Everyone in this world makes mistakes oh yes they do. Not even though the best supervisors or leaders are perfect, because leaders are human being. But the best supervisors learn from their faults and show improvement from them. If you can prove to the boss that you can identify mistakes and adapt something about your style of leadership as a result, you will make a very outstanding leadership job applicant.

Behavioral Interview Query: Provide me an instance of a time when you were leading a project group that did not work out as well as you would have appreciated. What happened? What did you learn?

These kinds of leadership behavioral interview queries are always critical and dangerous. Indeed, any interview query that inquires you to discuss about a mistake or weakness is dangerous, but with leadership queries even more so because a leader that makes a huge mistake can take down a complete industry.

Let’s first discuss about what NOT to highlight:

• Do not highlight any colossal failures. You do not have to be that honest.
• Do not open up any failures that you blame on other persons.

A perfect answer would be a mistake you made when you first initiated out, or one that you were capable to fix. Keep in your mind that the main point and focus of your answer should be more on what you LEARNED, not so much on the error itself, which you should try to reduce as best you can.

You may not have an answer quite much perfect, but as long as you do not discuss about any horrible mistakes, and put a good concentration on what you did to recover, you should influence the employer with your leadership qualities.