This week we're talking about a time when you changed your opinion about someone!
Posted: Mon May 19, 2025 10:36 am
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Full version lesson:
Describe a situation when you had to change your opinion about something or someone.
You should say:
What the original opinion was
Why you held that opinion
What made you change it
And explain what you learned from the change
One situation when I had to completely change my opinion was regarding a colleague of mine named Jeff. When I first started working at a previous job, I thought he was quite cold and unapproachable. He rarely smiled and didn’t really make an effort to chat with anyone on the team. Because of that, I assumed he was arrogant or simply not interested in building any sort of relationship with his colleagues.
I think I formed that impression partly because of how he carried himself—very serious, very focused. Also, some of my teammates seemed to hold a similar opinion, which probably influenced my thinking more than I realised at the time.
However, everything changed when Jeff and I were assigned to work together on a fairly demanding project. From the very beginning, Jeff was incredibly helpful and surprisingly down-to-earth once we started talking more. He had a dry sense of humour and a very calm way of handling pressure. I soon discovered that he was just naturally introverted and a bit reserved in group settings. In fact, he later mentioned that he’d always struggled with social anxiety, which explained a lot of his earlier behaviour.
That experience really made me reflect on how easily we can misjudge others. By the end of the project, we’d built a solid working relationship and even became friends outside of work.
This experience reminded me not to jump to conclusions and to always give people the benefit of the doubt.
Subscribe to the podcast to get automatic updates in future weeks:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i ... 1070129363
Video version of this week's free lesson:
Full version lesson:
Describe a situation when you had to change your opinion about something or someone.
You should say:
What the original opinion was
Why you held that opinion
What made you change it
And explain what you learned from the change
One situation when I had to completely change my opinion was regarding a colleague of mine named Jeff. When I first started working at a previous job, I thought he was quite cold and unapproachable. He rarely smiled and didn’t really make an effort to chat with anyone on the team. Because of that, I assumed he was arrogant or simply not interested in building any sort of relationship with his colleagues.
I think I formed that impression partly because of how he carried himself—very serious, very focused. Also, some of my teammates seemed to hold a similar opinion, which probably influenced my thinking more than I realised at the time.
However, everything changed when Jeff and I were assigned to work together on a fairly demanding project. From the very beginning, Jeff was incredibly helpful and surprisingly down-to-earth once we started talking more. He had a dry sense of humour and a very calm way of handling pressure. I soon discovered that he was just naturally introverted and a bit reserved in group settings. In fact, he later mentioned that he’d always struggled with social anxiety, which explained a lot of his earlier behaviour.
That experience really made me reflect on how easily we can misjudge others. By the end of the project, we’d built a solid working relationship and even became friends outside of work.
This experience reminded me not to jump to conclusions and to always give people the benefit of the doubt.