Describe a person you think is a good leader
The card most likely to be answered in the abstract, which is exactly what loses marks in Part 2.
The cue card
Describe a person you think is a good leader.
You should say
- who they are
- what they lead
- how they treat the people around them
- and explain why you think they lead well
1 minute to prepare · up to 2 minutes to speak
How to fill the two minutes
Four beats, not four answers. The prompts on the card are a scaffold — a turn that flows past them scores better than four disconnected replies.
- Who they are and what they lead — a team, a company, a community group, a country.
- A specific decision they made, ideally an unpopular or difficult one.
- How they treat the people below them, shown rather than asserted.
- Your definition of leadership, arrived at from the example rather than stated first.
Vocabulary this card invites
Lexical Resource is a quarter of your band, and band 7 explicitly allows the occasional wrong word — playing it safe with plain vocabulary is what keeps people at 6.
lead by example
the core idiom for this card
take responsibility when things go wrong
distinguishes leaders from managers
command respect
note it's earned, not demanded — useful nuance
listen to the room
a modern, natural phrase for reading a group
make the unpopular call
for difficult decisions
delegate
precise vocabulary examiners notice
The trap on this card
Turning it into a Part 3 answer about what leadership means in general.
Part 2 wants one person, described. Save the general theory — the examiner will ask for it in Part 3 anyway.
A band 8 answer, and why it works
Read this to see the moves, not to learn the words. An examiner hears memorised answers every working day and it shows up in your fluency score — the hesitation pattern of someone reciting is nothing like the pattern of someone thinking. The details below are invented; yours should be your own.
I'd like to talk about someone I worked under rather than someone famous — a project manager called Farah at a company I joined about four years ago. The team was in a bad state when she arrived. The previous manager had been the sort who took credit upwards and blame downwards, and morale was on the floor. What she did in the first month was almost entirely listening. She had a conversation with every single person, including the contractors, and she didn't announce a plan until she'd finished. I remember being sceptical about that at the time — it looked like indecision. It wasn't. When the plan came it was specific, and crucially it named things that were going to be dropped, which nobody had been willing to do. I think the quality that made her good was a willingness to be unpopular in a precise way. Weak managers are unpopular by accident. She chose exactly which fights to have and then held the position, and the team trusted her because of it, not in spite of it.
What earns the band
- 'Took credit upwards and blame downwards' is compressed and idiomatic — it does in six words what a lower-band answer needs three sentences for.
- It includes a revision of its own judgement: it looked like indecision, it wasn't. Showing your thinking change mid-answer reads as genuinely unrehearsed.
- The final distinction — unpopular in a precise way versus unpopular by accident — is the kind of abstract contrast that lifts an answer clearly above band 6.
What Part 3 asks next
Part 3 is loosely tied to your long turn, but the questions turn abstract — about people in general rather than about you. This card usually leads into:
- whether leaders are born or made
- how leadership styles differ across cultures
- what people expect from leaders today
Other people cards
Describe a person who has had an important influence on your life.
The most common Part 2 card there is, and the one most often answered with a list of adjectives instead of a story.
Describe an older person you admire.
A card that rewards specific life detail — the era someone lived through is free material most candidates leave on the table.
Describe a person who helped you with something.
A narrative card disguised as a person card — the marks are in the situation, not the description.
Describe a famous person from your country.
One of the few cards where you can prepare real content in advance without it sounding memorised.
Describe a friend you have known for a long time.
The 'how you met' bullet is the story engine here — most people rush it and then run dry.
Describe someone you know who is very good at their job.
A card that hands you an entire vocabulary field — work, skill, standards — if you pick someone whose job you can actually describe.
Speak this one out loud
Oliver will read you a card, wait out your preparation minute, and then say nothing at all for two minutes — which is the part you cannot rehearse alone. The report afterwards scores fluency, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation separately. The first test is free.
This guide is written from the published IELTS Speaking band descriptors, in our own words. For the official wording, see the British Council's band descriptors. MockLive AI is an independent practice tool and is not affiliated with IELTS, the British Council, IDP or Cambridge University Press & Assessment.