Describe changing a colleague's opinion from negative to positive
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What is this question about
Interviewers use this question to assess whether you can influence someone without relying on authority, pressure, or being "the loudest person in the room." They want to understand how you handle disagreement, whether you sought to understand the other person's concerns, and whether you changed their view through trust, evidence, empathy, or collaboration. At higher levels, they are also evaluating whether you can do this on consequential decisions and in a way that improves long-term working relationships.
Key Insights
- This is not really a question about persuasion tricks; it is a question about whether you can understand why someone was negative in the first place and respond to that root cause.
- You do not get full credit for simply being right. You should show how you listened, adapted your approach, and moved the other person from resistance to buy-in without damaging the relationship.
- If the person changed their opinion only after you escalated or overpowered them, that is usually weak signal. Strong answers show influence through credibility, empathy, and follow-through.
What interviewers probe atlevel
Top Priority
You do not need a big cross-functional story here, but you do need to show that you persuaded through discussion, evidence, or collaboration instead of just deferring to authority.
Good examples
🟢I put together a small comparison and walked through tradeoffs with them, which helped us talk about the choice concretely instead of as opinions.
🟢I asked what evidence would make them comfortable, then came back with a short test and a safer rollout plan.
Bad examples
🔴I asked my tech lead to back me up in the meeting, and once they agreed with me the other person changed their mind.
🔴I kept arguing my case until the colleague gave in because there wasn't much else they could say.
Weak answers rely on positional power or persistence alone; strong answers create legitimate reasons for the other person to change their view.
Valuable
Example answers atlevel
Great answers
On a recent feature, a teammate was pretty negative about adding a new filter because they thought it would make the screen harder to use and add testing risk. My first reaction was to explain why the code change was small, but I realized that wasn't their real concern, so I asked what specifically worried them. They told me they had recently helped fix a confusing UI issue and didn't want us to repeat that. I mocked up a simpler version, walked through the user flow with them, and suggested we release it behind a limited rollout so we could get feedback safely. After that, they changed from opposing it to helping review the test cases, and the feature shipped without the confusion they were worried about.
On a small backend cleanup I proposed centralizing some helper code, and one teammate pushed back saying another layer would just hide logic and slow down debugging. Instead of arguing, I asked them for a recent example where they’d been slowed down and they showed me a bug where duplicated logic made root cause hard to find. I created a short branch that consolidated the helpers, added a couple lines of explanatory comments and a tiny bit of logging, and walked them through reproducing the bug before and after—showing it was actually easier to trace with the shared helper. Seeing the concrete improvement and having input on the comments changed their mind, and they even suggested an extra log message to make future debugging clearer.
Poor answers
A teammate was negative about how I wanted to implement a small feature because they thought it was unnecessary. I explained that my approach was cleaner and would be easier to maintain, but they still pushed back for a while. I kept making the case in our conversations, and eventually they agreed to let me do it my way. The feature worked, so I think that changed their opinion.
Question Timeline
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Late May, 2026
Early March, 2026
Early August, 2025
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