hey everybody and welcome to q a so today alex matanga asks can you please do a video on how to answer what is your leadership style in a job interview uh yeah certainly alex this is another one of those canned interview questions that recruiters especially like to ask in a job interview particularly a job interview for a management type role and everything i'm going to uh say in this video applies equally to if they had asked you what is your management style okay management versus leadership those words technically mean two separate things but a lot
of people interchange them so um so yeah this applies to both now if somebody asked me that question in a job interview and uh i have been asked that in a job interview several times this is the answer that i would give okay so they say what's your leadership style this is what i would say well i don't have one single leadership style um different situations require different handling and in the past i've had to adopt on occasion a very autocratic authoritarian leadership style for some situations because that's what was needed but my default leadership
style if i have one is more of a consultative leadership style where i especially if i have good employees i consult individually with a lot of my employees to get their two cents on the situation and what they feel is the right course of action just to sort of incorporate that into my decision um that's worked very well for me in the past but i've also adopted a more uh delegative leadership style on on occasion where you know you don't need to micromanage absolutely everything especially if you've got good people so you can give a
task on occasion to an employee and just trust that they will do it correctly without you being constantly involved you know so if the situation calls for that i can certainly do that and also in the past i've had to adopt a participative leadership style where you get everybody together uh you hammer it out you get everybody's opinion on it and it kind of goes back and forth and that tends to work very well if you know it's a very complex decision that affects everybody in multiple ways um you know so that's that's something that
i've employed on occasion um i've i've i can wear many hats i have done and uh to great effect so that would be my answer i know it's a bit long-winded but it's honest it's the truth and um it seems to fit the bill uh you know as with these types of questions when they're asked in a job interview there's always a question behind the question right they ask you one thing but they're really trying to probe for something else and in this case the nature of this question is um they ask this because they're
they're wanting to verify that you know you can get things done that you won't be hamstrung by indecision and you can actually you know get decisions made and and get things working um now just to switch roles for a second um if i was interviewing someone and i have um where i asked well technically i didn't ask this question but i asked one similar if i did ask this question and a candidate told me that they had a very authoritarian autocratic you know almost military style leadership style uh and that's it that's all they said
that would be a red flag for me because um it would raise the concern that you know if i did hire this person put them in charge they would cause a lot of ripples they may drive away good employees uh things like this so so if you just left it at that that would be a concern for me conversely if they said the opposite if they said like okay they had a very participative leadership style they got everybody together and you know they all talked it through and um you know made a decision together and
included everybody uh and that's all they said that would also be a bit of a red flag for me i have to confess because you know my concern would be that everything for them would turn into a decision by committee you know you would get group think and uh you know the concern would be that uh there might be a lack of vision and i hate using that word everybody uses that word it's so overused but it's true you know um there are anybody who's ever managed people you know that uh there are times when
you have to make a decision and no matter what option you pick someone's gonna take exception to it you know you're gonna have conflict uh it's just not possible to pick something that everybody uh agrees with and it's just not possible to get buy-in from everybody in the time allotted you know that's just a reality unfortunately and um in those cases you know you need to get everybody pulling in the same direction you need to pick a course of action and get everybody cooperating uh and working together you know to achieve a goal right you
can't have some people go this way some people go that way and people refuse to help to cooperate so so that would be my concern if somebody said that you know i have a very participative leadership style and that's all they said okay so i feel that the answer is to be able to switch up your style depending on the situation and i think that uh any hiring manager or recruiter that actually knows their stuff would agree so that would be my two cents for this question um i want to thank everybody for your attention
don't forget to like subscribe hit the bell blah blah blah blah and my patron of the week is michael walbridge so thank you to michael and thank you to everybody who's watching this video including you you are awesome and i will see you on the next one take care
