Tell me about a time you worked in a team that faced a problem. What was your role, and what did you learn?

Last year I was part of a Young Enterprise team of six, with three weeks to launch a product. Two members had stopped coming to meetings, and the rest of us were getting resentful.

I was finance lead, so I needed their input on costs, but I was more worried the team would split. Rather than complaining to our teacher, I messaged each of them separately¹ and asked how things were going. One was overwhelmed by coursework deadlines; the other felt her ideas had been dismissed in the first meeting. I suggested in our next meeting that we reallocate tasks by preference and add a ten-minute check-in each week where everyone could say what they were struggling with. I also made a point of building on her design idea², which we ended up using.

Both of them re-engaged, and we launched on time and made a small profit⁴.

What I learned is that disengagement usually has a reason worth asking about³, and that assuming the worst about a colleague damages the team more than the original problem. In a hospital, where a team might include a nurse on a double shift or a junior doctor who's out of their depth, I think asking 'what's going on?' before judging matters even more — because patients bear the cost of a team that isn't talking.