Describe a time you had to lead a group through a stressful or high-pressure situation. What did you do specifically?
Your answer
Yeah, so one time our team had a big deadline and everyone was kind of stressed out. I tried to keep everyone calm and just told people to focus and we'd get it done. I checked in with people a couple times to see how it was going. In the end we finished the project and it turned out okay, people said it was good. I think I'm a pretty calm person under pressure so that probably helped the team.
Overall score
1.0 / 5Breakdown
"A big deadline" and "stressed out" is a generic, unspecific setup — no real detail about what the deadline was or why it mattered.
"Told people to focus" and "checked in a couple times" are vague, generic actions with no concrete first-person specifics.
"It turned out okay, people said it was good" asserts an outcome with no real content behind it at all — no detail on what was actually delivered.
No real reflection — the closing line about being "a pretty calm person" is a self-assessment, not reflection on what the situation revealed.
The answer is far too short and unstructured for this question — situation, action, and result all blur together with no real time given to any one part.
Nothing concerning in the substance, but the lack of any concrete detail makes it impossible to actually assess judgment or consideration for teammates.
Notes on your answer
“I tried to keep everyone calm and just told people to focus”
This stays at the level of a general leadership cliché — what did you actually say or do differently than anyone else might have?
“it turned out okay, people said it was good”
This needs a concrete outcome — what got delivered, what changed, what feedback did people actually give?
“Yeah, so one time our team had a big deadline”
This answer needs to be much longer. Right now almost every sentence is a generic summary rather than a specific, told-out moment — a strong STAR answer for this question would run several times this length once the situation, your specific actions, the result, and your reflection are each given real space.