EO Working Together interview questions test whether you can build useful relationships, listen properly to other people and change the way you work when collaboration is needed to achieve a shared goal.
At Executive Officer level, the strongest answers are usually practical. You do not need to describe leading a huge partnership. A good example can come from working across two teams, helping a colleague under pressure or improving a hand-off that was causing problems.
Preparing for an Executive Officer interview?
The EO interview guide includes 250+ sample answers across all nine Civil Service behaviours, including Working Together examples at Executive Officer level.
What Working Together means at EO level
The EO criteria focus on developing contacts outside your own team, sharing knowledge and learning, listening genuinely to other people and contributing to an inclusive working environment. You should also support colleagues when they need help, consider wellbeing and change ways of working when better cooperation will improve the result.
🤝 Build contacts: develop useful relationships outside your immediate team.
👂 Listen properly: show genuine interest in other people's views and pressures.
🔗 Share knowledge and resources: help information move between teams instead of keeping it in silos.
🌍 Support inclusion: make sure different views and individual needs are taken seriously.
🧠 Support wellbeing: offer practical help when a colleague is struggling.
🔄 Change how work is done: improve cooperation when current hand-offs or routines are getting in the way.
Searches for EO Civil Service interview questions often bring candidates to Working Together pages even when the vacancy does not name the behaviour in the question. Prepare examples around collaboration, supporting colleagues and cross-team delivery so you can adapt naturally.
Common EO Working Together interview questions
❓ Describe a time you worked with colleagues from different teams to achieve a shared goal.
❓ Tell us about a situation where you supported a teammate who was struggling with their workload.
❓ Give an example of when you worked with somebody who had a different working style.
❓ Describe a time you improved cooperation between two teams.
❓ Tell us about a time you listened to another person's perspective and changed your approach.
❓ Give an example of how you shared knowledge or resources to help a team achieve a result.
❓ Describe a situation where you helped create a more inclusive or supportive working environment.
How to answer with B-STAR
💭 Belief: briefly explain what good teamwork or collaboration means to you.
📍 Situation: describe the shared goal and why cooperation was needed.
🎯 Task: make your own responsibility clear.
🛠️ Action: show how you listened, shared information, offered support and changed the way people worked together.
📈 Result: explain what improved because collaboration became stronger.
Avoid saying “we worked well as a team” and leaving it there. The interviewer needs to know what you personally did to improve the relationship, solve the disagreement or help the other team deliver.
Example answer: working across teams to solve a shared problem
Belief: I believe cross-team work is most effective when relationships are built early, information is shared openly and people understand how their own pressures fit into the wider goal.
Situation: In an operational role, I worked with customer service, quality assurance and processing teams to reduce a growing backlog of customer cases. Hand-offs between teams were inconsistent and each area was focused mainly on its own queue.
Task: I needed to help the teams work together so the backlog could be reduced without lowering accuracy or creating more rework.
Action: I arranged short catch-ups with colleagues from each area to understand their pressures and where cases were getting stuck. I listened to the concerns from quality assurance about rushed work and to customer service colleagues who were dealing with repeated calls from people waiting for updates.
I suggested a temporary division of work based on team strengths and created a simple shared tracker so everyone could see case status and ownership. I also shared practical processing tips with customer service colleagues so straightforward evidence issues could be resolved earlier.
When one team raised concerns that the new arrangement was increasing their workload, I reviewed the tracker with them and moved part of the work back rather than insisting the original split was correct. I kept the tone focused on the shared outcome rather than which team “owned” the problem.
Result: The backlog reduced steadily, fewer cases were returned between teams and customers received clearer updates. The shared tracker remained in use because it improved visibility and reduced duplicated chasing.
Example answer: supporting a colleague under pressure
Belief: I believe supporting a colleague means understanding what is creating the pressure and giving practical help without undermining their confidence.
Situation: During a system outage, one colleague was managing a large number of high-priority incident tickets and was beginning to fall behind on stakeholder updates.
Task: I wanted to help them regain control while making sure the most critical incidents continued to receive their attention.
Action: I spoke to them privately and asked which parts of the workload were causing the most difficulty. I offered to take ownership of several lower-complexity tickets and contacted another technical team to share a small number of tasks they were already familiar with.
I also helped organise the remaining incidents by impact so my colleague could focus on the most serious issues first. I checked in later without hovering over them and made sure they knew the support could be adjusted if the situation changed.
Result: Stakeholder updates returned to schedule, the critical incidents remained properly managed and the colleague told me the practical support had reduced the pressure without making them feel that responsibility had been taken away from them.
Practise more EO interview questions
The full guide gives you a larger bank of Working Together answers alongside examples across the other eight EO behaviours.
What interviewers are looking for
✅ Relationships: show how you built useful connections outside your immediate team.
✅ Listening: explain what you learned from other people's views.
✅ Practical support: demonstrate how you helped another person or team succeed.
✅ Flexibility: show that you changed your approach when new information emerged.
✅ Inclusion: make clear that different perspectives and needs were respected.
✅ Shared result: explain what became better because people worked together.
Common mistakes
❌ Talking only about being friendly: Working Together should lead to a useful result.
❌ Making the team the whole answer: keep your own contribution visible.
❌ Ignoring disagreement: a real difference in views can make your evidence stronger if you handled it well.
❌ Helping by taking everything over: support should enable the other person, not remove all responsibility.
❌ Using a vague result: explain what improved in delivery, relationships or service.
For written evidence, see the Working Together 250-word statement example.
Quick EO interview check
✅ Is the shared goal clear?
✅ Have you shown what you learned from other people?
✅ Did you share information, resources or practical support?
✅ Have you shown how you handled different views or pressures?
✅ Does the result show stronger cooperation or delivery?
Prepare across all nine EO behaviours
Related interview example: Read an EO Working Together example about resolving team conflict.
For more question types, read the Working Together interview questions guide. The HEO examples show how the evidence changes at the next grade.
