23+ Leadership Skills Professionals Should Include in a CV

Leadership skills are abilities that help you effectively manage and guide your staff while fostering open communication to better understand their needs. They are especially valuable on applications for managerial positions, but should also be included on other CVs, as they can impress your recruiters and make you appear more versatile and well-rounded..

In this article, we will explore the characteristics of a good leader, help you understand how to add these skills to your application, and show you some simple ways to boost them.

Why Include Leadership Skills on Your CV?

Including leadership skills on your CV showcases your capability to manage and inspire others. This is particularly important in managerial careers, but it’s not limited to them; employers like to hire individuals who can take initiative even if that’s not in their job description. Plus, possessing leadership skills makes you a more likely candidate for promotion to a position that might make use of them. For instance, you might not need to be an excellent leader as an engineer, but these abilities could come in handy if you get promoted to a head engineer and put in charge of a team. Ultimately, if you possess some leadership skills, it’s wise to include them on your application. Even if you’re not applying for a leadership position, they can give you an edge in the hiring process and help you secure an interview.

Let’s examine these leadership skills examples in more detail:

#1. Communication

Excellent communication skills are crucial for good leaders; after all, much of their job consists of interacting with and managing people. Their primary task is to guide their subordinates by clarifying their goals and outlining the steps necessary to achieve them.

In other words, if they aren’t great communicators, leaders have a much harder time getting their teams to perform the way they envision. This also opens up room for misunderstandings and confusion, which may ultimately result in decreased efficiency and poorer performance.

Furthermore, communication is vital for establishing rapport with employees and helping them interact with each other more effectively. A study published in the Organization Management Journal showed that teams where all members and managers respect one another tend to be far more devoted to the shared goal than those that lack firm professional relationships.

#2. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence and excellent communication skills often go hand in hand because it’s challenging to communicate effectively without understanding other people’s feelings. When you know where a person is coming from, you’re more likely to empathise, which helps you figure out the right approach in your interactions.

Emotional intelligence isn’t just about understanding others, though. It also helps you become aware of your own feelings and handle them with maturity, instead of letting them control you. This is important for leadership positions, as you can’t let yourself lash out at your employees whenever something doesn’t go your way.

#3. Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking allows leaders to set a clear direction and guide their teams towards long-term success. Rather than simply going with the flow and reacting to challenges, strategic thinkers take a proactive approach, anticipate obstacles, and devise plans to overcome them in advance.

Strategic thinking encompasses several other skills, including:

By combining all these, strategists can come up with the best course of action, while still acknowledging that their plans may need to change with the circumstances.

Although leaders in high positions frequently have advisors with excellent strategic thinking skills, they can’t rely on them alone. They must demonstrate they are capable of strategising themselves; otherwise, their employees might not be inclined to follow them.

#4. Adaptability

Leadership positions aren’t for the weak of heart; they are very challenging and dynamic, requiring you to handle various responsibilities and respond to unexpected situations. As a result, leaders must exhibit a great deal of adaptability.

For instance, imagine that you’ve been working with a client for years and suddenly, for no apparent reason, they decide to end your collaboration.

This situation is upsetting and might have a significant impact on your company’s finances, but you can’t throw a tantrum. As a leader, all you can do is handle it as professionally as possible and figure out a way to move forward.

Demonstrating adaptability doesn’t only benefit your company, either; your employees will likely find your confidence and calm demeanour inspiring. Even if there is an ongoing crisis, they will feel reassured if you show that you can handle it.

#5. Delegation

Delegation belongs to the category of management skills, as it’s one of managers’ main responsibilities. It essentially means deciding who has the right skills to complete a particular task and, therefore, maximising a team’s efficiency.

Leaders can’t do everything by themselves, especially when their company starts growing and tasks begin piling up. At some point, they should let their employees work independently and check in only when necessary.

However, to do that, they must be confident in the people they’ve chosen. This is where delegation skills come in handy; they allow them to correctly assess their employees’ abilities and determine which tasks and workloads to assign to each.

The better the assessment, the better the outcome, so it’s important to sharpen this skill through practice. Interacting with employees, reviewing their performance reports, and observing their progress usually helps you narrow down more accurately what they excel at.

#6. Decision-Making

Though employees have to make small decisions every day, like which task to prioritise or how to approach it, managers are the core decision-makers of their companies. Their choices affect the entire collective and determine the overall strategic direction.

As a result, leaders must be excellent decision-makers, possessing the ability to accurately assess the situation, consider their resources, and think through potential outcomes. One misstep can spell trouble for the company, especially in competitive industries.

