Leadership is a fundamental quality that all managers must possess, regardless of their position within an organization.
A primary objective of any organization is to attract exceptional managers who can steer the company towards a bright future.
In the absence of effective leadership from managers, an organization will struggle to accomplish its goals and function efficiently when confronted with obstacles. Consequently, the organization dedicates significant resources towards recruiting leaders who can facilitate the growth and prosperity of the company.
Furthermore, it is crucial for the organization to identify leadership qualities in key personnel who are recruited to the company, as they could play significant roles in managing the organization in the future.
Therefore, job interviews for managers and key employees who must exhibit leadership skills are often complex, as they aim to uncover leadership traits.
The process of conducting such interviews requires extensive preparation.
This article highlights the kinds of questions posed during job interviews for both senior and junior managers, specifically in relation to leadership, and suggested answers for the same.
Mastering Leadership:
Assessing Behavioral, Project Management, Decision-making, and Communication Skills
This chapter presents examples of leadership questions and answers and suggests four skills to evaluate:
Leadership behavior, project/team leadership, decision-making, and communication skills.
6 Behavioral leadership questions for Leadership:
- Provide an example of a time when you played a key leadership role in an event, activity, teamwork unit, or project.
- Describe how you influenced and affected the activities and how people reacted to your actions as a leader.
- Have you ever disagreed with your management, and were you able to prove your conclusion and persuade your superiors?
- Have you experienced difficulties getting people to accept your ideas, and how did you handle those situations?
- What practices do you implement during conflict situations, and are they successful?
- If your superiors or teammates were asked to comment about your leadership, how would they respond?
Tips on answering these questions:
The interviewer wants you to define your leadership style, explain why people listen to you, and how you influence people.
Provide examples of events where you proved your positive leadership characteristics to support a company effort. Explain how people reacted to your leadership.
11 Project leadership and team leadership skills:
- How often do you consult team members?
- Define your key team members.
- How do you motivate your team?
- Have you ever used your listening abilities to achieve goals?
- Can you outline the steps you implement when beginning a new project?
- Can you outline a project from beginning to end that you finished, and the specific steps used?
- Are you often satisfied with your actions and outcome?
- Are you flexible and able to achieve your goals in a fast-moving environment?
- Can you meet deadlines, and have you ever missed a deadline?
- Could some of your team members assist you with meeting a difficult deadline?
- How do you best use your time, and what disciplines do you use?
Answer:
The interviewer wants to verify the methods you use to manage and lead a team to achieve goals within timelines.
These questions are more leading questions to explain your team leadership discipline. Therefore, explain the course of actions you take for key situations, how you recognize and use other team members’ skills to achieve goals, and how you manage your time to achieve your objectives.
In summing up, how positive of a manipulator are you for managing a team?
5 Decision-making and analytical thinking skills:
- Have you ever had to decide without knowledge of all the necessary data?
- How do you approach complex problems?
- Can you give an example of a conclusion you had to change after obtaining new knowledge or facts?
- Have you ever arrived at a wrongful conclusion, and can you explain what part of your analysis went wrong?
- Do you believe all conclusions should be 100% accurate 100% of the time?
Tips on answering these questions:
A leader must make decisions, and one of the essential qualities of a leader is to make decisions when others avoid them.
Personal stories are welcome in these types of questions. You have to describe the ways you take a decision and consider the risk management and advantage/disadvantage factors for each decision.
4 Personal communication skills for leaders:
- Are you most comfortable with verbal or written presentations?
- How do you build a case and present it to an audience?
- What are conversation impressions other than words, and how do you use them to communicate effectively with others?
- What techniques do you use to clarify the meaning of unclear messages? How do you maintain a positive discussion?
Answer:
Communication is the flow of information and ideas from one individual to another.
Many problems occur because of people failing to communicate effectively. Faulty communication causes problems in organizations and can cause a good plan to fail.
The interviewer expects you to describe the methods you take to deliver your and others’ messages, how you gather people around you for a good discussion, listen to one another, and exchange thoughts and ideas.
In summary,
The interviewer wants to assess your ability to lead and manage a team effectively, make decisions, communicate well, and handle conflicts and complex problems.
They want to hear personal stories that demonstrate your leadership style and how you approach key situations.
As a leader, you should be able to make decisions confidently and effectively, communicate clearly and concisely, and inspire and motivate your team to achieve their goals.