Top 3 Essential Leadership Skills – Tell Me About A Time You Showed Leadership Skills

Tell me about a time that you showed leadership skills. You wanna learn how to answer this question in a way that makes you sound like a natural born leader, so you’re in the right place.
 
 

 
 

In this post, I’ll break down three top leadership characteristics and an example of exactly how to incorporate them into a flawless answer for when you need to answer this question.
 

So, stayed tuned.
 

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85% of organizations in the US anticipate a shortage of leaders in the next five years, which is why it is going to be super, increasingly important to demonstrate key leadership skills in your interviews.
 

So if you want to be successful, listen up.
 

First thing, you need to be able to identify where you are in your career in terms of your leadership development. You can develop leadership skills wherever you are at right now and your answer is going to show them where you’re at right now.
 
 

 
 

There are many different leadership types, which might resonate with most of you.

So the first one is called servant leadership.

The philosophy of giving people the tools and the resources they need to get their jobs done, so basically, putting their needs in front of your own as a leader.
 
 

Second, leading by example, doing as you would like others to do.

By walking your talk, you become a person that other people want to follow. You become a person of integrity and that is a leadership characteristic.
 
 

Three, leading by facilitation.

This is coaching people into doing their best work by asking them questions and have them search within themselves for the answers.
 
 

 
 

So there’s three different types of leadership styles that you can internalize and decide which one resonates most with you.
 

The first characteristic of a great leader is taking risks and being willing to go first. Once I was at a conference and the presenter called on the audience and said, “I want everybody to introduce themselves. Who wants to go first?”
 

So, I put up my hand. The presenter came over and handed my a sucker. I still have the sucker today. He said to me, “The first characteristic of a great leader is someone who steps up to go first.”
 

I still have this sucker because it reminds me of how scary it was to put up my hand to go first in a room full of people, but what an important lesson I learned.
 

Now, no one wants to go first. I was the only person who raised my hand and I did it really quickly. I don’t know what possessed me to do it.
 

It was scary to go first, so that’s why being a leader means taking risks and going first.

Let’s give you an example of what leadership skills look like in an answer to when they ask you, tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership skills.
 
 
 

Step 1. Situation

I gave a presentation at my university and I was responsible for training the new resident advisers. My main goal was to teach each new resident adviser what his or her leadership style was going to be.
 

Here, she knew how to interact on the floor and as a student, I wanted them to be familiar with their leadership styles.
 
 

 
 

Step 2. is The Action, the middle of the story.

So, what actions did you take?
 

I had each student fill out a leadership questionnaire, which would determine what their leadership style was. Each person was assigned a group according to his or her responses, so each group did an activity that should the a lot about themselves and their own styles.
 
 

 
 

Step 3. The Result

In the end, this is the wrap up of this story, where you tell what happened, what the outcome were, et cetera, and it goes like this.
 

Each student successfully understood how they approached their tasks differently according to their own leadership style, and from that, how they would approach the jobs in their resident adviser position.
 

So not only did I engage the audience with a hands-on exercise, but I also gave them the knowledge about themselves that they needed to be able to leadership effectively in the class and on the floor, and they can also pass this on to fellow students as well.
 
 

 
 

Interesting features

So, are there any interesting features to add to this story,. The ones that I picked out were, instead of talking and giving a lecture-style presentation, I made it into something where they could participate, be hands-on, ask questions, and discover something about themselves, not only listen to me talk.
 

And then I want to talk about what I learned. Talking about what you learned when you’re answering a question is really, really powerful because it shows that you learned a lesson, you were very self-aware of what you were doing, and why it got you were you are today.
 

So in this example, I learned the most rewarding part of the effort was to see students and how they found this information so valuable that they really wanted to pass it along to their fellow students as well.
 

So they all wanted to do leadership quizzes and it was very rewarding to see that.

Some questions to help you come up with your own stories because you might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, I don’t have any leadership stories. I’ve never led anybody.”
 

So, one, have you ever helped someone see a new perspective before?
 

Five, have you presented a new idea to your boss that he or she took?
 

Have you facilitated a discussion that led to a course of action?
 

How did you go about leading?
 

Let me what you did in the comments below!
 
 

 
 

Also, if you’d like to dive deeper with me…

If you want some help coming up with your own impressive story answers for interview questions…

If you have ever blanked when asked one of these questions…

I’ve got you covered in my famous downloadable guide.

All you have to do is click on the image below to get it.

What you’ll get inside the guide:

• Top-ten examples of stories that have proven to be impressive interview answers

 

• The S.A.R.I. formula breakdown of how to answer these questions

 

• The step-by-step of why it works

 

• Fill-in-the-blank templates for each question so, you’ll be able to fill in the blanks and get going!

 

• Now you’ll need to come up with your own stories! (You can steal the ones in the guide if they apply to you though too, I don’t mind)

 

If you are still getting stuck because you can’t think of your own stories…

I’ve included 25 questions that you can ask yourself to come up with your stories much quicker!

You’ll get all this in a beautifully designed workbook prepared specifically for you to prepare for your interviews.

By the end of working through this guide, you’ll be feeling confident and ready for any situational interview that comes your way!

Here is some feedback I’ve gotten from this guide, and I get new emails like this every day, and they NEVER get old!

Do you know one person who could benefit from the information in this post? If so, do your friend a favour and share this info with him/her.

And remember, the current system isn’t perfect, but you can outsmart it. I’m here to prove to you that you do have what it takes.

I’ll see you next time and I can’t wait!

In Work & Life

I’ve got your back

-Natalie