How to Answer What is Your Leadership Style | Leadership and Management Interview Questions

Hey, everyone. This is self made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann. In this video, you'll learn how to answer the question, what is your leadership style? What is your management style? With a four step framework that will be sure to impress that interviewer. My ultimate goal is to help you find what makes you special so that you can add value to the world in a way that brings you joy. So make sure you subscribe to this channel and hit the bell to get a new video every, every Thursday. I will be completely honest. I was on the job market several years ago and you know, I pride myself on being a pretty solid interviewee. But the interviewer asked me this question, what is your leadership style? And in the moment, I just felt like this question was so big and abstract that I just started rambling about how it's important to respect people's time and be on time. I mean, suddenly I was obsessed with time. I mean, who was I? Flavor Flav? Yeah. I have no idea what I was saying. I mean, that is nowhere near what is most important to me. I completely fudged it and I ended up staying up all night hating myself for it. So this video is dedicated to all of you out there who will hopefully never have to have an awful experience like that with this question. All right, so with this question, they're trying to to picture you managing other people, which is tough to do. So your job here is to help them picture it. Here are four steps for your answer. First, emphasize flexibility. There isn't a one size fits all leadership style that works for every organization and every person. I believe that it's worth noting so that they know that you're a dynamic person who can adapt to different environments. Second, think about what leadership styles you have shown in the past. And remember, a leadership style doesn't have to be the very classic line on an org chart where these people report to you, sir, yes, sir. But could also be the way you lead external vendors, how you step in when working on a project, or how you plan and delegate to inspire you. With a few styles you can mention, you can talk about how your about coaching your team to be better. You're great at holding your team accountable to hit deadlines, or you lead by example, or you have a servant leadership style, or you're very strong at delegation. Those are just a few examples to think about. What rings true for you? Here are two more ways to uncover your leadership style. Number one, ask people who you know what they interpret your style as. I mean, it can be tough to see this in Yourself. Number two, if you don't have a lot of leadership experience, frame it in a way that's more about which leadership traits you would like to emulate. The way to do this is to ask yourself questions about what are those traits that you value? Such as what were the behaviors of the leader you've had in the past that you've really liked? And what were the behaviors of leaders you didn't respect? Your management style can then be made up of doing more of what you like and doing the opposite of what you don't like. The third step is to come up with stuff, stories and examples of you showing these different management and leadership styles. So if you thought of a heavy focus on coaching, think about a time you took to really coach someone through a challenge. Now, you can also do this the other way, right? So think of some of the leadership moments you've had that you've been most proud of. Write out those stories for yourself and then identify the leadership qualities you you showed in that moment. The reason why you need to tell stories is because this helps them to understand what it would be like to work with you and to help them picture you in the job. If you just, you know, self describe like, I'm an inspirational leader, I motivate everyone, and they all want to follow me, okay, that answer feels a bit hollow. And we can't really tell if that's what you're actually like or if you're slightly deluded to feel that way. I don't know. Now when I tell people to give an example, they do it this way. There was an associate on the team who didn't understand Excel, and I was the one who stepped up and coached her. Folks, that's not a story. Those are just a series of facts. You need to present it in the par format, which is also called Star and other similar things like that. But I like to keep it to three steps, keeping it simple. First, start with P. Problem. What problem did you need to solve? Paint the before picture for us. So tell us about that associate's struggle with Excel. Why was it so important that she learn it? What you noticed that led you to take action? Speaking of action, next is A for action, which is what did you do to solve the problem? So how did you coach her? What steps did you take? And finally is R for result. This is the so what of the story? What were the results of your coaching? How did this benefit the department and the company? Okay, fourth step is to tie it all back to the company. If you have an idea of the management culture at the company. You can completely tailor your answer to that, such as that you are flexible in your leadership, but through your interviews and your research online you know that the company has X culture and it expects Y employees. So so you would adopt largely a Z leadership style which then you tell a par story of how you exhibited that in the past. Oh wow, talk about impressing them. That would blow them away. Now, if you aren't feeling so confident in your knowledge of what types of leadership styles they want which are compatible with what you can offer, then bring it up. At the end of your answer, ask something like knowing the direct reports for this role and the types of projects this position will be leading, what do you think are some of the most important leadership approaches or what types of leadership styles have you seen be most successful here? Such helpful information, right? You can see if it's actually a leadership style that you could jive with and if their answer is different than your answer, but you still for sure resonate with the management style they describe, you now have an opportunity to address that immediately in the interview instead of them walking out going well, that candidate was great, but too bad they can never lead in the way we'd want them to lead here. Oh well, no, don't let this slip away from you like that. Make it a conversation. Now let's jump into an example. My leadership style has morphed depending on the people I am leading in the type of environment we are working in, such as I've managed a workforce that was very junior. Many of them, it was their first job, they had to learn many new skills and it was an industry that was heavy, heavily deadline driven and so I found my leadership style in that case to be very hands on, such as when I brought on a team of five very junior new writers. Their articles often needed many rounds of edits and it was a steep learning curve and I also noticed that many of them didn't know how to conduct themselves in a professional setting. I would work very closely with each writer for their first few assignments and I was a bit strict, like clockwork. If their assignment was due at 2pm and I didn't see it in my inbox, they got a call from me at 2:01. My writers ended up being fully trained several weeks earlier than many other sections and consistently did not miss any deadlines because I knew that was so crucial to the publication. Now I have led other teams where the work was longer term projects and it was a bit more creative and I found my leadership style in that case was to step back a bit, give them a goal and allow them to determine how they wanted to reach that goal and then acted in a servant leadership capacity of making sure to support them, remove roadblocks and to also course correct when they got stuck what types of leadership approaches have you seen work best at your company? Boom. Good one. So you will want to create what I call a story toolbox where you have specific examples of your leadership and and also many other situations. I'll link a video of how to create this story toolbox when people email me with their success stories, that video number one most frequently referenced for them getting job offers. So I will link that in the description. Also, if you're interviewing for leadership roles, you better have a strong answer to the common interview question. Tell me about yourself. Managers notoriously take too long to answer this question, so I have created a worksheet for you to craft a high impact answer. I will link that free download in the comments and in the description. You've got this wi Fi high five.