key skills for leadership resume

30 Examples: How to List Leadership Skills on Your Resume

By Status.net Editorial Team on December 12, 2023 — 11 minutes to read

Leadership skills on your resume showcase your ability to manage teams, projects, and organizations effectively. These skills indicate that you can assume responsibility, guide others, and make informed decisions.

Here’s a quick breakdown of key leadership skills to include:

• Communication : You need to articulate your ideas clearly and listen effectively.
• Teamwork : Collaborate well with others and build strong team synergy.
• Problem-solving : Find solutions to issues and think critically to overcome challenges.
• Innovation : Show creativity and the willingness to try new approaches.
• Reliability : Demonstrate dependability in completing tasks and maintaining work ethic.
• Mentoring : Guide and support the development of peers or team members.

Highlight the skills that align closely with the roles and responsibilities of the position you’re applying for. This customization will help your resume resonate with potential employers.

Identifying Your Leadership Qualities

To effectively showcase your leadership skills on a resume, start by pinpointing what you bring to the table as a leader. This will help tailor your resume to highlight your unique strengths.

Self-Assessment

• Begin with some honest self-reflection.
• Consider your previous experiences where you took charge—whether formally or informally—and think about the skills that helped you succeed in those roles.
• Were you good at setting clear goals, or perhaps your strength lay in motivating a team? List down these instances and skills.
• Try categorizing them under relevant skill sets like communication, problem-solving, or team motivation.

Feedback from Peers and Mentors

• Next, reach out to colleagues and mentors who’ve seen you in action.
• Ask them to share their perspectives on your leadership abilities. This step not only gives you additional insights but also validation for the skills you’ve identified through self-assessment.
• Compact these insights into clear bullet points, such as “recognized by team for effective conflict resolution” or “commended by manager for strong project vision and execution”.

Showcasing Leadership Skills in Different Resume Sections

Professional summary.

Your professional summary is a teaser of your capabilities and accomplishments. Mention a standout leadership achievement or characteristic here. For example, if you spearheaded a project that exceeded targets, you could start with, “Dynamic team leader who successfully drove project X to completion, exceeding goals by 20%.”

Work Experience

In your work experience section, quantify leadership accomplishments with specific results. Under each relevant job title, describe how you guided teams or projects. Use bullet points like:

• Led a sales team to a record-breaking year, increasing revenue by 30%.
• Managed cross-departmental collaborations to streamline the product development process.

Your skills section should concisely list leadership qualities that match the job description. You can focus on skills such as:

• Critical thinking
• Team building
• Strategic planning
• Effective communication
• Decision making
• Conflict resolution
• Emotional intelligence
• Adaptability
• Problem-solving
• Accountability
• Visionary thinking
• Influencing others
• Cultural intelligence
• Time management
• Performance management
• Change management

Categorize them as ‘Leadership Skills’ to make them easily identifiable.

Education and Certifications

Include any leadership roles you held during your education or mention relevant certifications. If you were a club president or coordinated a major event, it’s worth mentioning. For example:

• President of the Student Council, managing a team of five to organize school events.
• Certified Project Management Professional with expertise in agile leadership practices.

Quantifying Your Leadership Impact

When listing leadership skills on your resume, showcasing the tangible impact you’ve had in past roles can make a significant difference. Employers value candidates who can demonstrate their leadership skills with clear evidence of success.

Example Achievements:

Project management.

• Coordinated a team of 10 to deliver a web development project, resulting in a 30% increase in user engagement within three months.

Team Development

• Mentored five junior staff to advance into mid-level positions, enhancing team productivity by 20%.

Using Specific Metrics:

Revenue growth.

• Spearheaded a new market strategy that led to a revenue boost of $100K in the first quarter.

Cost Reduction

• Implemented operational efficiencies that cut supply costs by $50K annually.

Tailoring Leadership Skills to the Job Description

When crafting your resume, aligning your leadership skills with the specific requirements of the job description can make a significant impact. This customized approach shows employers that you’re not just a great leader, but the right leader for their team.

Researching Job Postings

Start by thoroughly reading job postings in your field, focusing especially on the responsibilities and qualifications sections. Here you’ll find keywords and phrases that companies use to describe their ideal candidate. Make a list of these terms, particularly those related to leadership.

Matching Skills to Employer Needs

Once you have your list, match your own experiences and skills with the needs of the employer. Did you spearhead a successful project? That’s a great opportunity to highlight your strategic planning abilities. Have you overseen a team? Mention your supervisory experience and how you’ve fostered team productivity and morale. Ensure each skill you list is presented in a way that’s directly applicable to the job you’re aiming for. Use bullet points for clarity:

• Strategic Planning : Organized a fundraiser that exceeded goals by 30%, illustrating strong strategic planning and execution abilities.
• Team Leadership : Led a team of 10 sales associates to a record-breaking quarter, demonstrating effective team motivation and leadership skills.
• Conflict Resolution : Resolved interdepartmental conflicts by mediating discussions, resulting in improved communication lines and a 15% increase in project efficiency.

Tailoring your leadership skills to the job description not only positions you as a qualified candidate but also demonstrates your attention to detail and your commitment to the role.

Writing Compelling Bullet Points

Crafting your bullet points with clear action verbs and specific outcomes will make your leadership skills shine on your resume.

Action Verbs

When you start your bullet points, kick off with a strong action verb that showcases your leadership skills. This approach brings energy and clarity to your experience. Check out these verbs to strengthen your resume:

• Coordinated
• Implemented
• Streamlined
• Facilitated
• Revolutionized
• Spearheaded
• Transformed

Concrete Outcomes

Highlight the results of your leadership using concrete numbers and outcomes. These specifics will paint a picture of your effectiveness. Here are examples showing how to do this:

• Boosted sales by 20% through strategic leadership of a cross-functional team
• Cut costs by 15% by streamlining in-house training processes
• Increased team productivity by 30% by implementing a new project management system
• Developed a new employee engagement program that reduced turnover by 25%
• Led a marketing campaign that generated a 40% increase in qualified leads
• Improved customer satisfaction scores by 35% as a result of a team restructuring initiative
• Enhanced operational efficiency by redesigning the workflow, saving the company 1000+ hours annually
• Closed deals with 3 major clients, resulting in a revenue increase of $1.5M
• Drove the company’s expansion into two new international markets within a year
• Oversaw a budget of $500,000 while cutting unforeseen expenses by 10%
• Guided a project team to deliver all projects within deadline, 95% of the time
• Achieved a record low employee turnover rate of 5% through improved morale and leadership engagement
• Raised $200,000 in funding for a community service project by leading fundraising efforts
• Completed a company-wide audit leading to a reduction in operational waste by 20%
• Accelerated the company’s growth by 200% in three years through strategic partnerships
• Revamped the onboarding process, resulting in a 50% decrease in new hire ramp-up time
• Delivered a cloud migration project that improved system uptime by 99.9%
• Successfully coached a team of junior managers to achieve their KPIs six months in advance
• Pioneered a new customer feedback system that improved product development cycles by 30%
• Secured a 98% client retention rate through effective team leadership and problem-solving strategies
• Launched a diversity initiative that increased minority representation in leadership roles by 40%
• Orchestrated a department merger without disruption in services or employee satisfaction
• Built a volunteer program that contributed over 500 hours of community service per year
• Engineered a supply chain logistics plan that saved the company $250,000 annually
• Cultivated a culture of innovation that resulted in filing 10 new patents
• Designed a comprehensive risk management strategy reducing liability exposure by 20%
• Consolidated multiple legacy systems into a singular platform, enhancing productivity by 15%
• Commanded a national conference with over 300 delegates, showcasing organizational leadership
• Initiated a quality control protocol that improved product quality by 22%
• Masterminded a program that positively impacted over 10,000 local residents

Leveraging Extracurricular and Volunteer Experience

When detailing your leadership skills in a resume, don’t overlook extracurricular and volunteer experiences. These activities are fertile ground for showcasing your leadership qualities, especially if your professional experience is limited.

Organize Your Points Start by listing leadership roles in clubs, sports teams, or community groups. Did you captain your soccer team or head a fundraising event? This shows commitment and the ability to manage a group towards a goal.

• Led practices and strategy sessions.
• Coordinated team logistics for traveling to matches.

Highlight Achievements Quantify your impact where you can. If you raised a notable amount of money for a cause or increased club membership, include these achievements. This demonstrates the tangible outcomes of your leadership.

• Increased club membership by 20% through targeted recruitment campaigns.
• Organized a charity run, raising $5,000 for local food banks.

