[Student]
[Professor]
Interview Questions
Q1) how do you define Leadership?
Q2) how do you rate yourself as a leader? And Why?
Q3) Leadership is all about motivating your followers. Are you able to motivate them? If yes than how you do this?
Q5) among the above mentioned skills how many do you exhibit while working?
Q6) Can these skills be learned or developed?
Q7) why you think you are a successful leader?
Q8) we see so many leaders now but not everyone is effective, what actually differentiate one leader from the other?
Interviewee backgrounds
Employer- Sunrise Manufacturing
Gender- Male
Age- 47
Tenure – 11 years
Employer- Tech Software
Gender- Male
Age- 52
Tenure – 21 years
Ms. Emily
Employer- Emily Corporation (Retail stores0
Gender- Female
Age- 40
Tenure – 15 years
Employer- Tetra Packages
Gender- Male
Age- 40
Tenure – 18 years
Employer- Saint Brewery
Gender- Male
Age- 48
Tenure – 24 years
Interview Results
Question 1
Question 2
All of the respondents rated them as influential leaders accept for Mr. Andrew who viewed himself as manager not as a leader and stressed upon the difference between leaders and managers.
Question 3
The entire respondents believed in motivating employees. Ms. Emily, Mr. Abbott and Mr. Ranjit believed in doing it through financial measures while Mr. John focused on inspiring employees to be motivated. Mr. Andrew believed motivation to be inner quality and stressed on intrinsic motivators.
Question 4
Ms. Emily- Influencing and Risk Taking skills
Question 5
All of them were very confident that they possess the mentioned skills apart from Mr. Andrew who again stated that he is manager not a leader so charismatic personality is something god gifted.
Question 6
All of them were of the belief that some can be learned while others are born skills. Mr. Andrew seems to be more convinced on leaders being born with skills that others can’t learn.
Question 7
Four of them related their success of leadership to be evident from financial performance of their divisions and company. Again Mr. Andrew disagreed with the question of him being leader.
Question 8
Ms. Emily- Effective leaders are successful because they are aware of their employee’s positions and try to capitalize on their skills
According to your interviewees, are leadership skills born or learned?
If I try to sum up the views of interviewees, they all were of view that some skills can be learned but other are in born such as being extrovert or risk taking ability (Winkler). So it’s basically mixture of both that some skills are definitely in born but others are learned through experience and also the existing in born skills need to be polished. One of the respondent, Mr. Andrew, was of a firm belief that leadership skills are born and can’t be learned.
What was your most interesting finding?
Interesting finding was Mr. Andrew responses as he recognized himself as a manager than leaders and also he distinguished between the two. His view was though rigid but he was really clear over that leaders are born as they possess charismatic personally.
Did anything surprise you and why?
Yes response of Mr. Andrew surprised me as managers are often regarded as leaders and now a clear distinction need to be made between the two as blur distinction is not in the benefit of business.
What did you learn from this exercise?
I learned what is important to be effective leaders and what skills can be polished or developed to be successful among many other who are contending in the same area.
Works Cited
Winkler, Ingo. Contemporary Leadership Theories. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2010. Print.
