It is common knowledge that no matter which position you might be interviewing for, the butterflies in your stomach are indispensable! Interviewers know for a fact that the candidates are nervous and scared so they make efforts to help them calm down. But if you are interviewing for a team leader’s position, there is no room for anxiousness or uneasiness. For a leadership position of a Team Leader, Division Head or even a Manager, where you have to inspire, motivate and inculcate confidence in your assigned team, there is no scope for you to be unsure. Every office has a hierarchy and the tip of the pyramid bears significant importance to the company – the roles and responsibilities of a leader are vital and crucial to the performance of an entire team or department. While preparing for the interview round, remember that the possible questions would revolve around your technical knowledge, behavioural, communicative, decision making and analytical skills and finally, your leadership abilities. The article below discusses a few possible questions that you might encounter in a job interview and the ways you can handle such questions effectively. Browse through the section below for more about team leadership interview.
Team Leadership Interview
Have You Ever Had A Conflict With A Boss Or Professor? How Was It Resolved?
Answer. Yes, I have had conflicts in the past. Never major ones, but there have been disagreements that needed to be resolved. I've found that when faced with a conflict, it helps to fully understand the other person’s perspective, so I take time to listen to the other person’s point of view and then I seek to work out a collaborative solution. For example, (list an example from your previous experience here).
What Is Your Greatest Weakness?
Answer. I've had trouble delegating duties to others because I felt I could do things better myself. This, at times, backfired because I ended up with more than I could handle and the quality of my work suffered. But I've taken courses in time management and learned effective delegation techniques. I feel I've overcome this weakness since, over the past few years, I have been able to perform better.
If You Had To Live Your Life Over Again, What One Thing Would You Change?
Answer. Although I’m overall very happy with where I’m in my life, the one aspect I would like to change would be my focus on my career – I’d like to start focusing earlier on my chosen career. I had a great internship this past year and look forward to more experience in the field. I started off with an engineering degree but the technical knowledge that I learnt does not apply anymore to my current job. Nevertheless, since I have to deal with officers and engineers quite often, my technical background helps. I’d only like to get this dedicated feeling within myself a tad bit earlier than it came in reality. (Stay focused on positive direction in your life and back your answers with examples.)
How Will You Motivate Your Team?
Answer. When it comes to motivating a team, the bottom line is to stay motivated. Involving all the members in the ongoing developments and progress of the company is extremely important. For this, I will communicate and interact with the team members and ask them to give me regular updates on their personal performances. There is also a need to celebrate both individual and the entire team’s performance. Asking for innovative ideas and focusing on recognizing excellent performance will also be on my priority list. I will also set challenging goals and push the team to work hard in order to accomplish them. I will encourage consistency and transparency within the team. Letting the members know why they have been assigned a particular task is important to me since it gives them a direction and increases the productivity as well. (You could also list a past experience where you brought in phenomenal change and record breaking productivity!)
Hope the sample question and answers have successfully stirred your creative juices and got you thinking of possible answers for a broad range of questions which you are likely to face. Please use the above mentioned examples as samples and do not memorise them verbatim.