Showcase Soft Skills Volunteer work often requires collaboration, problem-solving, and communication. Reflect on instances where you used these skills during your extracurricular activities.

• Coordinated with a team of 10 volunteers to optimize the adoption process.
• Fostered communication between the shelter staff and potential pet adopters.

Use Strong Verbs Employ action verbs to convey your role in leading the effort.

• Chaired the annual book fair, managing over 50 volunteers.

Highlighting extracurricular and volunteer work can fill in the gaps and project a well-rounded image of your leadership capabilities. Tailor these experiences to align with the job you’re applying for, reinforcing the relevance of your skills.

Fine-Tuning and Proofreading Your Resume

Before you hit send on your application, take a moment to double-check your resume. Ensuring every detail is accurate and polished reflects your strong attention to detail—a vital leadership trait.

Start with these steps:

• Spell-check : Use tools like spellcheck to catch any typos or misspellings. However, don’t rely solely on this; some mistakes can slip through.
• Grammar check : Programs like Grammarly are a second pair of eyes, but again, they aren’t foolproof. Read through each line to catch errors a computer might miss.
• Consistency : Review for uniformity in font size, type, and heading styles. Consistent formatting is key for a professional look.

Hand your resume to a trusted friend or mentor for feedback. They might spot errors you’ve overlooked and provide suggestions to enhance your leadership descriptions.

Finally, print out your resume: sometimes, physical copies reveal mistakes that aren’t as obvious on-screen. Scan each section carefully, checking for proper alignment and spacing, and be certain that all of your leadership skills shine with precise, clear language.

Avoiding Common Mistakes

• Not specific enough: Rather than claiming you have “excellent leadership skills,” illustrate this with concrete examples. Showcase situations where you guided a team towards a goal. For instance, “Led a team of six in developing a new marketing strategy, resulting in a 20% increase in sales.”
• Overloading your resume with clichés: Terms like “outside-the-box thinker” and “team player” are vague and overused. Reveal how you breathe life into these phrases. Instead of “team player,” you might say, “Collaborated with cross-functional departments to streamline project processes, enhancing productivity by 15%.”
• Ambiguity about your role in a team achievement: Clarify your contributions to a team success. Instead of “Contributed to a project that won an industry award,” detail your specific actions: “Designed the key product features for an award-winning mobile app.”
• Avoid listing leadership qualities without context. Your skills should tie back to actual results or improvements made. Also, resist the urge to embellish achievements, as this can lead to a lack of credibility if questioned during an interview.
• Using too much jargon or technical language can make your leadership skills unclear to the reader. Explain your accomplishments in straightforward terms that anyone can understand.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some examples of leadership skills to put on a resume.

Consider adding skills such as conflict resolution, team building, strategic planning, and effective communication. You might also highlight your ability to delegate, your decision-making prowess, and your knack for inspiring others.

How can I describe my team leadership experience in a resume?

When you describe your team leadership experience, start with a strong action verb followed by the scope of your responsibilities and the impact made. For instance, “Led a team of 12 in completing a cross-departmental project ahead of schedule, increasing efficiency by 15%.”

What kind of leadership achievements should I highlight on my resume?

Showcase achievements where you’ve had a measurable impact. This could be project completions under budget, improvements in team performance metrics, or successful launches of new initiatives. Quantifying these with percentages or dollar figures makes your contribution more tangible.

How would I write a resume headline if I’m applying for a leadership position?

Think of your headline as your professional tagline. If targeting a leadership role, a powerful headline could be “Innovative Team Leader with Proven Record of Elevating Operational Success” or “Visionary Manager with 10+ Years of Experience in Team Growth and Strategic Planning.”

What’s a good way to illustrate leadership skills during an interview?

During an interview, use specific stories that demonstrate your leadership skills. Discuss challenges you’ve faced, how you addressed them, the actions you took, and the results that followed. This method paints a clear picture of your leadership style and effectiveness.

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45 Key Leadership Skills for a Resume (All Industries)

Show that you are an effective leader on your resume. Find top leadership qualities and synonyms and how to include them on your resume (with examples).

What are leadership skills and why do you need to include them on your resume?

The answer to this question is simple. You need to show your potential employers that you can manage a team and get results.

Companies like Amazon are very serious about leadership skills.

They won’t hire you if you don’t have leadership capabilities.

This is true even if you are applying to non-leadership positions!

In this article, we will explain the 9 most important leadership skills for your resume.

We will also share 45 leadership skill synonyms that you can sprinkle into your resume.

Let’s define leadership and get a deeper look into the nature and reality of leadership itself.

What Are Leadership Skills?

Leadership skills are the abilities that allow you to direct, supervise, and guide a group of people to achieve goals in unison. It’s not only being able to give direction to subordinates. It’s being able to inspire your team members to achieve the objectives of the organization.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Leadership traits are essential for management, executive, and supervisory roles. But most positions required them in some form.

Leadership ability is also essential for rapid and desirable career growth.

For quick reference, here are 45 leadership skills and adjectives for a resume. Pick the skills that best describe your abilities.

Don’t use too many leadership adjectives throughout your resume. This will increase each one’s impact!

Where To Include Leadership Skills on Your Resume

Above is a list of the top leadership skills.

Now it’s time to get them added to your resume.

To include the best leadership traits on your resume:

• Analyze the job posting. Determine the most important leadership skills for the position you are applying for.
• Compare those skills with the ones you have.
• Weave these skills into various sections of your resume.

Here is a sample resume with leadership skills used throughout the resume:

We’ll walk you through each section of your resume and how to include the skills that make you a great leader.

Leadership Skills in Your Resume Title

Take your resume to the next level by adding leadership skills to your resume title.

Your resume title should tell the hiring manager what role you are applying for, but you can do more than that.

Including leadership skills here will set you apart from your competition.

You can add 3 – 5 skills to your title such as:

• Sales Leadership
• Team Development & Coaching
• Executive Leadership
• Turnaround Strategy

Remember to check the job description to know which skills to include in your title.

Leadership Qualities in Your Resume Summary

Your resume summary section is a great place to showcase your leadership skills.

Back up the skills you mention with a few great examples from your career.

Here’s a sample resume summary for a retail manager:

Highly accomplished Senior Retail Manager with extensive experience directing operations across multiple retail locations towards growth and profitability. Developed career track record of success in support growth results at leading retailers. Skilled in team engagement, human resource management, and training and development. Described by superiors as a winning goal-achiever in the face of obstacles.

The sample summary includes leadership traits (in bold).

Leadership Traits in Your Skills Section

The skills section of your resume is important. It will show the hiring manager that you have the necessary skills for the job you are applying for.

List your skills front and center on your resume.

Don’t leave this section off of your resume or place it at the bottom of the second page.

You can name this section with various titles like:

• Core Competencies
• Area of Expertise

Here you will list 10-15 of your best and most relevant skills for the job you are applying for. Include both hard (or technical skills) and soft skills like those listed above.

Leadership Skills in Your Work Experience

Add leadership skills to the professional experience section of your resume.

Always try to highlight your skills with examples, results, and numbers.

Here are some sample statements that include leadership skills:

Developed and managed a team of 10 call center employees, providing ongoing coaching , mentoring and feedback to ensure optimal performance.

Implemented an improved culture focused on growth and leadership development, which significantly reduced turnover and resulted in extremely high employee retention rate of 92%.

Built, developed and managed a staff of 7 sales professionals, providing coaching and mentoring to support their personal growth and achievement of challenging quotas.

The samples use numbers to quantify leadership skills (in bold). They also show what actions led to the accomplishments.

Check out our 20+ resume samples to see different formatting options for your resume.

Leadership Traits to Add to Your Resume

Now we will discuss each individual leadership trait and provide some synonyms to use on your resume.

1. Communication

Communication is the heart of effective leadership.

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are at your work and how much passion you have for it. If you do not know how to transfer your knowledge and passion to others, you can’t be a good leader.

Many other leadership skills are useless without effective communication skills.

Include the following on your resume to show that you have communication skills:

• Active listening
• Articulation
• Non-verbal communication
• Public speaking

Include examples of using your communication skills to get work done effectively.

2. Creativity

We often think that creativity isn’t learned, it’s inherent.

But that is far from the truth. You can develop your creativity through experience and practice.

And, creativity is very much required for effective leadership.

These words on your resume will show that you are creative:

• Imaginative

It is a good idea to avoid the use of the word “creative” itself due to its being overused. Instead of directly stating it, you need to show how you were creative or use the words above.

3. Dependability

A leader that is not dependable is not a leader at all.

What makes a good leader is that people know that they can rely on you and jump into action with a simple request.

