All questions tagged leadership and development - Consulting Q&A - PrepLounge.com

Hi there!

Based on your short description of the context, both examples are fine. However, the real question is: in which of those contexts did you encounter interpersonally challenging situations in a team setting, to explain your detailed "Actions" and "Decision-making rationale" (according to the PARADE framework) in those situation. The context as such is actually secondary.

Additional comment: As a rule of thumb, the more current your example is, the better - all other factory being equal, chose the more recent example.

(Why? Firstly, as an interviewer, I am interested in your current skillset and abilities. Therefore, I am not really so much interested in your actions and decision-making rationale several years ago as opposed to several weeks or months ago. And hopefully, you developed yourself further over the last couple of years, so that your actions and decision-making rationale were different today, given the possibility that you would be in the same situation again.)

Hope that helps!

Robert

Hi Julia,

a leadership story should focus on your experience building/leading the team and managing team dynamics in challenging situations; the core of the story should thus not be based on drive or impact. That’s due to the specific definition of the three PEI dimensions.

1) Leadership is about leading a whole team in challenging situation and showing team management skills. Questions include:

1. Give me three examples of a time that you lead a group. 

2. What are some key lessons you have learned about motivating people? 


Here you want to emphasize how you overcome a difficult situation leading a team.

2) Personal Impact is mainly based on persuading someone about doing/not doing something. Questions include:

1. Tell me about a time that you persuaded your boss to go along with an idea you had.
2. Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills. 


Here you want to emphasize your influence on someone else, usually in disagreement with you.

3) Entrepreneurial Drive is about implementing something overcoming major difficulties. Examples include:

1. What was a situation where you set a major goal and been able to achieve it?
2. What has been your major accomplishment so far?

Here you want to emphasize the achievement you reached and the process that led you there.

Leadership is therefore different from drive, because you have to act as a team leader, driving the whole team to the result and managing internal team dynamics, while in a situation where you have to show drive you could act as a single person overcoming a major challenge.

Leadership is also different from impact as in both you deal with people, but while in the first you are leading a team, in the second you are actually influencing someone else (not necessarily a team and not necessarily as team leader).

Of course, some stories have a mix of the three dimensions together. In such stories, my recommendation is to emphasize one single dimension only, the one requested by the interviewer (if one of the others has necessarily to appear that's ok but it's presence should be marginal compared to the main one); otherwise the interviewer may think you are answering the wrong question (eg impact instead of leadership).

Hope this helps,

Francesco

Hi Fred,

MBB have a wide variety of alumni who become CXO in some of the biggest companies worldwide, I would say thus you will be totally safe going into consulting if you target a senior management position. In general, coming from MBB will allow you to have a faster career track than going directly into the industry, therefore not only you won’t be stuck in a position, but could actually reach faster your goal.

There is one element though which is important to underline: it doesn’t make sense to go into consulting exclusively for the exit opportunities in the industry/faster career path if you are not passionate/interested in the consulting job per se. You need indeed to like the actual job to do well in consulting, which then will lead to good exits as well. Thus, if consulting is merely a faster way to reach your goal but you are not passionate about the job itself (whether you like or not case prep it’s a good initial proxy for that), it may be better to consider an industry role from the beginning.

Hope this helps,

Francesco

Hi! I don't know if you are familiar with the STAR approach, but it is always a good base for any situational question. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result - it is pretty self-explanatory. Putting that framework more in line with your context of managing-leadership skills, I would answer the question by quickly describing the nature of the project and the diversity of the team, the conflict that arouse (or could have), and then how you dealt/fixed it. I just want to add that although consulting firms value team players, in these type of personal-interview questions they also want to hear about YOUR achievements, so make sure you let them know how YOU behaved as a leader. Hope this was helpful and good luck!