10 leadership interview questions to help assess management potential

1. Give an example of a time you managed a difficult employee, and how you overcame it.

Effective leaders build strong teams by communicating openly and fostering a sense of connection and belonging. This unity can be disrupted by an employee who is troublesome, doesn't perform well, or causes conflicts among team members. Ask candidates about their experience dealing with difficult employees to assess their ability to handle conflicts within their team.

Their answer should demonstrate their conflict resolution skills, as well as their ability to communicate and compromise. While their solution for dealing with a difficult employee may have ended in termination, that should have been their last resort. 

2. How do you motivate your team

This question is meant to get your candidate talking about their philosophy on people management. Remember that good leaders are able to nurture growth and empower their team by creating a safe and trusting environment.

Listen for well-developed strategies for encouraging career growth and strong performance from their employees. Do they use a positive motivation or negative motivation approach? Do they create a feeling of succeeding — or failing — together for their team? Are they able to provide concrete examples of how they have motivated teams in the past, or does the candidate mostly speak in generalizations?

3. How do you set priorities for the different projects you manage?

Prioritization and self-organization are very important skills for senior-level staff. Misplaced priorities, or an inability to rank projects by urgency and importance, can lead to inefficiency and missed deadlines that cause trickle-down effects throughout the company.

The candidate should be able to demonstrate a method for prioritizing their own and their team's tasks. Do they have a mental model for making decisions, and are they able to communicate their strategy well? Can they regulate their time and delegate important tasks to other people when necessary, or do they try to do everything themselves?

4. Walk me through a time you managed a complex team project. What was your approach to the work, and how did you delegate tasks?

Great leaders foster a collaborative environment by optimizing individual employee's strengths. They encourage employees to “self-organize” by providing encouragement and direction, and by allowing them to achieve their own goals. Leaders who try to control every part of each process will smother employees and burn out.

Look for people who are able to assign tasks based on the abilities of team members. Are they able to delegate tasks, and are they comfortable giving employees the autonomy to self-direct? Kerrie Juels, Technical Recruiter at Formlabs, uses this question to assess whether a candidate's leadership style aligns with their organization: “We are a company that emphasizes lack of micromanagement.

5. How do you give feedback to employees?

Communicating your evaluation of an employee's performance is a huge part of being a leader. The candidate must be able to give both positive and negative feedback in a way that nurtures employee growth. Leah Ward, Chief of Staff at Teampay, often asks interviewees how they give feedback because “they'll constantly be required to direct their team and communicate their strategies to other leaders in the organization.”

The candidate should be able to give feedback that helps employees learn and improve their performance going forward. They should have established methods for doing so often and openly.

In the follow-up discussion, probe their ability not just to give feedback, but to receive it — from their peers and those they manage. Have they established ways for employees to give feedback anonymously, for example?
 

6. What’s the most difficult decision you’ve had to make recently, and why?

Leaders need to be decisive. While it's important to fairly examine all options and hear everyone's perspectives, too much back and forth can look wishy-washy and be ineffective. A leader who can quickly and fairly make decisions inspires the trust of their employees.

In the candidate's answer, you are looking for a few key pieces of information. First, why was this decision difficult for them? Was their greatest worry the impact on the customer? Was it their ego and looking good to others? Was it the well-being of their employees?

7. How do you help employees grow and develop in their careers?

The best managers nurture growth among their team members to help create the next generation of leaders. Employees who feel challenged and encouraged often respond with higher-quality work.

The candidate should show a commitment towards helping their employees grow within the organization. Do they expect employees to be internally driven, or do they provide opportunities for training and learning new skills? Do they allow room for trial and error and a safe environment for failure?

8. Tell me about a time you had to think outside the box to complete a task.

Being open to new ideas and approaches are key components of encouraging organizational learning. With this question, you're asking about the candidate's flexibility and their ability to approach problems in new ways and come up with novel solutions.

Their answer should give you a window into their creativity and problem-solving abilities. First, they should be able to articulate a good example of a time they approached a solution in an unorthodox way. Second, they should be able to walk you through their decision-making process, explaining what choices they made and why.

9. Tell me about the best leader or manager you ever had. What did you like about them?

This question takes the focus off the candidate directly. By getting them to talk about someone else, you can glean some honest insights into what leadership qualities the candidate personally values. Brian Nolan, co-founder of Sellbrite, likes to ask this question because “I want to know that they have learned from a good manager in the past and are able to apply those traits to their leadership ability.”

10. In what ways do you demonstrate leadership qualities outside of the office?

By getting the candidate to talk about something outside of the scope of their normal job duties, you can catch a glimpse of their natural leadership abilities. Sofia Quintero, the CEO of EnjoyHQ, likes to ask about a potential hire's side projects: “I want to understand if they can make something happen from scratch. Especially if they have done it with other people, as a team and outside their regular job.”