That’s the magic of dependability in a leadership role. Your team must know they can count on you to tackle any issues that may come up.

These words will help you to express your dependability on your resume:

• Credibility
• Reliability
• Responsible
• Trustworthy

Don’t forget to show how dependable you were to everyone in your previous role.

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching,” according to C.S. Lewis.

Being ethical is an essential leadership skill. If the leader does not do what is right in every situation, how can the followers?

An ethical person will keep their commitments, take responsibility, and respect their employees.

You can show your ethical characteristics with the following words on your resume: 

Include the words above to show that you are a leader and an employee that can be trusted.

5. Motivation

The ability to motivate others is essential for effective leadership.

Motivation and productivity go hand in hand. A motivated team is a productive team.

And, the leader must keep their team motivated to achieve their goals.

The following words will help you to explain your ability to motivate others: 

• Encouraging
• Stimulating
• Influential

Include some succinct stories of your motivational skills at play and how it helped your colleagues and team members.

6. Optimism

A positive outlook is sometimes all you need to get through a tough assignment.

Optimism in a leader is a godsend. We all love to work with someone who always sees and brings out the best in us, instead of being doubtful.

Positivity as a leader will also make your leadership experience a fulfilling one.

The following words will help you to represent your positive attitude on the resume:

• Enthusiastic

Remember that positivity is not about blindly being optimistic for every solution, it’s about finding the best logical solution and keeping unfaltering faith in your discernment.

7. People Management

To be a great leader, it takes technical knowledge as well as the ability to manage people.

Keeping people aligned with your vision is the art of a true leader.

A significant part of corporate leadership is people management.

These are the words to use on your resume to show your people management skills.

• Constructive feedback
• Conflict resolution
• Team building

Include any training you have in HR management.

8. Project Management

Leading a project involves coordinating a lot of moving parts. It takes many skills to be an effective project manager.

From planning to allocating resources to monitoring progress, this skill covers it all.

Add these words to your resume to convey your project management skills:

• Agile/Scrum
• Lean thinking
• Organization
• Risk management

Be sure to quantify your projects on your resume by including your results. Include any PM certifications you have in the education section of your resume.

9. Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is the ability to take complex problems and determine logical solutions.

Strategic thinking requires clarity of thought and a deeper understanding of the situation.

It is an essential leadership trait.

The following words show your strategic thinking capabilities:

• Problem solving
• Critical thinking
• Decision making
• Visionary thinking

Showcase tasks you have accomplished by strategic thinking and what the results were.

Key Takeaways

What we have learned about leadership skills and how to include them on your resume is quite simple:

• Leadership qualities are sought-after skills in today’s job market.
• You must show quantifiable leadership skills on your resume. It is the first contact with a potential employer.
• Leadership traits are indispensable for management, executive, and supervisory roles. They are also essential for teamwork and career growth.
• Read the job announcement to determine the leadership skills required for the job.
• Include your leadership skills in various sections of your resume with quantifiable examples.

Keep these guidelines in mind to create a resume that moves you into your next leadership role.

Or contact a professional resume writing service to do it for you.

Find My Profession ‘s team of experts can help job seekers craft a resume that effectively showcases their leadership abilities and stands out from the competition. Contact us today!

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How To Showcase Leadership Skills On Your Resume (With Examples)

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Find a Job You Really Want In

When brainstorming a list of skills that you have, you likely will think of hard skills at first. That is, skills that you have mastered to some degree through classes or on-the-job experience. Examples of hard skills include computer programming languages, foreign languages, technology skills, and other certifications.

Soft skills , on the other hand, are the intangible qualities and interpersonal abilities you possess that make you a great person to work with.

Here we’ll be discussing one soft skill in particular: leadership. We’ll cover what leadership skills are, what words to use in your skills section to highlight your leadership ability, and show you examples of different methods of including leadership skills on your resume.

Key Takeaways:

Leadership skills include team-building, conflict resolution, decision-making, and more.

Leadership can come in many different forms – if you’ve ever worked on a team with other people, you probably had to use some leadership skills even if you were not the formal “ leader .”

When listing leadership skills on your resume , be sure to demonstrate the skills you’ve had experience using by giving specific examples of times you faced problems and had to solve them.

The Best Leadership Skills for a Resume

Examples of leadership skills on a resume, final thoughts.

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Leadership skills are skills that show your capacity to lead a group to achieve a goal. Leadership styles and skills show a lot about a potential job candidate — how they can interact in a team setting, how they can communicate with others, and how they can reflect upon the project and provide constructive feedback.

Most importantly, however, a job candidate with good leadership skills is more likely to finish tasks and work well with fellow team members than those who do not possess leadership qualities .

Typically when people think of “leaders,” they often create an image in their mind about a strong-willed, enthusiastic, and incredibly charismatic person who can make a crowd follow them without a second thought. They think a good leader is the epitome of the “extrovert ideal.”

Don’t worry — leadership isn’t all about being able to stand up and transform a room. It’s also about being able to listen to the advice and ideas of others, give constructive criticism and be able to receive it, as well as being able to delegate the tasks to people with the best ability to complete them.

Here are the nuts and bolts to leadership skills on a resume:

Do not lie about leadership skills. Think of skills that you have demonstrated in your work/school experience and list those.

List skills that answer how you communicate with others, how you interact with groups of people, and any skills that point towards your leadership style .

List these skills in the skills section or the accomplishments section of your resume.

When looking for new employees, recruiters are looking for a well-rounded person who has the hard skills needed for the job, as well as the soft skills to be able to work seamlessly and effectively as part of the team.

While you may want to list “leadership skills” as a skill in the skills section, it isn’t the best idea to do so because saying you are a leader doesn’t show them how you are a leader.

When thinking of leadership skills, think of times when you worked in a group setting. What worked well and what didn’t? Leadership can be many things, but often, it is about how someone can effectively navigate interpersonal communication among a group to utilize the strengths of each member to achieve the goal.

To do so, a leader often possesses these main qualities that can be used on a resume.

Communication. Communication shows your ability to speak effectively with others. What many people miss about communication, is that communication isn’t all about you talking. Active listening is a crucial part of communication that is an incredibly important leadership skill to have.

With great communication skills , you can build trust, express care, and clarify issues as they arise. Knowing how, when, and how often to communicate with team members requires finesse, and great leaders know how to deliver, thoughtful, impactful, and concise information to all relevant parties.

Decision-making. This leadership skill shows your ability to make executive order on a project when asked to make a decision. It involves weighing the pros and cons and coming up with a compromise that best suits the goal and the team.

The buck stops somewhere, and while collaboration is key to a successful business, so is decisive action. Being a leader means being accountable for your final decisions and being comfortable being the person who makes those calls. Even if you’ve worked independently, showcasing your decision-making skills can help enliven the picture of you as a leader.

Conflict resolution. Not all teams work perfectly and sometimes a team is faced with a setback that is outside of their control. But when that happens, how do you deal with it? If you are able to handle stress and resolve it quickly, conflict resolution would be a great leadership skill to mention.

Often, you’ll be asked to mediate decisions or challenges between team members or even across departments. It’s essential that you’re viewed as an impartial arbiter who makes choices based on logic, not favoritism. Portraying yourself as a resolver of disputes implies great leadership skills and potential.

Teamwork/Team-building. Being a leader is also being a fellow team member. Some attributes that make good team members are dependability, integrity , and decisiveness.

Some leaders are more democratic than others, but every leader needs to take into account the strengths and weaknesses of those she manages. Team-building exercises and organic collaborative situations allow you to determine the best use for each team member.

Organization. As a leader, you’re expected to have a high-level, big-picture view of situations. That requires particularly good organizational skills . To manage a team, you need to know what everyone is up to and how progress is ticking along.

Being able to communicate, make decisions, and solve problems all rely on your ability to have a clear vision. And for that, you’ll need to stay organized.

Delegation. Leaders can’t do everything on their own. They need to know how projects can be done both efficiently and effectively by delegating tasks to team members with the appropriate backgrounds.

If you’ve ever assigned tasks, that’s a real-world leadership skill that employers love to see.

Time management. A key part of organization is time management. Your team counts on you to keep an eye on the grand scheme of things and ensure that projects finish on time.

To that end, you need to anticipate problems and be proactive about solving them. A good leader builds enough time into their day to deal with the unexpected as it arises, while leaving enough time to manage all the rest of their daily tasks.

Problem-solving. Some leaders like to be super hands-on while others prefer to step back and trust their team to figure out solutions. Regardless of your style, you’re going to be called on as a problem-solver , and probably quite often.

The ability to think through a problem logically and arrive at the optimal solution is a goal for every member of your team, but a leader has to be the one to make the final decision.

