Leading a team is a big responsibility and picking your next manager or boss is the biggest choice you’ll make when choosing a role, more so than the duties of the job or the pay for your work. A bad boss is one of the top reasons people leave their job, as such you should understand, on more than just a surface level, who you’ll lead by. As such, the reason I ask this question is it gets the interviewer to think critically about how they lead. A great leader will know that a team can’t be lead with a single management style, it takes tailoring management to what works best for the team, the individual, and the task at hand and changes constantly.
The second part of the question is designed extract an attitude from them about their own comfort in the role, their team, and place in the company. How do they consider the health of their team? has leading been a challenge? is this person still learning how to be a better leader? How is the team dynamic? there are lots ways to answer this question but your #1 goal is to see if they are self aware enough as a leader to know that it’s their responsibility to lead the team, not just delegate tasks and lead meetings.
A red flag around this question is if they can’t think of a single example of a challenge they’ve had with their team. Even the most perfect teams are going to have challenges, and if the person interviewing you can’t think of, or worse disclose, a challenging moment then you should understand that is a reflection of their abilities, the company culture, and awareness of their team.
Take note of which route they take here, do they go high and talk about accomplishments or do they speak to the difficulties, use that knowledge to guide whether to go positive or critical in each of the following questions.