Best Leadership Skills for Your Resume (Tips & Examples)

1. Team building

The best leaders know how to keep employees happy and work with team members to identify and develop their strengths and abilities. Carefully highlight leadership skills related to team management, organization and team building on your resume to demonstrate your ability to manage and create productive teams.

Team building skills include:

2. Teaching and mentorship

Your ability to encourage employees, teach them new skills and guide them along their career path is essential. The following interpersonal skills can help you develop a self-sufficient team.

Mentorship skills include:

3. Critical thinking

Strong analytical and critical thinking skills will help you navigate potential issues, disagreements and conflict resolution. Consider adding relevant experience from this suggested leadership skills list.

Critical thinking skills include:

4. Decision making

One of the more stressful aspects of leadership is making decisions that can significantly impact the company and its staff. The following skills can help you analyze information and make choices.

Decision making skills include:

5. Task management and assignments

You must prioritize the most important goals to help your organization and teams thrive and succeed.

Task management skills include:

6. Reliability

Since leadership roles usually bear a lot of responsibility, reliability is essential. The following leadership skill examples indicate your dependability. 

Reliability skills include:

7. Goal setting and career pathing

A leader’s ability to set realistic goals and staff expectations is crucial. The following list of leadership skills can convince hiring managers of your practical team development skills.

Goal setting skills include:

8. Motivation

Many businesses need help keeping their employees focused and on-task. Share practical leadership skills that help you inspire and maintain team performance and prevent distraction or project stagnation.

Motivation skills include:

9. Communication

The following communication skills can convey goals, build trust, inspire action and foster inter-team collaboration.

Communication skills include:

How to list leadership skills on your resume.

There are multiple opportunities to successfully share leadership skills and accomplishments on your resume and apply for a promotion or management position.

Resume summary: Your summary statement or resume objective uses two or three sentences to pitch relevant skills quickly. Share one or two examples of impactful leadership opportunities with their positive outcome. For example: 

“Experience project manager with 5+ years of leadership in managing cross-functional teams, improving processes and delivering results within budget. Strong communicator can successfully manage 10-person teams and enhance productivity.” 

Work history: The most influential work history sections include three to four detailed bullets of key accomplishments under your previous jobs. Use these opportunities to share crucial leadership development opportunities or advancements. For example: 

• Led a team of 10 to execute a $2M project, resulting in a 15% reduction in operational costs.

• Mentored junior team members, improving overall performance by 20%.

• Spearheaded new process initiatives that increased team efficiency by 30%.

Skills section:  

Most skills sections feature a simplified list of eight relevant resume skills, although this will depend on your resume format.

How to feature leadership skills in your cover letter.

Although your resume is a great place to highlight your leadership potential quickly, your cover letter is a better opportunity to dive into specifics. Focus on one or two meaningful management experiences highlighting your unique leadership style.

Share two or three skills related to the open job’s requirements. Aim to share a story that illustrates your positive impact and value as a potential employee. Use an online writing assistant like our Cover Letter Builder to effectively frame, describe, and quantify your leadership skills.

How to describe leadership skills during a job interview.

Most hiring managers will use situational interview questions to study and measure your leadership potential. Keep the following interview tactics in mind.

• Memorize a bulleted list of notable accomplishments and key details. This will help you remember relevant information during the interview without sounding overly rehearsed or robotic. 
• Justify your skills by giving examples of how you use them. An employer can better imagine how valuable your skills are for their business. 

Quantify effective leadership using data. For example, a restaurant manager could say:

“I emphasize server training, education and ingredient knowledge. In my current position, I established weekly wine tastings to educate the staff and saw a 22% increase in the volume of wine sales as a direct result. This event also served as a team-building exercise that improved staff morale.”

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