Flexibility. Those who panic at the first sign of an unexpected hurdle are not cut out to be leaders. Projects rarely go off without a hitch, and a leader needs to remain cool and collected when things go awry.

Leaders also have to work with a diverse team, and that often means adjusting your leadership style or motivation strategies depending on the individual you’re dealing with.

Ability to teach and mentor. Not all leaders have to instruct their subordinates, but it’s a useful skill to have nonetheless. It goes hand in hand with communication, but requires additional patience and a capability for simplification.

Effective feedback. People count on leaders to update them on the quality of their work and your expectations of them. When someone does a great job, a good leader recognizes that and tells that person, specifically, why they’re happy with the process and/or results.

On the flip side, leaders also need to provide constructive criticism to team members who are underperforming. You don’t want to make people feel bad about themselves — you just want to provide actionable steps toward improvement.

These skills compose the core values of leadership, but leadership is a fluid concept. There are many different types of leaders and if the more common leadership skills above don’t apply to you, there are many others to consider.

Listing leadership skills is most often done in a bullet-point form on a resume under the skills section of the resume. Like so:

Skills Mentoring and training Project management Negotiation Team-building

Or, if you’re doing a functional resume or choosing to provide more detail on each skill, you could do something like:

Skills Leadership: Managed teams of up to 30 employees and contractors by delegating tasks, tracking KPIs, and executing high-level goals of the company Training: Led a weekly technology workshop that introduced teams to new software and processes — saw a 14% increase in task completion after rollout

However, anyone can list these skills on a resume. What will really make you stand out as a candidate and showcase your skills in a more realistic light is by emphasizing the use of these skills when describing your roles and outcomes for each job experience.

For example:

Work Experience Resident Head Advisor | Raleigh College | June 2020-Present Managed fifteen resident junior advisors by delegating resident life tasks Led crisis intervention teams and effectively resolved resident conflict Mentored students by supporting, listening and offering feedback during counseling sessions

Or even in a volunteering situation:

Volunteer Experience Fundraising Coordinator | Kitten Mittens | April 2016-August 2018 Coordinated a team of volunteer fundraisers to raise $15,000+ each quarter Presented results at semi-annual meetings to the board of directors Led workshops on handling stray cat situations with both volunteer groups and the local community

You may feel that you cannot sum up a leadership skill in one word and that’s perfectly fine. Many skills are best described in a few words and can be used under the skills or achievement sections of your resume.

Some common phrases include the ability to teach and mentor , relationship-building, problem-solving, positioning team members, and conflict resolution.

Describing leadership skills may seem daunting at first, but there are many different types of leadership .

If you aren’t the type to stand at the front of the room presenting and delegating tasks, don’t think that you have no leadership qualities. In fact, many good leaders are those who work in small groups and moderate discussion.

So if you are looking for different types of phrases or keywords to use to describe leadership skills on a resume, read back through the choices outlined above. Maybe some will surprise you and you’ll find you have more leadership skills than you thought.

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Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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8 Leadership Skills to Include on Your Resume

A typical corporate job posting receives about 250 resumes Glassdoor reports . So how can you stand out from a sea of applicants? If you want to move into a management or executive position, adding leadership skills to your resume is a good way to get noticed. 

This article offers a definitive list of eight leadership skills examples for your resume. 

1. Analytical Decision Making

Employers ranked analytical/quantitative skills high in the Job Outlook 2019 survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Nearly 72% said they look for this characteristic among potential employees. Analytical decision makers use facts from a variety of sources to inform their choices. To appeal to employers, highlight job roles and workplace wins that required research and analysis.  

2. Communication

Communication is one of many important leadership skills examples for your resume. Effective communication is essential to present a company’s mission, vision, and goals to employees. Written communication skills were the top ranked attribute in NACE’s survey; 82% of employers value these skills. Verbal communication skills weren’t far behind; 67% of employers ranked verbal communication skills. Convey your communication expertise in your resume by highlighting written and verbal projects you contributed to—such as corporate reports, case studies, newsletters, training materials, meetings, and public speaking events.

3. Delegation

Leaders know when to delegate work to their team members. There are many ways to successfully delegate . Demonstrate your delegation skills on your resume by describing how you managed a team or project. Provide specific examples of how you delegated responsibilities, established expectations, tracked progress, and provided feedback.

4. Teamwork

Of the leadership skills examples to include on a resume, teamwork should definitely be highlighted. Leaders must be able to tackle complex problems and engage their teams in decision making. In other words, today’s leaders must be great team players. According to NACE’s Job Outlook Survey 2019, almost 79% of employers value teamwork, making it a desirable leadership skill to include on your resume. Use your resume—and job interview —to stress your ability to work with others and passion for accomplishing team goals. 

5. Adaptability

In the Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics’ 2018 article, “ Future Trends in Leadership Development Practices and the Crucial Leadership Skills ,” adaptability was ranked high in the list of crisis management leadership skills. Leaders don’t just need to adapt well during times of crisis, however; they also must adapt well to everyday changes. Great leaders respond to changing needs and pivot the direction of a team or organization when necessary. Demonstrate your adaptability on your resume by describing when you had to shift directions in response to a change of plans or an unplanned event.

6. Creative Problem-Solving

Obstacles arise, even in well-planned projects. How do you problem solve? Do you look for ways to turn problems into opportunities, lead brainstorming sessions to find solutions, or use the “ five why’s ” technique to uncover the root of the problem? The point is, there are many ways around a problem, and employers value creative problem-solving. This is a great leadership skill for a resume. Use your resume to demonstrate how you’ve creatively removed an obstacle to aid a project’s success.

7. Trustworthiness

Good leaders can be trusted to meet deadlines, better their employees, and be role models for their teams. According to an Indeed.com article, “ Q&A: What Makes a Good Professional Role Model? ,” accountability, hard work, positivity, persistence, integrity, and respect are traits of workplace role models. Rather than state that you are trustworthy, demonstrate your trustworthiness by incorporating some of these traits into your resume.

8. Tech Savviness

Technology is part of nearly every job, and leaders are expected to leverage it for growth, innovation, and efficiency. Show the full breadth of this leadership skill on your resume by listing your experience with industry-specific technologies, whether that’s computer languages, coding, or project management systems. If you’ve used technology to streamline or improve a process, mention this as well.

Expand Your Leadership Skills With a Leadership and Management Certificate

While this isn’t an exhaustive list of leadership skills examples, including these leadership skills on your resume could help you get noticed by your ideal employer. If you’re looking to grow your leadership skills, explore Wharton Online’s Leadership and Management Certificate Program . In this flexible program, students learn how to apply the latest management concepts from Wharton’s world-class faculty. The world is expanding, and your leadership skills should do the same. Request information today .

Download our eBook: Women in Leadership

Women represent more of the workforce than they used to, but they’re still underrepresented in management. Download our free eBook, “Women in Leadership: The Data-Driven Guide to Leadership Skills for Women,” for a detailed look at what obstacles exist for women pursuing leadership roles and how to overcome them.

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The Wharton School is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU.

How to List Leadership Skills on a Resume | Best Skills and Examples

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What are leadership skills?

Examples of leadership skills, how to improve leadership skills, how to list leadership skills on your resume.

Listing your leadership skills on your resume can increase your perceived value to a prospective employer, making you a more appealing candidate for the job. This is especially important if you are applying for a managerial or executive role. Even if you are seeking an entry-level position, you can showcase your leadership skills to let the hiring manager know that you can assume an important role in the future. This article will discuss how you can properly list leadership skills on your resume to stand out from other job applicants.

Leadership skills refer to abilities and strengths that enable you to oversee processes, direct initiatives and guide your team members toward specific goals. Since a leadership position involves a wide array of tasks, you will need to have multiple skills to become an effective leader, such as making sound decisions, allocating resources and motivating your staff. Although they are considered soft skills, you can learn leadership skills through lessons, practice and experience.

The leadership skills you need may vary depending on the employer and job position. However, certain leadership skills are generally considered more important. 

The following is a suggested list of the top leadership skills to include on your resume:

Communication skills

Communication skills are essential because they enable you to clearly convey your vision, objectives and strategies to your staff. As a leader, you have to know how to address your team, explain the requirements of a project and provide details of the tasks that need to be done. With good communication skills, you will also be able to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team members and delegate tasks to the right people.

