[Music] hello friends my name is yogesh i am a gpm lead in one of the top technology companies and i am doing tpm role in ic and leadership capacity for some time now in my career today i am here to talk to you and help you prepare for a few of the areas of the tpm interview today we are going to talk about leadership situational air questions and behavior aspects of the interview now what is leadership and why is leadership for tpm you may be entering for just ic rule into your contributor role but why then leadership comes into picture leadership comes into picture because ppm a technical program manager is the person who expected to lead the overall program team or the portfolio based on based on where you land and what your work is think about other roles which are part of the programs they can be sponsors of the programs executives lot of times in these roles there can be engineering leads there can be engineers product managers and more data analysts but all of these will have a slice of the program in terms of role but tpm is the only role which stays with the program throughout and lead it he or she is the person who will lead the outcome and that's why leadership is important and leadership without authority is a big topic you want to read about it more and more but overall leadership should show from the actions from the influence and from the outcome and you should have examples about it that how did you lead a particular program portfolio or situation saying no is very very important in tpm role be fearless understand and back your team about what they can deliver and what is a risk to the end user to the customer of the program and as well as to the team and the technology and that is why the leadership comes into picture also cross-functional leadership think about that a program typically is done for someone it can be in customer and end customer can be represented by marketing function of the team of the company it can be represented by finance function it can be represented by product managers at the same time there are very customer support teams involved so all of these teams are not actually delivering on the program they may be internal customers or stakeholders of the program cross-functional stakeholders so how do you lead that how do you come up with examples about talking those is very important so make sure those are ready uh with you then there will be situations right which will comprises of your tpm skill as a leadership skill this will this will overlap there's the interview might not ask that talk talk about leadership or talk about situation or a tpm scale but he he may talk about tell me a time when you had to miss the timeline tell me a time when you did not foresee a risk in the program and the risk materialized tell me a time when just before launch of the product someone came to you and say there's a big big defect in a product in which you need to handle so with all these situations you should have a good examples in your back pocket and very very important to segregate i versus v right in these answers a lot of times we start our answer with v because we want to be inclusive and that's great that we did this and we approached it this way but what was your contribution before a tpm in the program is very important that is something which you cannot miss you can start with the v but then how did you pass that information how did you create options for your sponsors or leadership team or executive team to make decisions how did you influence them by making some supportive arguments and data to make their decisions is very important data is your best friend influencing skills all kind of soft skills and relationship are important and that's part of your job but as a tpm can you create a solid data to buy back the argument and and how did you do that in your situation is going to be the one of the most important thing which you want to talk about then what about behavior question right behavioral equation is a lot of time will we will have situations in from the past for example if your team member is not cooperating with you suddenly how how did you deal with it right now think about it you are not a manager of the person but you are a tpm of the program how did you do it right did you try to understand what was going wrong with the person in the program because of lack of commitment from a team or a foreign person do you try to solve it that's where relationship management will come into picture your influences come will come into picture but did you still keep the interest of the program in center of your thought and that's why did you engage with right participants highlighting that issue and try to get options to resolve it what about what if questions right these are the hypothetical questions coming your way what if some engineering teams just re-prioritize your effort put in the backlog and they said no to it what if you are going to launch something and there was government regulation come in and change your timeline to do in shorter time span in lot of these cases think about the the triangle of program management right scope schedule budget something has to give away if you need to crunch your timeline then your scope might need to be impacted there's no right answer to it but can you frame the answer in such a way that you have a thought process which interviewer can see how we are going to approach the problem and what are options we are coming back from what about if you do not get aligned with the sponsor sponsor is not giving you enough time because he or she has other areas of work which are important how do you communicate you are not getting time but then that's a behavioral aspect of it but can you also handle it strategically as well as tactically can you do a lot of offline communication the written communication is very important can you do it effectively and can you get it delivered so there are multiple aspects which you want to attack what if kind of questions will come take a pause take a pause make sure you reiterate the question you understand question behind question the interviewers actually like it when you ask them did i understand this correctly let me let me repeat and take a pause if you want piece of paper write down your thoughts let have a hard 30 second pass there no issues but then formula is your answer accordingly so overall what we discussed today is leadership very important for a tpm which you show from your actions situational areas where you will need to look at your resume and talk solidly about what you have delivered as a tpm and finally behavior questions hypothetical questions and what if kind of questions where you have opportunity to run your imagination but reflect on your ex real experience to define the possible options so i wish you all the best and looking forward to talk to you more in future thank you thanks for watching the video if you liked it please subscribe our website is prepfully.com we've got lots of interview questions there you can also schedule a mock interview with one of our experts you can find the link in the description below and we hope you totally rock your interview