A number of behavioral interview questions you encounter involve building trust or admitting to when you lost trust. Three ways of building trust that you can use in your response to these sorts of prompts are:

• Candor

• Curiousity

• Commitments

Let’s walk through those:

Candor.

We trust people who are candid, truthful, straightforward, and frank. There is no need to play guessing games to figure out what a candid person intended. This builds trust.

Word of Caution: That said, there are some situations in which even the most candid person can’t be perfectly candid due to social norms. Being candid at times can be offensive to some.

In Practice: People who are generally candid are seen as trustworthy because they speak the truth and don’t hide behind any number of excuses. .

Curiosity.

If you are curious about your teammates’ goals and aspirations, you will naturally ask good questions and be engaged with what matters most to them.

Word of Caution: You can be too curious. Asking ‘Why’ too many times can annoy people. Also, curiosity can border on being nosey (think my mother always being curious about my life).

In Practice: Curious people are generally good at asking what matters to those around them as well as being an active listener rather than always doing all the talking.

Commitments.

Those who set and meet their commitments are seen as trustworthy. If you say you are going to do something, do you do it and complete it on time? If yes, you can be trusted when you commit to taking on a shared or crucial task.

Word of Caution: Overcommitting will burn you out and then you will lose trust. Set commitments carefully.

In Practice: People who meet their commitments typically take on a commitment early in a working relationship to build trust. Think about how many times you have onboarded to a new team and found a small task you can complete early on. This is an example of meeting commitments to build trust.

With these three rules: Candor, Curiosity and Commitments in mind, try practicing interview questions like:

1. Describe a time when you significantly contributed to improving morale and productivity on your team.

2. What three things you are you working on to improve your overall effectiveness?

3. Give an example of a tough or critical piece of feedback you received.

4. Give me an example of an idea you had that was strongly opposed.

5. Give me an example of a significant professional failure.

Using the three C’s (candor, curiosity, and commitment) you can focus your story on how you failed to leverage one and use the same or another to solve the problem.

Let’s dive into #3 above. Most critical feedback relates to some loss of trust. Something as simple as being told people don’t feel you hear them. A lack of curiosity could cause that. Maybe you aren’t letting others speak, or when they do you don’t listen but rather focus more on what you are going to say next. Or maybe you are seen as being bold and not understanding how much they fear having to rebuild relationships you are putting at risk by being too blunt or goal driven.

Now, you can build a story around the time you were told the business development team didn’t trust you. After diving in, you realized they felt you weren’t listening to them and their concerns about the long-term health of a particular client. You fixed the situation by focusing on displaying curiosity and practicing active listening.

Now, your real answer would be more detailed but the essence of your answer would be around the concept of showing curiosity into the issues they face with clients.