Examples of communication skills:

• Active listening
• Verbal communication
• Nonverbal communication
• Assertiveness
• Friendliness

Organizational skills

If you are a leader in a company, you often have to handle several different tasks at the same time, such as instructing your team members, monitoring your projects and solving problems. Multitasking can easily result in confusion and errors, which can jeopardize the progress of your project. If you have the ability to organize your tasks, you will be able to create an efficient work process and stay focused on your goals, even if you face unexpected situations.

Examples of organizational skills:

• Goal-setting and deadline-setting
• Schedule creation
• Project management
• Team management
• Multitasking
• Event coordination
• Strategy implementation
• Problem-solving

Motivational skills

Many factors can cause your team members to feel discouraged and lose focus on their responsibilities, from workplace conflict to personal problems. To be an effective leader, you have to know how to motivate them to maintain a high level of productivity and keep working toward your goals. Inspire your team members to follow your vision, make them feel valued, and help them achieve personal and professional growth.

Examples of motivational skills:

• Motivational strategy creation
• Appropriate delegation
• Positive communication and feedback
• Performance recognition
• Relationship building
• Reward program implementation

Decision-making skills

As a leader, you constantly have to make important decisions that can have an impact on the success of your team or company. You have to be able to choose the right actions and the most effective solutions, sometimes within a very short time. If you are a competent decision-maker, you can help your company create effective strategies, minimize risks, solve problems and manage projects successfully.

Examples of decision-making skills include:

• Data analysis
• Critical thinking
• Brainstorming
• Forecasting
• Strategizing
• Ability to think under pressure

Conflict resolution skills

Workplace conflict can lead to an unpleasant work environment that can have a negative impact on productivity and morale. If you are in a leadership position, you should be able to help conflicting team members reach a fair resolution and show respect toward each other. Conflict resolution skills can result in an amicable, cohesive team that is committed to achieving company goals.

Examples of conflict resolution skills:

• Analytical thinking
• Communication
• Negotiating
• Trust-building

To become a good leader, you have to constantly invest time and effort to improve your existing leadership skills and learn new ones. 

Follow these tips to build better leadership skills:

1. First, learn from successful leaders

Many successful leaders provide tips on how to become great leaders through books, interviews, workshops and courses. You can learn real-life lessons and proven leadership philosophies from these leaders and adapt them to suit your own career.

2. Second, think beyond your job description

If you are currently employed, you should try to go beyond your job description. Leaders have to do more than their regular work duties. Ask your manager for more responsibilities, especially those that allow you to assume a leadership role.

3. Third, practice leadership skills in your free time

Find as many opportunities as you can to practice your leadership skills. You can start a new website or join a local club or charity organization. This is a great way to learn or improve specific leadership skills.

By properly listing your leadership skills on your resume, you can present yourself as an ideal candidate for the job and distinguish yourself from other applicants. 

Here are a few useful tips for highlighting your leadership skills on your resume:

1. First, include leadership skills mentioned in the job description 

Your potential employer may include a list of required leadership skills in the job description. Mention those skills in your resume to show that you have the specific skills needed to perform the job.

2. Then, quantify the impact of your leadership

By including measurable results along with your leadership skills, you can show the hiring manager the extent of your leadership abilities. This will allow them to have a clearer idea of your potential value to the company.

3. Last, use powerful verbs

Powerful verbs can help you capture the hiring manager’s attention and make a stronger impact. Examples of powerful verbs include ‘spearheaded,’ ‘empowered,’ ‘motivated,’ ‘launched,’ ‘engaged,’ ‘pioneered’ and ‘created.’

Strong Leadership Skills: Resume Guide, Example Usage, and Skill Set for 2024

Here are the top ways to show your team leadership skills on your resume. Find out relevant team leadership keywords and phrases and build your resume today.

Is your resume ATS-friendly?

Drop your resume here or upload a file to find out if the skills in your resume are readable by an ATS.

In This Guide:

How is showing you’re a good team leader useful for your job hunt, what skills and qualities help you highlight your team leadership skills, leadership skills: key takeaways for your resume.

Having strong leadership skills means being able to lead, influence, and guide others, be they colleagues, friends, or even strangers.

What’s more, great leaders are natural problem-solvers. Think of someone between your favorite superhero and your best friend.

But putting ‘leadership skills’ in the skills section of your resume is surely not something we advise you to do. It does not mean anything and might make you sound shallow.

Instead, prove that you’re an active listener, a strong decision-maker, and an empathetic problem-solver.

Being a team leader has little to do with your job title. “Leader” is not just a formal title but also essential roles in each team.

Let’s consider scenario #1 - you may either be applying for an operational, a specialist, an expert job or your future job title might not explicitly say “leader”, “manager”, or “chief operations officer”. Besides that, having leadership skills would still be extremely attractive displayed on your resume. Exerting a certain set of leadership skills could be beneficial for your career and for your growth. It could be very useful in building good relationships and group dynamics within the team you’re working with. In addition, it could also be beneficial in putting you out there in the eyes of your managers when it’s time for promotion.

On the other hand, if you’re after a people managing position, then you already know the importance of leadership skills for your work success, growth, and satisfaction. Forming an effective team is an art on its own and its components are motivation, support, understanding, and focus - on the tasks, on the people both as a team, and as individuals.

The question then is, if team leadership consists of so many integral parts, how to best describe and showcase your experience on your resume? Let’s dive in.

Read this: 300+ Must-Have Skills for Your Resume

Similar to most soft skills, the best way to prove you have a certain skillset is to disintegrate it into its constituent parts and then provide examples for each of them. In this way, you are not only specific and detailed, but also show your definition and understanding of the skill.

You can usually tell someone is a good leader by exerting the following:

• Communication and listening -- good communication skills are the platforms upon which we all build our lives, both professional and personal. Being able to listen actively, ask nonjudgmental questions, seek to understand, and speak with empathy are key if you want to be viewed as a true leader.
• Mediation and problem-solving -- being in the position of the team leader, you often need to juggle different people’s interests. Being able to balance between various points of view and not take sides but rather try to listen and proactively offer solutions, are qualities that help build confidence and in your skills and persona, and a sense of openness in your team members.
• Consistency, discipline, and vision -- consistency leads to trust which then leads to open sharing and being able to move forward and progress. Discipline is the fuel on the path of that progress and success. Vision is the goal at the end of the path, but also the reason for stepping on the road in the first place. Good leaders combine all of that
• Empathy, active listening & support: problems arise all the time. Recruiters know this, and that’s why they don’t want you to ignore them or magically make them disappear. Knowing how to deal with them through being an empathetic and supportive listener is a whole other story though. In fact, these skills can actually decrease the number of problems over time.
• Creativity & strategic thinking: it might sound as if creativity is the opposite of strategic thinking, but the truth is – they are intrinsically linked. Adapting ideas from different contexts to build improved and innovative strategies is essentially what every leader should know how to do.
• Flexibility & organization: being organized and setting good examples for others is crucial, but welcoming setbacks and delays with a high level of flexibility is even more important. The combination of these two skills will show employers that you’re a strong leader who is able to handle all types of situations.

How to demonstrate team leadership skills on your resume

• Think of instances when you took the initiative and united the team around an idea of yours that lead to success
• Describe a time when you helped resolve a team conflict or deescalate a situation
• Give examples of innovative ideas or approaches that took your team efforts to the next level
• Mention situations when you were able to listen actively, motivate, and provide support to your team members
• Explain the relation between consistency, discipline, and trust by providing an example of your experience
• Talk about a difficult situation that you were able to overcome by exerting original thinking and mediation
• Mention times when plans have changed drastically, but you’ve handled the situation well
• Talk about some team issues you have helped resolve or avoid
• Demonstrate how responsible you are when it comes to organizing your time and meeting tight deadlines
• Share how your ability to be an empathetic listener has helped your team in the past
• Point out the link between your creativity and your ability to keep your eye on the prize

Saying things such as “I’m a good leader who has managed a team of 4 people” sounds impressive, but managing people does not directly imply how and why that makes you a good leader.

To make this statement believable and persuasive, you need to go into detail and support it with examples.

Try to dig deeper by pondering the following questions:

• What exactly did you achieve when you managed this team?
• Did you take any specific classes or receive any certifications or coaching on being a leader?
• What did your team members say about working with you?
• What did you learn from that experience?
• Have you ever led a successful project?
• When was the last time you had to resolve a work-related issue and how did you do it?
• How do you deal with unsupportive or unengaged team members?

To help you describe your own experience, here are some real life examples from other Enhancv users’ resumes.

Get inspired to craft and enhance your own resume.

