Recruiters look for applicants with certain core skills that will help the company keep them as assets in the form of possible future leaders. You need both strategic management and people skills to be a good leader. These skills set candidates for senior positions apart from their peers during formal interviews. The ideal candidate impresses interviewers with their poise, ability to draw references from real-life experiences, and collaborative qualities. Â.
We talk about what these skills are, why they are important, and how you can prepare for the 20 most common leadership interview questions that companies use to find and evaluate candidates for leadership positions. Â.
Leadership abilities are sought after in almost every industry and job role. From entry-level positions all the way up to the C-suite, companies want to know that you can handle leadership responsibilities and effectively manage teams. That’s why you can expect to get leadership interview questions in just about any job interview.
In this comprehensive guide, we provide the top 50 leadership interview questions that recruiters commonly ask along with tips on how to best answer them. From questions about your leadership style and skills to situational questions about resolving conflict and motivating teams preparing answers to these leadership questions will showcase your abilities and get you one step closer to landing the job.
Leadership Style Questions
Interviewers often start with these types of questions to understand your overall leadership approach
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
Tips for answering: Share your overall approach to leadership, such as being collaborative, democratic, pacesetting, etc. Highlight relevant skills like communication, empathy, decisiveness.
Q: What are the core values that shape your leadership style?
Tips for answering: Share 2-3 values core to your leadership like integrity, excellence, empowerment, etc. Give specific examples of how they influence your style.
Q: When is it appropriate to deviate from your leadership style?
Tips for answering: Give an example of a situation where adapting your style could be beneficial, like being more directive during a crisis or more delegative with highly capable team members.
Q: How do you determine when to use different leadership styles?
Tips for answering: Explain factors you consider such as experience level of team members, nature of task/project, time constraints, organizational culture, etc.
Q: How do you adjust your leadership approach when necessary?
Tips for answering: Share steps you take to assess situations, get input from others, and flexibly adapt elements of your style as needed. Demonstrate self-awareness.
Leadership Skills Questions
Hiring managers also want to understand the specific skills you possess:
Q: What are the most important skills and qualities for an effective leader to have?
Tips for answering: Highlight essential leadership skills like communication, strategic thinking, creativity, empathy, decisiveness, motivation, team development, etc.
Q: What are your greatest strengths as a leader?
Tips for answering: Share 2-3 specific leadership strengths you possess, such as conflict resolution, leading change, building trust, delegation, fostering innovation. Give examples.
Q: In which areas do you think you could improve as a leader?
Tips for answering: Demonstrate self-awareness by sharing 1-2 areas to improve, like public speaking skills, providing feedback regularly, building external networks, etc. Share how you are working to improve.
Q: How have you developed your leadership skills in the past?
Tips for answering: Outline on-the-job experience, training programs, mentoring relationships, continued education, professional organizations, reading, etc. that have grown your abilities.
Q: How would you work to improve the leadership skills of your team members?
Tips for answering: Share ideas like coaching/mentoring, rotating leadership of team projects, assigning stretch assignments, sending team members to leadership training, etc.
Team Leadership Questions
Assessing your team leadership skills is a priority for interviewers:
Q: How do you foster teamwork in a group you are leading?
Tips for answering: Share tactics like setting clear team goals, organizing team building activities, promoting open communication, encouraging collaboration, and leading by example.
Q: What strategies do you use to motivate your team members?
Tips for answering: Explain techniques like setting stretch goals, recognizing achievements, empowering team members, encouraging initiative, advocating for the team, and connecting work to purpose.
Q: How do you handle underperforming members of a team you lead?
Tips for answering: Share steps like having candid one-on-one conversations, resetting expectations, providing coaching/mentoring, and taking disciplinary action if poor performance continues.
Q: How do you handle conflict within a team you lead?
Tips for answering: Highlight conflict resolution tactics like having open discussions, finding common ground, keeping emotions under control, fairly mediating disagreements, and focusing on solutions.
Q: How do you ensure accountability across your team members?
Tips for answering: Discuss tactics like setting clear expectations, monitoring progress, providing regular feedback, asking team members to justify decisions, and creating transparency.
Situational Leadership Questions
Situational and behavioral questions allow you to demonstrate leadership skills:
Q: Your team misses a critical deadline due to the failure of a team member. What do you do?
Tips for answering: Share you would meet with the team member to understand why they failed, discuss the consequences, reset expectations, create an improvement plan, and follow up.
Q: A key team member disagrees with your direction on an important project. How do you respond?
Tips for answering: Explain you would hear them out, be open-minded, discuss facts/priorities, compromise if possible, make a final data-driven decision, and explain the rationale.
Q: You take over leadership of a team with low morale and productivity. How do you approach this situation?
Tips for answering: Note you would outline a vision for improvement, arrange team building activities, meet individually with team members to understand concerns, and recognize quick wins.
Q: Your company is undergoing major changes that will impact your team. How do you ensure the team stays motivated?
Tips for answering: Share you would frequently communicate changes, empathize with concerns, reinforce benefits, empower team to help shape direction, and keep team focused on goals.
Q: How would you handle a talented but difficult employee whom other team members complain about?
Tips for answering: Explain you would set clear expectations on proper behavior, have candid conversations on impact to team, involve them in solutions, provide mentoring, and take disciplinary action if needed.
Concluding Thoughts
This overview provides a starting point for preparing for leadership interview questions. Keep in mind, rather than reciting memorized answers, try to think of real examples from your past experience that demonstrate the leadership abilities they are assessing. The more you can prove your skills in dealing with leadership situations, the more likely you will impress the interviewers and stand out from the competition. With the right preparation, you can leverage leadership questions as an opportunity to showcase your true talents and qualifications for a leadership role.
How can your presence add value to the company?
It’s important to know what the job is, what skills the recruiters have listed in the job description, and what the company’s missions and goals are in order to give a good answer. As long as you know these important things, this answer will help you become the best candidate. Go on to talk about how you can use your knowledge, experience, and skills as a team leader to meet the needs of the hiring company. In short, your answer should talk about what the company needs and how your skills and experience make you the best person to do it. Â.
How do you manage a conflict situation?
Conflict of interests or ideas is inevitable in the workplace. Give examples of times when you were on a team with people who were fighting and how you stayed calm, listened carefully to understand each person’s point of view, and made suggestions for how to get things done in a way that would be best.
