions as long as it is done in the appropriate forum.  In my opinion the appropriate forums include planning meetings, any time feedback on a decision is solicited or in a private meeting with your direct supervisor.  I believe that when the decision is made final it is the duty of employees to put their best efforts into making the final decision a successful one.

Before I detail what I consider good responses to this query, I will share an experience from my career.  When I was the senior technical specialist with a large biotech company, we were hiring another specialist to join my group.  As the senior specialist, I was invited to participate in the interview process.  When all of the interviews were completed we were left with two potential candidates.  One of the candidates impressed us with her technical knowledge set and extensive experience.  The other candidate was younger with far less experience, but he impressed us as being a very quick study who was incredibly motivated and hard working.  Although there were pros and cons to hiring either of the candidates, I had a strong preference for the more experienced candidate as I felt that she could have an immediate and positive impact on our workload (at the time we were completely swamped with work).  My manager, on the other hand, felt that in the long run, we would benefit more from having the less experienced, but more motivated and harder working candidate.  We debated the merits of both candidates for 45 minutes in a private meeting, but when the meeting ended my manager decided to hire the less experienced candidate.  Unless they have read this blog, my co-workers still have no idea that the candidate who got the job was not the one that I had favored.  Additionally, when the new candidate started working with us I made a point of acting as his mentor and helping him develop the skills needed for success as quickly as possible.    To this day we still work together and the (formerly) new candidate has certainly proven to be very competent.

Example of a good response:

This response was given in an interview for a product marketing specialist:

I remember a product launch when, against my objections, the company that I worked for used a very budget conscious approach to marketing.  In the meetings leading up to the product launch, I advocated for a bigger marketing budget and a more aggressive campaign.  Our finance group opposed risking more money on marketing this product so we were limited to a conservative budget.  In spite of our budgetary limitations, and thanks to a lot of long evenings at work, we still managed to beat our sales target by 20%.