When making decisions, leaders should rely on the following skills:

It’s worth noting that decision-making isn’t only relevant for managers, directors, and CEOs. In fact, this leadership skill is crucial in nursing or other medical careers, where head nurses and doctors must take charge in life-or-death situations.

#7. Conflict Resolution

Whichever level of management you work in, you’ll inevitably have to deal with conflict, either between your subordinates or your own misunderstandings with others. The tricky part about conflict at work is that professionalism must be maintained; you can’t start a shouting match with someone you disagree with, no matter how satisfying it might feel.

A manager’s crucial responsibility is to resolve conflicts and ensure the smooth functioning of all teams. As a result, they must possess excellent diplomacy skills and master the ability to hear out both sides without judgement to help them reach a compromise.

This skill is usually tightly intertwined with emotional intelligence; the better you are at understanding people, the easier it is to resolve conflicts effectively. That’s because you can instinctively gauge what approach suits each side and apply it while interacting with them.

#8. Networking

Leaders have an important task of communicating with clients and partners, or otherwise maintaining their professional relationships. On top of that, they often benefit from connections with experts from various industries, who can help them come up with better ideas and stay on top of global trends.

All this requires excellent networking skills and the ability to quickly establish rapport with different people. Usually, this goes hand in hand with excellent communication skills, which, as we have established, are crucial for leaders.

#9. Team Building

Building a cohesive team is crucial in every workplace, since everyone should be on the same page while working towards the shared goal. If they aren’t, they’ll have difficulty relying on each other and may even face some conflict and clashes.

Team building skills encompass many of those that we’ve already mentioned, such as communication, networking, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence. However, it can be viewed as a separate skill, since it represents a synergy between all these distinct abilities.

In other words, good leaders know how to inspire trust and nurture a positive relationship with and between their employees. There are different ways to achieve this, depending on the team; however, capable leaders can usually determine the best approach through their interactions with team members.

#10. Vision

Employees may be primarily concerned with their daily tasks and performance reviews, but leaders look way beyond that. They must have a vision to strive towards, a goal to guide them and everyone working under them.

Being able to visualise exactly what you’d like to achieve can be incredibly helpful, as the road to that accomplishment becomes clearer, too. However, having a vision isn’t enough; good leaders know how to help their employees see it and understand it well enough to want to contribute to its execution.

#11. Mental Strength

Being a leader is by no means easy; that’s why one of the most critical leadership skills is strength. We’re talking about mental strength in particular, as it helps you deal with the pressure, unexpected situations, and demands of your coworkers, employees, and clients.

Furthermore, leaders are the ones who receive the greatest scrutiny and the fiercest backlash should something go wrong. This also requires a great deal of mental fortitude and readiness to accept the consequences of your decisions, no matter how harsh they turn out to be.

13 More Sought-After Leadership Skills for 2025

The skills we’ve already covered are the most important ones a leader must possess, but they certainly aren’t a comprehensive list. Here are some more of the best leadership skills that could boost your application in 2025:

How to List Leadership Skills on Your CV

Since we’ve covered the most important leadership skills, let’s see how to list them on your CV effectively.

First, let’s start from the skills section, where you’ll naturally include them along with all your other capabilities. Leadership skills generally fall under the category of soft skills, so they are often listed below technical skills. However, if you’re applying for a managerial position, you could put them first for more emphasis.

So, here is how you could list your leadership skills in the skills section:

Generally, there’s no need to explain any of the skills on your CV, particularly not leadership skills, which are easy to understand at a glance. Creating a simple bullet point list is enough to let the recruiter know you have the qualities they are looking for.

Another place to showcase your leadership skills is in your professional summary, where you can list them alongside relevant achievements that support your claims.

Here is what that might look like:

Finally, you can add leadership skills to your work experience section by showing how you demonstrated them through specific achievements. Here’s an example:

How to Develop Your Leadership Skills

To develop your leadership skills, you need to practise, keep your mind open to criticism, and ask for feedback. Almost all of the skills we listed relate to interactions with people, and you only get better at those if you put in conscious effort and engage with them regularly.

So, here are some strategies you could try next time you interact with someone:

You should, of course, work on your leadership skills even when you’re not directly interacting with anyone. For instance, you can:

Final Thoughts

Now that you understand the importance of leadership skills, you should grasp why it’s crucial to include them on your CV. We’ve covered some of the most in-demand ones, so consider if you possess any and list them in the skills section.

If you need any help to add them effectively, use our CV builder for assistance. It suggests suitable skills for your profession, so all you need to do is pick out the ones you think fit the best and finalise your application within minutes.