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BEHAVIORAL INTERVIEWS
Answering Leadership
Interview Questions
Part of our ongoing series to help you ace common behavioral interview
questions. This post focuses on answering leadership interview questions.
Read on to find out how to ace them.
Describe Your Leadership Style
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Behavioral interview questions have become a standard now for companies in all
industries — especially Fortune 500 companies.
These behavioral questions (“Tell me about a time…” or “Describe…”) probe for
examples of how candidates have demonstrated desired competencies in the
past.
Of the many competencies that come up in behavioral interviews, leadership
ability is one of the most common (we would rank it as the #2 most popular after
the teamwork question). In fact, there are companies that base their entire
interview process on leadership interview questions — for positions at all levels
within the organization.
You might think that leadership interview questions are only relevant for
management positions, but that’s a common misconception. Most companies
are looking for people with leadership potential even when hiring for entry-level
positions.
You will surely be faced with some form of a leadership interview question in the
interviewing process. This is why we recommend that every job seeker prepare
at least one example of leadership experience and get comfortable speaking
about it in an interview situation.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be an on-the-job leadership role. Recent grads can
speak about leadership experience gained through volunteering, hobbies, clubs,
and academic projects.
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NOTE: This is Lesson 10 from the Big Interview interview training system. Take a quick look here if
you want to learn more about it.
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Table of Contents [ hide ]
1 Describe Your Leadership Style
2 What is Leadership?
3 Leadership Interview Questions
3.1 Behavioral Interviewing Refresher
4 Why Interviewers Ask About Leadership
5 How to Answer Leadership Behavioral Questions
6 Inside Big Interview
7 Leadership Interview Questions and Answers
7.1 Sample Answer — “Tell Me About a Time You Had to Lead and Motivate People.”
7.2 S/T (Situation/Task)
7.3 A (Approach)
7.4 R (Results)
8 More Tips for Handling Leadership Interview Questions
8.1 1. Choose a Strong Example
8.2 2. Get Specific About What You Did
8.3 3. Practice
9 Start Practicing Today
What is Leadership?
One of the challenges is that the term “leadership” means different things to
different people. What exactly are “leadership” and “leadership skills”?
Well, in the basic dictionary sense, “leadership” just means leading a group of
people or an organization. However, most people see true leadership as
something that goes beyond just managing people and projects.
There are countless books and articles about leadership and countless
definitions. Here are some of the competencies typically considered “leadership
skills”:
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• Taking initiative • Communicating a vision
• Translating vision into reality • Inspiring others
• Making tough decisions • Motivating others
• Empowering others • Developing others
With leadership skills being such a highly valued trait, it is no surprise that hiring
managers are also eager to ask leadership interview questions.
Leadership Interview Questions
When it comes to the job interview, most hiring managers are looking for the
type of leadership skills required to run a team, department or organization
(now or in the future).
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular leadership interview
questions:
Tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership skills.
Describe your leadership skills.
Tell me about a time that you took the lead on a difficult project.
When have you delegated effectively?
Describe a time when you led by example.
Who have you coached or mentored to achieve success?
Tell me about a time that you led an important meeting.
Describe your leadership style.
There are plenty of other variations on this theme.
Before we give you the step-by-step approach to answering leadership interview
questions like a rock star, here’s a quick refresher on behavioral interview
questions in general.
Behavioral Interviewing Refresher
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Behavioral interview questions ask for examples of how a candidate has
demonstrated specific competencies in the past (the questions usually begin
with “Tell me about a time…,” “Describe…,” or “Give me an example of…”).
The idea is that understanding past job performance is the best way to predict
future job performance.
Apart from leadership interview questions, hiring managers often ask about
your greatest accomplishments, and other behavioral questions that evaluate
your intercultural fluency, or work ethic.
Read our Behavioral Interview Questions 101 Guide for more.
Why Interviewers Ask About
Leadership
For the interviewer, the goal is to find out if the candidate has true leadership
potential.
For more senior-level roles (any position with direct reports), it’s important to
communicate your ability to jump in and assume a leadership role immediately.
The best way to do this is to demonstrate that you’ve done it successfully in the
past.
For other roles, the leadership challenge may be to lead and motivate people
who don’t report to you. For example, any project management role or position
that requires gaining cooperation and/or buy-in from other departments.
For other positions (even entry-level jobs), companies ask leadership interview
questions because they want to hire people with leadership potential —
individuals who can grow with the company and have superstar potential.
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Most companies want to hire the best of the best. Your interviewer wants to
know if you have what it takes to help lead the organization into the future.
In most job interviews, you will be competing against many qualified candidates.
Most of them can do the job. However, to get hired in a competitive job market,
it is essential to be more than qualified. You want to show that you are a leader,
a superstar, an influencer.
How to Answer Leadership
Behavioral Questions
This type of question can seem daunting. It requires a bit of bragging and many
of us are not comfortable with “selling” ourselves.
If you’re too humble when talking about your leadership experience or potential,
you risk selling yourself short.
This is why it’s so important to prepare for a leadership interview question with a
great leadership story in advance using the STAR format.
The goal is not to script out an answer word-for-word. The STAR format allows
you to structure the general shape of your response by jotting down bullets for
each of the key aspects of the story.
Check out Big Interview for more guidance on structuring great STAR stories —
and an Answer Builder tool that you can use to make the process much easier.
Inside Big Interview
Our complete training system for job interviews gives you video lessons, sample
answers, and an interactive practice tool for all of these different versions of
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leadership interview questions.
START PRACTICING TODAY
Watch this brief video to learn a little more about Big Interview, and then take a
quick look at the step-by-step system we’ve developed to get you ready for your
interview.
