What is your leadership style?
The interviewer asks this question to see if your leadership style will be a good fit within the company culture. There are many different leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, servant, pacesetting, coaching, collaborative, affiliative, and more. American Express prefers their Project Managers to have a collaborative and servant leadership style.
Collaborative leadership is a management practice that brings staff, executives, and managers together to share information organically. The servant leadership style emphasizes that leaders prioritize serving their team and organization first. Servant leaders do not prioritize their own objectives but seek to achieve a vision by providing strong support to their staff.
Since American Express listed collaborative and servant leadership skills as preferred qualifications on their job posting, you want to focus on describing your leadership style as one or both of the two styles. You should show the interviewer you have the skills and qualifications they are looking for in a Project Manager.
Avoid describing your leadership style as something opposite of what American Express is looking for in a candidate. They specifically state they are seeking a Project Manager with servant and collaborative leadership skills. If you say your leadership skills are different from what they are looking for, they may pass you over for a candidate with those leadership styles.
"My leadership style is collaborative. I like to seek out a broad range of ideas, opinions, and thoughts from my team to build strategies and solve problems. I find this leadership style is effective since my team members feel included and trusted and are more likely to take pride in ownership of their work."
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