Speaker 1: Hi there. My name is Richard McMunn from the interview training website, PassMyInterview.com. And in this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to pass a leadership interview. If you are applying for any leadership role whatsoever with any organization, make sure you stay tuned because I will help you to pass it. Now, in a second, I'm going to walk through this door and undertake a live leadership interview. I will answer a series of difficult interview questions to teach you what to say and do during your own leadership interview. Just very quickly, please make sure you SUBSCRIBE to this channel. I am on a mission to help as many people as possible to pass their interviews. And I can only do that if you are subscribed to the channel. And please make sure you hit the LIKE button because that tells me you find the content useful and it motivates me to create more videos for you. Thank you very much. Okay. Let's walk through this door and undertake a live leadership interview.

Speaker 2: Let's go. Hello, sir. My name is Richard. Nice to meet you. Hi. Nice to meet you. Please take a seat. Thank you. Welcome to this interview, Richard. My name is Andrew, and this is my colleague Joshua. Today, we're going to be interviewing you for this leadership role. So, if you're sitting comfortably and ready, you start by telling me about yourself. Well,

Speaker 1: first and foremost, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed for this leadership position with your company today. Before I applied for the role, I analyzed the job description and the person specification to make sure that I had the necessary skills, the qualities, and the experience to come into the position and excel for your organization. I am very good at managing difficult projects. I am very good at working with other people and organizing people to make sure that we meet our objectives. I would say that I am a very strong communicator, and I am also, most importantly, strategically aware. I understand that within this leadership role, I have a responsibility for delivering on your commercial and your financial objectives. The different types of experience that I have that I believe will help me to be an outstanding leader is the fact that I can always foresee potential problems. I will always manage projects well. I will put plans of action in place to make sure that we achieve our goals, and I will look ahead to see what potential problems they are so we can adapt accordingly. I'm also very good at facilitating collaborative working. I'm very good at organizing teams of people, and I'm also very good at motivating others to get the most out of them. I will always take responsibility for the people who are within my team or my department. I believe I have a track record of significant achievements. For example, in my previous role, I was responsible for helping the organization to increase sales by 20% year-on-year. And that was done by getting everybody together in a room, by brainstorming different ideas about how we could increase sales, and then implementing effective and innovative marketing strategies to help the organization surpass its financial objectives. I am the type of leader who will always be a positive role model for your organization. I will always demonstrate strong work values and ethics so that other people will follow. And I will always be a strong mentor for people within

Speaker 3: my team or my department. Thank you. What are the most important skills and qualities

Speaker 1: needed to be a great leader? There are several skills and qualities needed to be an outstanding leader. You need to be a strategic thinker. Now, what I mean by that is making sure that everything you do is totally focused on helping the organization get where it wants to be. And you also need to sell that strategic vision to your team. So you need to be good at inspiring and motivating people within your team or your department, and also to enable them to achieve the company's vision. You also have to be commercially driven. Everything you do as a leader must be focused on making sure that the organization meets its commercial responsibilities and objectives, and also achieve the company's financial goals. You need to be a very good communicator as a leader. And that's not just about selling your vision and motivating your team. You also need to listen to your team and also listen to external stakeholders, contractors, and suppliers to find out what the problems are, what the barriers are to enabling you to achieve your goals. So you need to be very good at listening, a good communicator, inspiring others, and you also need to be very good at embracing change and selling that change to the people within your team. You also need to be a creative problem solver. So you need to foresee potential problems where they are on the horizon, adapt accordingly, and come up with creative solutions to the problems that you will undoubtedly encounter as a leader within an organization.

Speaker 2: Give me three reasons why you're suitable for this leadership position.

Speaker 1: The three reasons why I believe I am suitable for this leadership position are, firstly, the fact that I have an in-depth understanding of this industry. So I am confident that I can come into your organization and make a fast, immediate, and long-lasting impact based on your commercial and your financial goals. I have lots of experience of dealing with problems within this industry and also coming up with creative ways to help the business move forward. The second reason why I believe I am suitable for this leadership position is the fact that I am not afraid to make difficult and tough decisions that are in the best interests of the organization. Basically, everything I do within this leadership role will be geared towards helping you achieve your strategic objectives. Finally, I believe I am best suited for this leadership position because I am a very good motivator of people. So I will be able to motivate the people within my team, sell the company vision, and make sure that everyone is suitably placed and equipped to achieve our objectives. Thank you.