Leadership Interview Questions
and Answers
Sample Answer — “Tell Me About a Time You
Had to Lead and Motivate People.”
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Here’s an overview of how to use the STAR format specifically to answer a
leadership interview question and present a leadership experience:
S/T (Situation/Task)
Briefly describe the project or situation. Give just enough history and/or
background to provide context.
Example Situation/Task Bullet Points
When I was at ABC Company, we went through some company-wide lay-
offs.
The team of five that remained in the department had to absorb the
duties of the two that left.
As a result, people were overworked and morale suffered.
At the same time, more mistakes were being made because attention was
so scattered.
As the manager, it was my job to get performance back on track.
Why We Like These Bullet Points
With these bullets, the candidate quickly paints a picture of the challenge
faced. She had to motivate a team of people who were stressed out,
negative, and overworked. This scenario obviously required strong
leadership skills.
Tip: Avoid the temptation to get bogged down in too much detail. You
don’t need to fill the interviewer in on the reasons for the lay-offs, exactly
how individual team members responded, or exactly what mistakes were
being made.
A (Approach)
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Talk about the key actions that you took. When telling a leadership story,
make sure that you convey specifically how you stepped up as a leader.
What actions did you take and why? How did your actions demonstrate
leadership?
Example Approach Bullet Points
I scheduled a meeting of the full team to discuss strategies.
I communicated my appreciation for all of their hard work during a
challenging time for the company.
I asked for their assistance in identifying ways for us all to be more
efficient –including me!
I made it clear that this was a brainstorming meeting to come up with
options — that no idea was stupid and that it was a safe environment for
making suggestions.
We spent an hour capturing ideas on a whiteboard, then voted on the five
with the most potential. I then assigned each person to do more research
on how we might implement one of the ideas.
Why We Like These Bullet Points
She gives us a step-by-step breakdown of her leadership strategy. She
empowered her people to help solve the problem, she opened herself up
to constructive feedback, and she made everyone feel valued and heard.
Tip: Remember that managing a team doesn’t necessarily make you a
great leader. It’s important to choose a story that demonstrates true
leadership — stepping up to guide or motivate or take initiative, ideally in
challenging circumstances.
R (Results)
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A strong STAR interview story always includes a happy ending. Wrap up
your example by describing the positive outcome(s) of your action.
Quantifiable results are particularly impressive (boosted sales by 32%,
saved the organization $19K), but anecdotal results also can work well
(My client was delighted and sang my praises to my manager, my VP loved
our creative approach and promoted me).
Example Results Bullet Points
First of all, the team responded very positively to this approach. They
loved the idea of being empowered to help find a solution. Instead of
complaining, they channeled their energy in a more productive way once
they knew that they would be heard.
Right off the bat, we came up with two ideas that could be implemented
quickly and save us a lot of time.
One idea was to eliminate a weekly report. This freed up 8 hours each
week — including two hours of my time and three hours for my top
account manager.
Another was to train Penny, our administrative assistant, to take on some
of the tasks that were burdening our account managers.
We also decided to incorporate brainstorming and idea evaluation into
our staff meetings each month.
We are now more efficient and morale is way up.
My boss even asked me to help him roll this process out to the other
departments in our division.
Why We Like These Bullet Points
This is a great happy ending. The candidate covers a number of positive
outcomes:
Increasing morale by empowering the team members
Improving efficiency and saving 8+ hours per week
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Impressing the big boss so much that he wants other departments to
follow the candidate’s approach
Tip: It’s nice to have some specific numbers (freeing up 8+ hours per
week), but the anecdotal results are equally impressive in this example.
The fact that the candidate’s boss “stole” the idea for other departments
shows it was a real success.
More Tips for Handling Leadership
Interview Questions
1. Choose a Strong Example
Select an example that really shows off your leadership skills. Don’t
settle for a weak example (“I was the leader for my group project and
everything went okay for the most part.”)
Customize the example if you can. Review the job description carefully and
identify the type of leadership skills required for the role. Often, the desired
leadership capabilities are spelled right out in the job description. One
position may require managing a large team and another may be looking for
someone who can take initiative.
Don’t try to boast with an answer like, “I consider myself a born leader and
have always sought out leadership opportunities over the years.” It’s boring and
it doesn’t answer the question.
This should go without saying, but avoid examples that could raise red
flags. For example, don’t talk about leading a project that was an utter
failure due to your mistakes.
2. Get Specific About What You Did
Be detailed. The best stories include enough detail to be believable and
memorable. Show how you were a leader in this situation and how it
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represents your overall leadership experience and/or potential.
Be concise. Make an effort to keep the story relatively short. It can be
tempting to go off on tangents, particularly if you haven’t prepared in
advance. Using the STAR format will help you keep it focused.
Remember: Don’t try to script your story out word-for-word. The example
above is far more scripted than you want or need. We took this approach to
make it easy for readers to understand. However, for your own stories, you
can just jot down the key bullet points for each section. The idea is to create
a framework that ensures you cover the most important and impressive
aspects of the experience.
3. Practice
Once you have framed your story using the STAR approach, it’s time to practice.
Do not skip this step. We know that practicing leadership interview questions
and answers is not exactly the most exciting activity. However, it really does
make a difference.
Academic studies consistently show that candidates who practice get more job
offers. We’ve also seen this over several years of working with thousands of
clients: Practice makes you a MUCH better interviewer and significantly
increases your odds of getting hired.
Start Practicing Today
In our complete training system for job interviews, we give you video lessons, sample
answers, and an interactive tool for you to practice answering leadership questions,
and much more.
CLICK HERE TO ACE YOUR INTERVIEW
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Pamela Skillings
CHIEF INTERVIEW COACH
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