Example 1: Show team leadership skills in your experience

Job Situation: Product manager applying for the role of Director of Product Management

• • Managed multiple product lines, all the way from the idea stage through their delivery for teams developing software for hospitals and clinics
• • Promoted products to both internal and external customers increasing penetration of customer base to 85%
• • Worked in collaboration with clients and stakeholders with a budget of $2M
• • Developed and managed goals, objectives, procedures and work standards minding all applicable local and foreign regulations
• • Served as a mediator between stakeholders and different teams involved, making sure all interests are taken into consideration

Do you notice what will tip the scales in this candidate's favor? That's right - achievements, instead of a responsibilities list.

They quoted their measurable results, such as "increasing penetration of customer base to 85%".

This example implies their agility, focus, and consistency.

By developing and managing goals, objectives and procedures, this Product Managers shows good vision and discipline - other important leadership skills.

They also were able to collaborate with different stakeholders and take into consideration their collective interests - a good example of mediation and problem-solving. The use of active verbs in the description such as “promoted” and “developed” shows proactiveness and focus.

We can see here that even though leadership skills are not explicitly stated in the experience section, they are well represented and implied.

Let's see another example.

• • Monitored progress and set deadlines for as many as 50% of our projects
• • Was appointed first POC for new colleagues who had difficulties settling in
• • Explained our suggestions to clients and worked to find a middle ground with them
• • Developed a mentorship program that linked junior PMs with senior PMs and resulted in 58% more motivation for all colleagues

The snippet of this senior project manager resume proves their leadership skills in two ways.

Firstly, the fact that they begin each bullet with an action verb shows they’re willing to take the initiative.

Secondly, they have highlighted their ability to work with people quite well. Even in challenging contexts, such as finding a middle ground with unhappy clients and increasing the levels of motivation for both junior and senior colleagues by 58%.

Highlighting the fact that they have been responsible for monitoring progress and setting deadlines, on the other hand, proves their strong organizational skills.

Tired of boring design ideas for your resume? Check out our modern resume builder!

Example 2: resume summary

Job Situation: Software developer with 4 years of experience applying for the role of Technical Team Lead

In those 3 short sentences, we get the idea that this Software Engineer has an affinity for tech and teamwork. They speak of collaboration, valuing teamwork, and approaching both tech and communication challenges with a people-first motto.

This summary definitely states the intention of the IT professional to move from a more tech to a more people position like a Team Lead.

Let's dive into another example.

The resume summary is a great place to showcase your leadership skills in a couple of sentences.

This Digital Marketing Manager’s resume summary proves that they have strong collaboration and organizational skills, as well as high levels of flexibility and creativity. Thus, it proves their leadership skills without making them sound boastful.

What’s more, they also add the keyword ‘leader’ which gives them bonus points, especially when it comes to passing ATS checks.

Still not sure what to include in your resume summary? Check out this guide!

Example 3: Key achievements

Job Situation: Finance Manager outlines his achievements

A great way to combine both your experience and your strengths is to use the Achievements section. In this example we can see that this Financial Manager is proactive, team-oriented, social, collaborative, and proactive - all good team leadership qualities that cannot be missed by an experienced recruiter’s eye.

Let's look into another example.

In case there’s something you’re extremely proud of and want to highlight, use the Achievements (also called Most Proud Of) section.

This resume snippet proves the applicant’s leadership skills by emphasizing their ability to lead teams to success and manage conflicts easily. They also share their leadership award, which proves that they’re a likable and valuable individual.

Looking for more reasons to add an ‘Achievements’ section? Read this article!

Example 4: Demonstrate your leadership skills through other sections of your resume

Job Situation: Graphic Designer describes his volunteering experience

• • Taught 60+ kids from 3 different classes, ages 12-16 how to work with MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Job Situation: HR Specialist describes her extracurricular activities and additional courses

Look at the examples above. They prove that you don’t need to be an executive or even a manager to have leadership skills.

In fact, enrolling in different courses on the topic shows you’re passionate about becoming a great leader and improving day by day. The same goes for volunteering roles .

So think about mentioning something besides your work experience. Maybe you were in charge of some school event? Or maybe you enrolled in a course about empathy and communication?

In short, you can add any kind of extracurricular activity that requires high levels of emotional intelligence , teamwork , organization, and flexibility.

• Demonstrate devotion: talk about projects where you had to leave personal preferences aside and focus on common goals and benefits
• Prove you’re a team player: share more about the times you had to lead teams and mention how you’ve earned success
• Keep it to the point: use action verbs and choose the words you go for carefully; you’ll have plenty of time to elaborate on your strengths during the interview
• Use all parts of your resume: try to showcase your leadership skills in as many sections as possible (but be careful and don’t go over the top)

Looking for more tips on crafting a job-winning resume? Check out this guide!

About this report:

Data reflects analysis made on over 1M resume profiles and examples over the last 2 years from Enhancv.com.

While those skills are most commonly met on resumes, you should only use them as inspiration and customize your resume for the given job.

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Which Leadership Skills on a Resume Matter? These Ones.

3 key takeaways

• What leadership skills are
• Understanding important leadership skills (plus important leadership skills examples)
• How to use the Teal AI Resume Builder to highlight and emphasize leadership skills

Do you know, deep down, that you’re a confident and capable leader, but you’re having trouble conveying that on your resume? 

Leadership skills are valuable to any company; if you’ve got them, that makes you valuable, too. But sometimes, it can be hard to transfer the concrete skills you have in real life onto a blank sheet of paper. 

That’s why, in today’s post, you’ll learn about the types of leadership skills you should add to a resume and how to demonstrate those skills when you land an interview. Then, you’ll discover the easiest way to update and organize the “ Skills” section on your resume. 

Understanding leadership skills

Leadership skills. They’re more than just buzzwords; they’re the fundamental traits and abilities that allow you to lead, inspire, and bring out the best in others. 

And guess what? Demonstrated leadership skills are not just for CEOs or team leads .

Leadership skills are essential for all job applicants, regardless of industry or seniority level. Showcasing leadership skills signals your potential to contribute significantly to organizational growth, handle challenges, make decisive decisions, and foster a positive team dynamic. 

Here’s the dilemma, though: leadership skills are all about taking big swings and driving change. So how do you convey the impact of those skills on an 8.5 x 11-inch piece of paper? How do you convey your leadership experience on your resume in a way that stands out to hiring managers? 

That’s where the skills section of your resume comes into play. 

Importance of leadership skills on a resume

Simply put, leadership skills carry immense weight on your resume, showcasing you as a trailblazer, a trait that’s hard to come by for many companies. 

Here's why:

• Leadership skills signal potential : They show that you're not just capable of performing tasks. You can actually manage, innovate, and take charge. It previews your capacity to rise and grow in your future roles within the company.
• They highlight versatility : Leadership skills are not industry-specific. Whether you're an entry-level candidate or a seasoned executive, leadership skills can paint you as a versatile player, ready to add value to your team.
• They connect to performance : Great leaders drive great results. By exhibiting strong leadership skills, you underscore your ability to positively impact job performance. 
• They pave the path for advancement : Leadership underscores your readiness to handle more significant challenges and responsibilities, making you an ideal candidate for career advancement. With these skills, you're not just applying for a job; you're eyeing a fulfilling career.

A resume highlighting your leadership skills can (and should) showcase your future potential, not just your past performance. So, with that in mind, let's look at some leadership skills to put on a resume. 

Different types of leadership skills

Ok, this will sound cheesy, but think about leadership as a multifaceted gem. It shines differently based on the angle from which it's viewed. This is a nice visual way to grasp the many approaches and nuances to leadership skills.

With that in mind, let's dive into the key types that you should aim to highlight leadership skills on a resume:

1. Strategic thinking: As a strategic thinker, you don't just focus on the task in front of you. Instead, you keep an eye on the horizon, looking for future trends and challenges. You're ready to pivot, adapt, and, most importantly, guide your team toward their long-term goals.

2. Communication: Effective communication skills are key, whether giving a presentation or crafting that perfect email. Good leaders can clearly and convincingly share ideas and nurture an environment of open dialogue. 

3. Problem-solving: Obstacles? For problem solvers, they're opportunities in disguise. This skill involves analyzing a situation, evaluating possible solutions, and selecting the best course of action. It's about taking on challenges head-on and turning them into triumphs. 

If you’ve solved problems that have led to a positive and measurable outcome, you’ll definitely want to add this to your resume. 

4. Team building: No leader can succeed without a dedicated team. Effective team building and team leadership skills involve creating a positive working atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable contributing. As a team leader, you're the glue that holds everyone together, and it helps to show you’ve built that type of atmosphere in the past. 

5. Decision-making: Decisions shape destinies, and good leaders understand this. They can make informed choices quickly and efficiently, even under pressure. 

