Situational Judgement Test Navigating Team Dynamics 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A team member who typically performs well has started showing up disengaged, contributing less, and appearing negative in team discussions. No personal information has been shared. What is the BEST initial response?
- Document the performance decline and begin a formal performance improvement process.
- Give them space and wait to see if the behavior self-corrects.
- Have a private, non-judgmental check-in to express that you've noticed a change and ask if they're okay. (Correct answer)
- Discuss the behavior change with other team members to gather input.
Correct answer: Have a private, non-judgmental check-in to express that you've noticed a change and ask if they're okay.
A private, empathetic check-in opens a door without assumptions and often reveals addressable causes before the situation deteriorates further.
Question 2: Your team is about to deliver work that you believe is not yet at an acceptable quality level, but the rest of the team disagrees and wants to ship. What is MOST appropriate?
- Agree to ship to maintain team harmony — majority rules.
- Refuse to be associated with the delivery and remove your name from the work.
- Clearly articulate your specific quality concerns with examples, propose a targeted fix, and ask the team to decide with that information. (Correct answer)
- Escalate to the manager to delay the delivery without speaking to the team first.
Correct answer: Clearly articulate your specific quality concerns with examples, propose a targeted fix, and ask the team to decide with that information.
Presenting concrete quality concerns with a proposed fix gives the team the information to make an informed decision rather than overriding or bypassing them.
Question 3: You are facilitating a brainstorming session and one participant keeps evaluating and critiquing ideas as soon as they are raised, shutting down the creative flow. What should you do?
- Ask the critical participant to leave the session.
- Remind the group of the 'no evaluation during ideation' ground rule and redirect the discussion back to idea generation. (Correct answer)
- Allow the critique because rigorous filtering produces better ideas.
- Stop the brainstorm and move directly to decision-making to save time.
Correct answer: Remind the group of the 'no evaluation during ideation' ground rule and redirect the discussion back to idea generation.
Referencing the pre-agreed ground rule depersonalizes the redirection and reinforces the norm for the whole group, not just one person.
Question 4: Two team members resolve a disagreement bilaterally and change a shared approach without notifying the rest of the team, causing confusion. How should the team address this pattern?
- Require all decisions to go through the manager for approval going forward.
- Publicly shame the two members in the next team meeting to discourage future siloed decisions.
- Agree as a team on a lightweight decision-log practice so that bilateral decisions are quickly communicated to everyone. (Correct answer)
- Accept that bilateral decisions are efficient and do not require team-wide communication.
Correct answer: Agree as a team on a lightweight decision-log practice so that bilateral decisions are quickly communicated to everyone.
A shared decision log balances team autonomy with transparency, preventing confusion without slowing down collaboration.
Question 5: You notice that your team's morale has dropped significantly after a project was cancelled. Teammates are questioning the value of their work. What leadership behavior is MOST helpful?
- Assign more work immediately to re-engage the team productively.
- Avoid discussing the cancellation to prevent dwelling on the negative.
- Acknowledge the disappointment openly, connect remaining work to broader purpose, and celebrate what the team learned. (Correct answer)
- Let individuals process the cancellation independently without team-level intervention.
Correct answer: Acknowledge the disappointment openly, connect remaining work to broader purpose, and celebrate what the team learned.
Naming the loss, reframing learning, and reconnecting to purpose are evidence-based strategies for rebuilding motivation after setbacks.
Question 6: A team member consistently arrives at meetings having not read pre-reads, which wastes meeting time on material that was already distributed. What is the MOST effective systemic solution?
- Stop sending pre-reads and cover everything live to ensure equal preparation.
- Publicly call out unprepared attendees at the start of each meeting.
- Set a team norm that meetings assume pre-read completion, and start with a brief accountability check-in where preparation gaps are named. (Correct answer)
- Accept that not everyone reads pre-reads and redesign all meetings to accommodate non-prepared attendees.
Correct answer: Set a team norm that meetings assume pre-read completion, and start with a brief accountability check-in where preparation gaps are named.
A clear norm paired with a low-stakes accountability check-in creates consistent expectations without public shaming or lowering the preparation bar for the whole team.
Question 7: You are joining a team mid-project as a new member. You immediately spot a significant process inefficiency that the team has been living with. What is the BEST approach?
- Immediately propose your fix in the next all-hands to demonstrate your value quickly.
- Stay silent about it for at least six months while you learn the culture.
- Privately note your observation, learn the context behind the current process, and then raise your suggestion constructively with that context acknowledged. (Correct answer)
- Implement your preferred process unilaterally since the team clearly lacks your perspective.
Correct answer: Privately note your observation, learn the context behind the current process, and then raise your suggestion constructively with that context acknowledged.
Learning the context before raising a suggestion increases the likelihood that your feedback is received well and that your fix actually fits the team's constraints.
Situational Judgement Test Navigating Team Dynamics 5
A team member who typically performs well has started showing up disengaged, contributing less, and appearing negative in team discussions.
No personal information has been shared.
What is the BEST initial response?