People: personal and interpersonal competence
What this domain is really testing
People covers the ten personal and interpersonal elements: self-reflection and self-management, personal integrity and reliability, personal communication, relationships and engagement, leadership, teamwork, conflict and crisis, resourcefulness, negotiation and results orientation. Questions here rarely ask for a definition; they ask what you would do in a tense human situation.
Concepts to name precisely
Know situational leadership: directive when the task is novel and the person inexperienced, delegating when competence and commitment are high. Know the five conflict modes - collaborating, competing, compromising, avoiding, accommodating - and when each is legitimate: collaborating needs time and trust; avoiding suits trivial issues or cooling-off; competing suits safety emergencies. In negotiation, separate interests from positions. Results orientation means pursuing outcomes, not activity, without trading away ethics or stakeholder trust.
Traps
Default answers like 'escalate to the sponsor' or 'instruct them to comply' are usually wrong; IPMA-style questions reward understanding the situation first. Leadership is confused with formal authority. Engagement is confused with a single communication event. Conflict is assumed to be always bad, or compromising is assumed to be always best. Reliability is confused with perfectionism - promising what cannot be delivered is a failure of integrity, not loyalty.
Rule of thumb
A good People answer protects both the relationship and the result. If an option sacrifices one for the other, look for a better option.
Worked example
A team member is repeatedly late with deliverables. Weak answer: public reprimand or escalation. Strong answer: a private conversation describing the observed behaviour and its impact, asking what is getting in the way, then agreeing a concrete remedy and a review point - and following up.