These are just a few of the most common leadership skills you may want to put on a resume. That said, the list is far from exhaustive. Here are a few other options you might consider: 

• Emotional intelligence: The ability to manage and understand your emotions and those of the people around you.
• Resilience: The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and maintain poise under pressure.
• Visionary thinking: The ability to map out long-term goals and strategic plans while inspiring others towards achieving them.
• Cultural competence: Understanding, communicating with, and effectively interacting with people across cultures.
• Conflict resolution: The ability to mediate disputes and foster a harmonious working environment.
• Adaptability: Adjusting one's course of action based on changing circumstances, displaying flexibility.
• Innovation: A leader who encourages new ideas and is open to taking calculated risks to drive progress.
• Ethical decision-making: The ability to make decisions based on ethical considerations, maintaining integrity and transparency.
• Empowerment: Enabling team members to take action and make decisions within their scope of work, fostering a sense of ownership.
• Mentoring: Guiding and nurturing the professional and personal growth of team members.

But having a list in front of you isn’t helpful if you don’t know what leadership skills on the list you actually have . Let’s look at how you can figure out which skills would be most suitable for your position. 

How to identify your leadership skills

Identifying your leadership skills can be tricky. It involves digging deep into your achievements and feedback to uncover your unique leadership traits. 

Then comes the hard part: adding it to your resume without sounding like every other applicant. 

Here are some tips to help you find the leadership skills that make you unique. 

1. Reflect on your past: Think back to your professional and personal experiences. Maybe you spearheaded a project at work or coached a local sports team. What skills did you use? Did you inspire and motivate others, make tough decisions, or solve a difficult problem? 

Any measurable success you’ve had should be prominent on your resume.  

2. Seek feedback: Sometimes, it’s hard to see our own strengths and wins . That's where seeking feedback from colleagues, mentors, friends, and family can prove invaluable. They can provide an outside perspective and shed light on the times you've exhibited leadership qualities without realizing it.

If you seek advice from friends and family, however, be sure to consider the source. Your grandmother might see you as the world’s best leader, but you should have concrete examples of when you’ve demonstrated those traits. 

3. Self-assessment: Several reputable self-assessment tools and leadership quizzes are available online. These resources can help you identify and develop leadership skills and styles. Remember, these tools aren't definitive answers to what leadership skills you possess but guides to help you understand your capabilities better. 

Take Teal’s Work Style Assessment to help you build your confidence in your career journey.

4. Look for patterns: As you evaluate your experiences and feedback, look for recurring themes. Perhaps you're often the one to take the initiative or the person others turn to for advice. These patterns can reveal key leadership skills you consistently lean on.

Once you've identified your leadership skills, it's time to highlight them strategically on your resume. 

And remember, leadership on a resume isn't about listing a bunch of generic phrases—it's about proving that you've already put in the work. 

So, let's tell your leadership story in a way that leaves potential employers eager to learn more.

How to effectively convey leadership skills for your resume

Showcasing leadership skills on your resume is all about illustrating a compelling narrative that testifies to your leadership abilities. 

Here's your roadmap to doing just that:

Figure out what leadership skills you need 

Understanding what leadership skills you should highlight can make you a top applicant. This is where Teal's AI Resume Builder comes into play. Beyond just helping you craft an impressive resume, Teal also assists you in identifying the leadership skills that you need to highlight.

Here's how it works: Teal's AI Resume Builder analyzes the keywords and skills from a job posting, aligning your resume with what hiring managers and recruiters are actively seeking:

By highlighting these keywords, you can easily identify the most relevant skills to the role you're applying for and ensure they feature prominently on your resume.

Why is this important? Well, most companies now use Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software in their hiring process. These systems scan resumes for specific keywords related to the job description.

It's important to note that ATS doesn't choose or eliminate candidates based on these keywords. Instead, recruiters can use ATS software to search for specific terms, but the software itself doesn’t  do any automated choosing or rejecting.

But if a hiring manager asked for a specific skill in the job descriptions, they just might be searching for it when the applications start pouring in. And in today’s job market, you should take every advantage you can get. 

Want to see how your resume stacks up against the job description? Try it yourself.

Make a stellar skills section

Consider your resume as your personal marketing document. It's not just a list of where you've worked and studied; it's a spotlight on what you bring to the table.  

And that’s where the “ Skills” section comes in. This part of your resume is a chance to showcase the unique talents and abilities that make you the perfect fit for the job. 

But here's the kicker. We're not only talking about technical, hard skills like programming or financial analysis. We're also talking about those soft skills that make you a great team player, an effective communicator, or a visionary leader.

The resume skills section is your opportunity to demonstrate to potential employers that you've got what it takes to excel in the role, both in terms of the specific expertise required and the interpersonal skills that can make or break a team's success.

Show, don't just tell, in your experience section  

Bring your leadership skills to life through your resume summary and professional experience. For instance, don't just say you have "strong decision-making abilities." Instead, write, "used strong decision-making abilities to select and implement a new project management tool that reduced delivery times by 25%."

Remember, you're demonstrating what you’ve done here. If you can replace vague adjectives like “great” or “excellent” with concrete data, you’ll have a better shot at standing out. 

Celebrate your accomplishments

The resume accomplishment examples section of your resume is a critical space where you can display the real-world impacts of your leadership skills. 

But you need to maintain a balance when presenting your accomplishments. The line between confidence and arrogance can be thin, and it's important to navigate. 

The best way to tread this line is by relying on measurable results and letting them speak for themselves. For instance, "led a team that boosted sales by 20% " or "implemented a strategy that reduced costs by 30% ."

And don’t forget that a good leader recognizes the value of teamwork and the importance of collaborative success. So, even while highlighting your individual contributions, acknowledge the collaborative nature of your accomplishments.

Leadership skills resume examples (for different positions)

Showcasing leadership skills on your resume should always be tailored to your target position. While the following list isn’t exhaustive, here are some skills you might add to a resume for five popular roles.

*Note the structure: Seniority : Skill - “How to describe that skill on a resume.”

1. Software Engineer

• Entry-level: Problem-solving ability  

"Developed an algorithm to optimize the code, improving application performance by 15%."

• Mid-level: Cross-functional collaboration

"Worked collaboratively with the design and product teams, ensuring seamless integration of 4 new features."

• Senior-level: Strategic project management  

 "Led a team of 10 software engineers to complete a complex software update ahead of schedule."

Explore leadership skills from other software engineer resumes

2. Digital Marketing Specialist

• Entry-level: Analytical skills

“Analyzed website traffic data to improve SEO strategies, leading to a 20% increase in organic traffic.

• Mid-level: Campaign management  

"Managed a digital advertising campaign that resulted in a 30% increase in conversion rates."

• Senior-level: Strategic planning

"Developed and executed a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that increased overall brand awareness by 40%."

Find more inspiration in the skill sections of other digital marketing specialist resumes

3. Sales Representative

• Entry-level: Relationship building

"Built strong relationships with key clients, leading to a 15% increase in sales."

• Mid-level: Negotiation skills

"Negotiated a key deal with a strategic partner, resulting in a 25% increase in annual revenue."

• Senior-level: Team leadership  

"Led a sales team to exceed their quarterly targets by 20%, contributing significantly to the overall company revenue."

4. Customer Success Manager

• Entry-level: Customer relationship management

"Managed relationships with 30 key accounts, achieving a customer satisfaction rate of 95%."

• Mid-level: Conflict resolution

"Successfully resolved over 200 customer issues, resulting in a 50% decrease in customer complaints."

• Senior-level: Customer success strategy

"Designed and implemented a customer success strategy that increased customer retention by 30%."

Working in CS? Check out these Customer Success resume skills

5. Product Manager

• Entry-level: Project coordination

"Coordinated the successful launch of a new product feature in collaboration with cross-functional teams."

• Mid-level: Product development

"Managed the development and successful launch of a product, leading to a 20% increase in user engagement."

• Senior-level: Strategic product vision

"Developed a product roadmap aligned with company vision, contributing to a 50% increase in annual revenue."

Leadership skills are crucial in Product Management. Be sure to check out these 19 product resumes for additional inspiration as you craft your skills section. 

It’s important to remember that these are simply examples of leadership skills and how they should be expressed when fleshed out on a resume. 

But remember, every leadership skill tells a story about you as a professional, and your story is unique . 

That means you’ll need to find the leadership skills that fit your profile best. 

