Answers to Interview Questions: Describe Your Management Style
Many management styles exist. Avoid labeling yourself in any way during an interview. Describe only your perspective, experience and approach. Expand the conversation with thoughtful remarks. A question such as "Describe your management style" is an opportunity to provide qualitative, positive details. Make your interviewer smile when explaining your mission statement. This information, more than a label, helps your interviewer choose you as a finalist.
Other People Are Reading
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Function
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Management style labels don't convey universally accepted traits of great managers. Insightful and consistently adaptive managers motivate, guide, and lead by example. If you must state a management style, "Entrepreneur" writer Carol Tice recommends the "Enlightened Warrior" style for the 21st century. Enlightened warriors synthesize and direct information for the benefit of the organization. They're fiercely yet positively competitive.
Solution
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Tony Beshara, author of "Acing The Interview: How To Ask And Answer The Questions That Will Get You The Job," recommends describing the management style without labeling it. Rather than use the buzz word of "democratic manager," he describes a unifying strength: getting people to do more than they might otherwise. He establishes an overarching emotional theme by saying that each member of his team feels they're an equal partner.
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Effects
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"Adams Job Interview Almanac" published by Adams Media in 2005 suggests providing an indirect answer to this question. Rather than saying "I use a coach management style," tell the interviewer that you've always responded well to bosses and supervisors who've coached you. For that reason, you provide thoughtful reasoning sessions to employees. Your approach enables the employee to learn a reasoning process for future deliberations.
Misconceptions
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"Business Communication," a book written in 2007 by Carol Lehman, recalls coercive, authoritative, or affiliative management styles of the 19th century. In contrast, today's managers look to balance the organization's needs to achieve productive output with personal satisfaction. Effective managers recognize the necessity to motivate employees to personal best standards. The author suggests that labeling a management style is difficult. She recommends explaining management's goals as well as methods when addressing management style definitions.
Types
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In "Code Switching: How To Talk So Men Will Listen," by Claire Damken Brown and Audrey Nelson in 2010, the authors discuss observations about the traits of successful managers. Successful women blend management styles in a cohesive way, usually preferring the win-win strategy and benefits of consensus management over other styles. Effective women in management need not employ "male" styles to achieve success. Similarly, male managers benefit from modeling these cohesive strategies. Each manager develops her own style based upon the needs of her employer and those she manages.
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References
Resources
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