In this instructional video, Natalie Fisher teaches viewers how to answer the common interview question “Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership skills.” She first emphasizes the growing demand for leaders, then outlines three leadership styles—servant leadership, leading by example, and facilitation—that candidates can adopt. Fisher highlights a core leadership characteristic: taking risks and being willing to go first, illustrated with a personal anecdote about volunteering to speak first at a conference. She then walks through a concrete STAR (Situation‑Action‑Result) example where she trained new resident advisors by using a leadership questionnaire to identify each student’s style, facilitating hands‑on activities, and achieving outcomes where students understood and could apply their own leadership approaches. The video provides practical prompts to help viewers generate their own stories (e.g., helping someone see a new perspective, coaching someone to solve a problem, presenting ideas to a boss). Finally, Fisher offers a free guide containing fill‑in‑the‑blank templates, example answers, and additional questions, encouraging viewers to apply the framework in future interviews.
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Tell me about a time that you demonstrated leadership skills. You want to learn how to answer this question in a way that makes you sound like a natural-born leader, so you're in the right place. In this video, I'll break down 3 top leadership characteristics and an example of exactly how to incorporate them into a flawless answer for when you need to answer this question, so stay tuned. 85% of organizations in the U.S. anticipate a shortage of leaders in the next 5 years, which is why it is going to be super increasingly important to demonstrate key leadership skills in your interviews. So if you want to be successful, listen up. First thing, you need to be able to identify where you are in your career in terms of your leadership development. You can develop leadership skills wherever you are at right now, and your answer is going to show them where you're at right now. There are many different leadership types which might resonate with most of you. So the first one is called servant leadership, the philosophy of giving people the tools and the resources they need to get their jobs done. So basically putting their needs in front of your own as a leader. Second Leading by example— doing as you would like others to do. By walking your talk, you become a person that other people want to follow. You become a person of integrity, and that is a leadership characteristic. 3, leading by facilitation. So this is coaching people into doing their best work by asking them questions and have them search within themselves for the answers. So there's 3 different types of leadership styles that you can internalize and decide which one resonates most with you. The first characteristic of a great leader is taking risks and being willing to go first. Once I was at a conference and the presenter called on the audience and said, I want everybody to introduce themselves. Who wants to go first? So I put up my hand. The presenter came over and handed me a sucker. I still have the sucker today. He said to me, "The first characteristic of a great leader is someone who steps up to go first." I still have this sucker because it reminds me of how scary it was to put up my hand to go first in a room full of people. But what an important lesson I learned! Now, no one wants to go first. I was the only person who raised my hand, and I did it really quickly. I don't know what possessed me to do it. It was scary to go first. So that's why. Being a leader means taking risks and going first. Let's give you an example of what leadership skills look like in an answer to when they ask you, tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership skills. I gave a presentation at my university and I was responsible for training the new resident advisors. My main goal was to teach each new resident advisor what his or her leadership style was going to be. He or she knew how to interact on the floor, and as a student, I wanted them to be familiar with their leadership style. Step 2 is the action, the middle of the story. So what actions did you take? I had each student fill out a leadership questionnaire which would determine what their leadership style was. Each person was assigned a group according to his or her responses, so each group did an activity that showed them a lot about themselves and their own styles. In the end, this is the wrap-up of the story where you tell what happened, what the outcomes were, etc. And it goes like this: each student successfully understood how they approached their tasks differently according to their own leadership style, and from that, how they would approach the jobs in their resident advisor position. So not only did I engage the audience with an on— a hands-on exercise, but I also gave them the knowledge about themselves that they needed to be able to lead effectively in the class and on the floor. And they can also pass this on to fellow students as well. So are there any interesting features to add to this story? The ones that I picked out were: instead of talking and giving a lecture-style presentation, I made it into something where they could participate, be hands-on, ask questions, and discover something about themselves. Not only listen to me talk. And then I want to talk about what I learned. Talking about what you learned when you're answering a question is really, really powerful because it shows that you learned the lesson, you were very self-aware of what you were doing and why it got you where you are today. So in this example, I learned the most rewarding part of the effort was to see students and how they found this information so valuable that they wanted to pass it along to their fellow students as well. So they all wanted to do leadership quizzes, and it was very rewarding to see that. Some questions to help you come up with your own stories, because you might be thinking to yourself, hey, I don't have any leadership stories. I've never led anybody. So 1, have you ever helped someone see a new perspective before? 2, have you ever helped someone accomplish something with a new frame of mind? 3, have you led or motivated a team to achieve a certain result? 4, have you coached someone to figure out on their own when they wouldn't have been able to figure out something before without your help? 5, have you presented a new idea to your boss that he or she took? Have you facilitated a discussion that led to a course of action? How did you go about leading? So that's all I have for you on leadership skills today. If you'd like to watch another video, click here. If you'd like to watch another video in this series, click here. I also have a free guide. It's chock-full of example answers, fill-in-the-blank templates, as well as more questions you can ask yourself come up with your own stories. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next video.
