Answering the Leadership Question in Job Interviews

Whether asked or not, preparing for leadership questions can improve how interviewers perceive you. This not only helps applicants to executive or supervisory positions, but it also helps applicants for faculty and administrative roles.

Interviewers might ask leadership questions directly or indirectly, such as:

• What’s your leadership philosophy?
• How have you contributed to improving departments/teams where you previously worked?
• What are some examples of how you’ve shown leadership?

With most face-to-face job interviews, hiring managers already know about your technical or subject-matter expertise, but they want to discover more about your personality, cultural fit, and leadership. Hence, answering leadership questions effectively and incorporating leadership responses into other questions can improve your viability as a candidate.

To help with your next interview, here are five things about leadership and the leadership question that you should know.

1. The meaning of leadership is evolving

While most still think about leadership traditionally and associate it with the executive and supervisory levels, leadership has radically changed in the last…