How To Answer “Tell Me About A Time” In A Management Job Interview

“Tell me about a time you have resolved conflict in your team.” “Tell me about a time you handled pressure.” “Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult employee.” “Tell me about a time you’ve handled underperformance.”

You’re likely familiar with these types of questions, and if you’re gearing up for a new role as a manager, you’re probably dreading them because your standard interview answers are shallow at best. So what’s the secret to effectively cracking the code and impressing the socks off the hiring manager?

What Is The Hiring Manager Really Asking?

To answer interview questions effectively, you first need to be sure that you’re answering the right question, not what you think they’re asking. Understand the underlying intent behind the question and read between the lines. This will help you structure your approach and ensure you don’t waste your time preparing an answer that is ineffective or fails to give the hiring manager what they’re really looking for. When the interviewer prefixes their question with, “Tell me about a time,” they are looking for you to provide tangible evidence of how you have responded in a given scenario, and most importantly, what was the impact.

Anyone can boast exceptional communication skills, business acumen, or strong problem solving and team management abilities. But it is through relating examples that your resume comes to life.

Three Main Types Of Interview Questions

There are three main types of interview questions: situational, behavioural, and competency-based. Often there is some overlap, so you must be careful.

But as a general rule, situational interview questions present you with hypothetical scenarios, and ask you what you would do should you be involved in such a dilemma. Behavioural questions ask candidates to share examples of situations they have already been in, and what actions they took. Competency-based questions, on the other hand, are structured around the core competencies of the person specification for the role the employer is trying to fill, and tend to be similar in approach to behavioral questions, drawing out previous examples as an indicator of your success and the future of the company should you be hired.

The latter two types of interview questions often tend to begin with, “Tell me about a time,” “Give me an example of a time,” and similar expressions.

How To Answer “Tell Me About A Time…”

Bearing this in mind, how do you structure a winning interview answer that proves you’re the best manager positioned to lead their team, operations, and profits to unprecedented success?

It’s simple: use the STAR model.

STAR is an acronym that helps you structure your answer, and makes it easier for you to remember what to say next. It also prevents you from going down the rabbit hole of talking endlessly without actually getting to the point (a common candidate pitfall). STAR stands for: Situation, Task, Action, Result.

Let’s imagine the interviewer asked you, “Give me an example of a time you handled underperformance in your team.” The answer is broken down below:

Situation (the context): When I was at XYZ Company as project manager, I led a team of eight on a high-profile client project. The project had a tight deadline of three months to complete and required superior-quality deliverables including x, y, z.

Task (what had to be done): One of my core team members was seriously underperforming. This resulted in the project lagging behind in quality, and we were close to missing our deadline, jeopardizing our prospects of continuing business with the client.

Action (what you did about the situation): I scheduled a one-on-one with this team member to understand the root cause of their underperformance, what challenges they were facing. and to assess what support they needed from me or other team members. It turned out that they were struggling with one aspect of the project due to less experience in that area. So I created a personalized performance improvement plan with their cooperation. The plan included realistic mini targets to achieve, full support and mentorship by a more experienced colleague, signposting to internal training resources, and regular check-ins with me.

Result (what was the impact): As a result of my intervention and ensuring well-rounded support for this team member, their performance and work quality drastically improved, and the client’s deadlines were achieved in record time. We continued to receive large volumes of business from this client, which made up over a quarter of our annual revenue. (Boast about your results and let the numbers do the talking.)

See how powerfully crafted this answer is?

To take it a step further, demonstrate critical thinking and self-awareness (essential leadership skills) by concluding with a reflection on what worked, what didn’t, and lessons learned. This is also less commonly known as STARR (the extra R stands for reflection).

In relation to the example above, you might say that this taught you the value in checking in with your team regularly before underperformance gets out of hand, or that you learned from that time on to provide your team with sufficient training and resources prior to commencing a new client project.

You likely have a ton of stories from which to extract examples of how you have demonstrated core leadership competencies. The challenge is yours: how will you craft your story in a way that provides all the essential details and persuades the interviewer to hire you?