Let's explore some core leadership skills (and examples of how to express them) that are great to include on your resume, regardless of your position:

• Communication: As a team lead, facilitated effective communication that improved project delivery times by 25%.
• People management: Successfully managed a diverse team of 10, fostering a positive work environment and high levels of team satisfaction.
• Decisiveness: Demonstrated decisive leadership in a critical project turnaround, resulting in successful on-time and under-budget delivery.
• Conflict resolution: Resolved a long-standing conflict between departments, improving cross-departmental collaboration and productivity.
• Creativity and innovation: Introduced solutions that improved product performance by 30%.
• Change management: Led the department through a significant organizational change with minimum disruption, maintaining 100% project delivery during the transition period.

The trick is to showcase not just why the skill is worth highlighting but also what it says about you as a candidate and how it has helped achieve your or your team's goals. Feel free to copy and paste any of our examples of leadership words for resumes to make yours all the more impactful. 

Showcasing leadership skills in job interviews

So far, we’ve looked at how to add leadership skills to your resume. But what happens when you land your first interview ? How can you demonstrate your skills to the person on the other side of the desk? 

Try a few of the following tips:

Draw from experience

The best way to showcase your leadership skills is to draw directly from your experiences. Your resume has already listed your leadership skills; now, it's time to bring them to life. 

Prepare several examples highlighting each skill, especially those most relevant to the position you're applying for.

For instance, if your resume mentions your strategic planning skills, you could discuss a time when your forward-thinking approach helped achieve a significant milestone, like, "When I was at XYZ Company, I developed a strategic plan that led to a 30% increase in product sales within six months."

Relating skills to job requirements

Another strategy is to directly tie your leadership skills to the job requirements. 

Let's say one of the job requirements is team management, for example, and your resume states that you've managed a team of 15 employees. During the interview, elaborate on how you used your leadership abilities to manage, motivate, and ensure productivity within your team.

You might say something like, "In my previous role, I managed a team of 15. I always ensured that each team member felt valued and motivated, which was reflected in our high team morale and exceeded productivity targets."

But if “team management” was a skill expressed in the job posting, you’ll want to share more stories about that skill during the interview. 

Using the STAR Method

The STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method is an excellent way to structure your examples during the interview. It guides you to provide a complete story: describe the Situation and the Task you were responsible for, then the Action you took, and finally, the Result of your efforts.

An example might be: "When I was leading the product team at ABC Company ( Situation ), we were faced with a challenging deadline for a new product release ( Task ). I developed a detailed project plan and facilitated extra brainstorming sessions, which fostered team creativity and motivation ( Action ). We were able to launch the product ahead of schedule, which resulted in a significant increase in customer satisfaction and sales ( Result )."

Practice using the STAR method when preparing stories for your next interview to make sure each example is structured and well-told. 

Using Teal’s AI Resume Builder to highlight leadership skills

Up to this point, we’ve covered the theory. And now? Let’s get down to action. 

You can create a resume in many ways, but Teal’s AI Resume Builder is hands down the easiest. 

With Teal, you can quickly and easily add a skills section to your resume and organize it as you see fit. 

All you need to do is sign up for Teal by clicking here and either create a resume from scratch or upload your existing resume. 

Scroll down to the “ Skills” section and click “ Add Skills” : 

Then simply add the skills you want to this section. 

When you’re done, you can drag and drop the “ Skills” section of your resume anywhere you’d like to emphasize it accordingly. 

Recent grads or people new to the workforce might place the “ Skills” section higher on their, for example, to compensate for lack of concrete experience. More senior roles, however, might add skills below their “ Work Experience” section , as this will complement tangible demonstrations of those skills in action. 

Teal’s intuitive platform offers flexibility in how you display your skills, putting you in the driver's seat . 

Final thoughts

Leadership skills, both on your resume and during an interview, are crucial to standing out in today's competitive job market. Tailoring these skills to match the requirements of your target position—whether you're an entry-level software engineer, a mid-level digital marketing specialist, or a senior product manager—can give you an edge over other candidates. 

Remember, every leadership skill tells a unique story about your professional journey .

In interviews, bringing these skills to life with compelling, concrete examples can show prospective employers what you're capable of. But before you get to the interview, you need a standout resume. 

And that's where Teal's AI Resume Builder comes in. 

This easy-to-use tool lets you add and organize a skills section on your resume in a way that best highlights your unique capabilities. Whether you're a recent grad or a seasoned professional, Teal's AI Resume Builder can help you craft a resume that showcases your leadership skills and tells your professional story in the most compelling way possible.

So don’t wait! Elevate your job hunt today by harnessing the power of Teal's AI Resume Builder today!

Frequently Asked Questions

How can i demonstrate leadership skills on my resume if i've never held a formal leadership position, should i include soft leadership skills on my resume, and if so, which ones are most impactful, how can i quantify my leadership experiences on my resume to make them more compelling.

Nathan Thompson

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Essential Skills for Executive Resumes

Here's how to write your skills section on your resume as a senior-level or executive hire. We'll cover the skills hiring managers want to see, with real examples.

2 years ago   •   4 min read

This is part 4 of our how to write an executive and senior-level resume guide. Navigate through different parts of the guide:

•  Part 1: Overview, templates and key tips •  Part 2: Executive resume summary •  Part 3: Work experience and bullet points on executive resumes •  Part 4: Skills section on executive resumes [ you are here! ] •   Education, optional sections, and additional executive resume tips

On a senior level resume, your skills section should focus on high-level management and leadership skills . This might mean leaving out older or less-relevant skills — a short list of highly relevant skills is more likely to impress recruiters than a longer but less focused selection.

An easy way to find out if your executive skills section shows the right high-level management skills is to upload your resume to the tool below — it’ll do a quick scan and tell you if your resume shows enough of these high-level management skills as well as other soft skills such as leadership, problem solving, conflict resolution and communication skills.

A dedicated skills section serves two purposes:

• Firstly, it allows recruiters to quickly skim your resume for essential skills. Think of your resume summary and skills section as the bookends of your resume — you want to begin and end by emphasizing your key skills and reinforcing to a recruiter that you have what it takes to succeed in the role.
• Secondly — and arguably more importantly — it helps you bypass Applicant Tracking systems (ATS) . ATS are automated resume scanners used by most companies, including nearly all Fortune 500 companies. ATS are programmed to scan for specific keywords, including the job title and key skills. If your resume doesn’t include those exact keywords, it will be automatically rejected, so getting your skills section right is crucial.

Before we dive in, let's check out an example:

What to title your skills section

• Core Competencies
• Areas of Expertise

You can learn what to title your resume's sections here.

What skills to include

Your skills section should highlight transferable leadership and management skills as well as industry-specific competencies. You should have a good idea of the most important skills for your particular industry, but if in doubt, check the job description for any you may have missed. For your best chance at bypassing ATS, list skills and job titles exactly as they appear in the description.

Here are some of the top skills for director level resumes:

Leadership and management

• Strategic Planning
• Business Process Improvement
• Change Management
• Operational Excellence

Managing employees

• Team Building
• Contract Negotiation
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Management Information Systems
• Performance Test Management
• Business Intelligence (BI)

If you want to find specific skills by job title, use our skills search tool below — you can search for specific job titles, e.g. Chief Financial Officer, and you'll get specific skills to include in your skills section.

What not to include

Soft skills.

Never list soft skills in the skills section of your resume. If you want to highlight transferable skills — for executives, this might include leadership, communication, problem solving, and conflict resolution — these need to go in your bullet points instead. Choose accomplishments that illustrate how you’ve used these skills in the workplace, but never list “leadership” as a stand-alone skill.

Low-level and outdated skills

Skills like inventory management and cash handling may have been essential as you worked your way up the ranks as a sales associate, but that doesn’t mean you should still be listing those skills when applying for jobs as a senior sales executive. The same goes for any skill you aren’t actively using in a senior role — to keep your skills section concise and impactful, focus on your most relevant skills and leave low-level or outdated skills off your resume entirely.

Examples of skills sections

Let's go through some examples of resume skills sections.

Example 1: Categories

SKILLS - Leadership and Management : Strategic Planning, Business Process Improvement, Change Management, Operational Excellence, Diversity & Inclusion, Cultural Leadership - Finance : Mergers & Acquisitions, Budgeting, Management Information Systems, E-commerce, Stakeholder Relations, Contract Negotiation

Example 2: Areas of Expertise

A simpler section, called Areas of Expertise, included at the top of your resume.

Example 3: Skills section for a mid-to-senior level resume

And here's a third example — which highlights specific technical tools you might have experience with.

Entire resume example of an executive or senior level resume

If you're unsure how a skills section would fit on an executive resume, let's look at a real example (click to expand the image):

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Thank you for the checklist! I realized I was making so many mistakes on my resume that I've now fixed. I'm much more confident in my resume now.