Speaker 3: Tell me about a time when you made a quick decision with limited information.

Speaker 1: In a previous leadership role with another organization, I was responsible for managing a very difficult project for an important client. Now, partway through the project, the client contacted me and he requested several changes to the project specification that were outside of the initial agreed contract. He told me that he needed an answer from me whether we would agree to those changes within 24 hours. Now, under normal circumstances, I would analyze the request and I would conduct a costs versus benefits analysis to see whether we could go ahead and agree to those. But in this situation, I didn't have enough information and I certainly didn't have much time to make a decision. So I decided to agree to the changes. Now, the reason why I agreed to those changes was because the client was a longstanding client of ours. He had spent considerable amounts of money with the organization and I believe that by refusing to those changes, it could impact negatively on our future working relationship. So I will always make quick decisions that are in the best interests

Speaker 2: of the organization long term. Tell me about a time when you handled a crisis. I was managing

Speaker 1: a team of people in a previous role and we'd all been working on a really important project for an external client. We'd been working on the project for four weeks and we only had 10 days left to finish the project on time. Now, unfortunately, three members of my team had to self-isolate because of COVID. Now, this had potentially disastrous consequences for the project because those three people who were self-isolating were valuable members of the team. They had lots of experience and I needed them to help get the project finished. Now, there was no way that I was going to contact the client and request an extension to the project deadline. So I assessed my options. What were my options and how was I going to get this project finished? So the first option was to speak to other departmental managers to try and find if they could lend me some people to come onto the project team. Unfortunately, I was only able to find one person who could come onto the team and help me. And even though he was really good, he was suitably qualified, we were still two people down. So again, I analysed the situation and I believe I came up with an innovative solution to this problem. I managed to find an outsourcing website where I could hire suitably qualified people who would work remotely on the different elements of the project that needed completing. And I'm pleased to say that the project was finished successfully within that 10 day period by borrowing one team member from another department within the organisation and by hiring two people from an outsourcing website. So it was a great result and we also then had that facility to use contractors from that outsourcing website moving forward if ever we needed them.

Speaker 3: Thank you. What will you dislike the most about being a leader?

Speaker 1: There are not many things that I would dislike. However, in my experience, the things that I do dislike about being a leader is having to work with external contractors or stakeholders who don't have the same appetite or ambition for project and task completion as I do. Although I do believe I have the necessary communication and relationship building skills to get them to work at pace and work effectively, I find it frustrating at times when external contractors don't have the same appetite as we do. The second thing that I dislike is people who are obstructive to change. I believe change is a fundamental requirement if an organization is going to be successful and also maintain its position within the market it is serving. But again, I see it as my responsibility as a leader to promote change, to explain the benefits of change and how we can really use it to help us achieve our commercial and strategic goals. Thank you.

Speaker 2: What's the first thing you would do in this leadership position?

Speaker 1: The first thing I will do within this leadership position is to sit down with you, the senior management team, to establish what it is you want me to achieve, how I'm going to achieve it and within what time frame. So I want to understand the strategic vision of the company. I would then go into my team or my department and I would analyse their performance for a short period of time. I believe it's irresponsible as a leader to go into a team and make changes without first of all understanding how the team is performing, analysing their strengths and weaknesses and what it is they need to perform to the best of their abilities. After analysing my team I would then sit down with each team individual and I would conduct a performance review. So I'd want to know what motivates them. Again, what are their strengths and weaknesses and where do they want to be within their career? And I would then sit down finally with my entire team and I would share my vision. I would explain the different things that I'd seen within the early days of the team performing based on their strengths, what they're good at and their areas of improvement. And I would then facilitate the change that I would want to make and I would motivate them to achieve our commercial goals. So, I hope you have found that tutorial useful. The next thing I recommend you do is to CLICK THAT LINK right now in the top right-hand corner of the video and head through to my website, PassMyInterview.com, where you can download my full set of 34 managerial interview questions and answers. This is a great resource for helping anybody to pass a leadership or management interview. So make sure you CLICK THAT LINK right now and check out that guide. Also, please make sure you connect with me on LinkedIn. I've put my LinkedIn.com link in the description below the video, and it's always good to connect with like-minded professionals such as yourself. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to the channel so you don't miss out. Please make sure you HIT THE LIKE BUTTON, because that tells me you find the tutorials and the live mock interviews useful, and it also motivates me to create more content for you. Thank you so much for watching and I wish you all the best for passing your leadership interview. Have a great day.