Some interesting interview questions - A response

Having managed my own small business for over a decade before earning my MBA in 2010, I have a significant amount of exposure leading and managing teams; but over the last year, I have gained a new appreciation for leadership and management in an organization as I have created and developed a new team in my current company. This has been an interesting experience that has taught me much about leading and managing people in a larger company. As someone who is currently hiring and doing interviews quite regularly, I will tell you the types of things I would look for in response to these questions.

1. "As a people's manager, what is your managerial style?"
• My answer would be:  From a textbook perspective I would say I use a mix of most styles (maybe throw out a few terms - paternalistic, democratic, laissez-faire, "management by walking around"* of course only if you understand what they mean and really use them), depending on the situation. I am mostly a laissez-faire style leader, preferring to surround myself with capable individuals that can to a large extent work autonomously. When decisions need to be made I am capable and willing to make them, but work to ensure that the decisions first and foremost benefit the company, then as much as possible considers the employee(s) in the equation.
• The key to me on a question like this is to indicate that you feel it is important that all individuals have apart of the process, this may not be as important in some environments, I can say that in a technical field where the employees are highly skilled knowledge workers it is essential for their happiness, productivity, and growth for them to be involved in decision making.
2. "As a team lead, how do you keep team members motivated?"
• My answer would be something like: I feel that leadership and motivation go hand-in-hand a good leader is inherently motivating. It's important that as a leader you are helping direct people to the best and correct decisions, but you aren't making the decisions for them. By giving employees autonomy, positive feedback, opportunities to excel and advance, and avoiding negativism most employees will be driven to excel.
• No company wants to hear that you will motivate employees by money.  They know that financial compensation is important, but they want to hire managers that can help them get the most of their employees for the money they will pay them.
3. "When managing a group of professional how do you make sure everybody is contributing to the maximum of their abilities?"
• Essentially this is the same question as number 2. A good leader that is capable of motivating a team will naturally drive his/her employees to work at the maximum of their abilities. Being cognizant of your subordinates and their unique situation and needs is the other part of this equation. All employees go through periods of inefficiency. It's the nature of people, they get tired, sick, burnt-out, have difficulties at home, etc. and all of these will impact their work. If you keep good, open lines of communication between you and your employees you will know when a little extra is needed. Perhaps as they start to get burned-out you could give them a special project that would ignite their interest in their job and get them excited about work again.
• This boils down to a question of motivation, how can you motivate employees to put in their best effort, again in ways other than just giving them more money.
4. I’ll try to come back with an answer on this one again soon.

* A quick rundown of the most commonly referenced management styles is here (for more detail check out Wikipedia):

• Autocratic: you make all the decisions – like a dictator
• Paternalistic: you still make all the decisions, but unlike a dictator you consider both the employee and the company’s best interests
• Democratic: you work with the team members to come up with solutions to problems
• Laissez-faire: you are pretty hands-off and pretty much let the people run themselves
• Management-by-walking-around: you are constantly trying to keep your hand on the pulse of the company/team to be aware of what is needed where and how you can best help. It is something of a mix between democratic and laissez-faire in that you help guide, but don’t necessarily make the decisions.

Please note that almost every text has different names, and varies a little on the definitions, of these styles, so if you use some of this B-School jargon you will want to describe it a little.


Below is the full post that this is a response to (http://linkd.in/sh4izq):
Some interesting interview questions
Here are some interesting questions I have been asked lately when interviewing for either technical lead or architect position. How do you even approach answering them? Please pick one question and give your version of the answer, if you wish.
1) "As a people's manager, what is your managerial style?" I answered: "I am a consensus seeker", but I think they expected a more elaborative answer. Any takes on this one?
2) "As a team lead, how do you keep team members motivated?" Well, compensation is a great motivator. Ability to do "cool" things so they look good on the resume is another one. But I doubt an interviewer wants to hear either of this answers, is there anything else to this business of motivation? Was I supposed to say that I use every occasion to give a motivational speech?
3) "When managing a group of professional how do you make sure everybody is contributing to the maximum of their abilities?" What if they don't, how is that a problem? What if a project does not require them to show "maximum of their abilities"? What if they are experts in .NET 4.0 but the project is still stuck (as a matter of corporate policy) with v. 2.0. How can they even show their strength? What this question is really about?
4) "As a solutions architect, how do you make sure that the system while being developed is doing what it is supposed to do?" I said something about soliciting frequent user feedback, but that sounded as if I am deferring this responsibility to the user. What a "solution architect" should do?
Thank you

It was not the beginning, but a beginning...

It was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the wheel. But it was a beginning...*

During my daily review of all the messages from my LinkedIn groups I noticed a message that I particularly wanted to respond to. Unfortunately, I'm far too long winded for a standard response so I decided to start the new blog that I've been planning to do for years, but never got around too. So here's a start to what will hopefully be a helpful and insightful blog about management, leadership, innovation, and technology (especially information systems).

* And yes if you noticed this is essentially part of the first paragraph of every WoT book - credit goes to Robert Jordan.