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Leader skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
5 min read
Quoted Experts
Jessica Tangen Daniels Ph.D.,
Jessica Tangen Daniels Ph.D.
Leader Example Skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical leader skills. We ranked the top skills for leaders based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 14.2% of leader resumes contained customer service as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a leader needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 leader skills for your resume and career

1. Customer Service

Customer service is the process of offering assistance to all the current and potential customers -- answering questions, fixing problems, and providing excellent service. The main goal of customer service is to build a strong relationship with the customers so that they keep coming back for more business.

Here's how leaders use customer service:
  • Maintain professional manner, customer service, and sensitivity to diverse populations while leading students and families through orientation programming.
  • Plan and deliver corporate-mandated and branch-specific training, including in key areas such as collective bargaining and customer service.

2. Strong Time Management

Here's how leaders use strong time management:
  • well organized, detail oriented, flexible, focused, strong time management, diligent, reliable

3. Excellent Interpersonal

Here's how leaders use excellent interpersonal:
  • Experience with training and writing procedures for production personnel, and excellent Interpersonal and Communication skills.
  • Utilized excellent interpersonal skills with students, parents and co-workers in order to meet program deadlines and goals with efficiency.

4. PET

Here's how leaders use pet:
  • Promoted to PET representative within the first quarter of 2008 based upon clinical knowledge and performance.
  • Maintained presence across multiple operating shifts, and occasionally performed rolls for PET lead when designated.

5. Digital Transformation

Here's how leaders use digital transformation:
  • Work with multiple industries on long and short term projects in the areas of Digital Transformation and Infrastructure and Customer Experience.
  • Owned end-to-end digital transformation across 20 countries, spanning platform selection and development to change management program facilitation.

6. Work Ethic

Here's how leaders use work ethic:
  • Directed and supervised participants' work ethic on-site at local non-profits
  • Encouraged leadership and developed an effective work ethic.

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7. Sales Floor

The sales floor is the area in a company or a business that is specified for retail activities or is designated as the selling area of the shop. A car showroom can be considered a sales floor, as it has cars in its display which are to be sold. A sales floor is generally crowded with sales assistants who are there to help you out while you can search and check out the products. Generally a sales floor has free access to the public and they can observe, view and get information about the product that is being sold.

Here's how leaders use sales floor:
  • Inventory Captain- oversaw backroom and sales floor inventory preparation and execution.
  • Trained new hires in best practices for the sales floor, company culture and their personal development in the company.
Select Skills To Add To Your Resume

8. Client Facing

Here's how leaders use client facing:
  • Played a critical role in improving all client facing reporting for 25 lines of business.

9. Project Management

Here's how leaders use project management:
  • Project Management: Effective project manager for facilities/construction projects, technology implementation, organizational change, and logistics programs.
  • Project management in implementations of solutions sold, acting together with technical consultants to delivery projects sold to customers.

10. Basic Math

Here's how leaders use basic math:
  • Lead a course in basic mathematics and statistics which involved developing lesson plans, classroom management, and submitting weekly reports.
  • Tutored children in basic math and English.

11. Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is an ongoing process of improvement of products, services, and processes with the help of innovative ideas. It is an organized approach that helps an organization to find its weaknesses and improve them.

Here's how leaders use continuous improvement:
  • Develop, coordinate, and execute continuous improvement activities at all levels and functions of the organization using continuous improvement methodologies.
  • Created and chaired formal finance/supply chain end-to-end process owner/leader structure to jointly incorporate design considerations for optimization and continuous improvement decision-making.

12. Professional Development

Professional development means to have the essential training certification or education with the purpose of earning and having a successful career. Every job requires a different set of skills. However, new skills may be needed in the future. Professional development, in this regard, helps people to develop and polish the skills and become efficient workers.

Here's how leaders use professional development:
  • Mentored subordinate team members and encouraged them to spend off-duty hours doing productive activities aimed toward self-enrichment and professional development.
  • Participated in a classroom culture book study to better facilitate meaningful professional development sessions in my area of expertise.

13. Business Development

Business development is the ideas or initiatives that work to make business work better. Selling, advertising, product development, supply chain management, and vendor management are only a few of the divisions involved with it. There is still a lot of networking, negotiating, forming alliances, and trying to save money. The goals set for business development guide and coordinate with all of these various operations and sectors.

Here's how leaders use business development:
  • Drive sales and business development initiatives to maximize admissions with final accountability to achieve revenue and admissions targets for the University.
  • Performed business development/marketing, proposal development (including proposal team manager), establishment of Teaming Agreements, subcontractor management.

14. HR

HR stands for human resources and is used to describe the set of people who work for a company or an organization. HR responsibilities revolve around updating employee records and carrying out management processes like planning, recruitment, evaluation, and selection processes. HR is a key contributor to any company or organization's growth as they are in charge of hiring the right employees, processing payrolls, conducting disciplinary actions, etc.

Here's how leaders use hr:
  • Worked closely with HR to ensure progressive discipline procedures were followed and associate improvement was achieved.
  • Recognized innovator with a proven record of establishing and maintaining industry-leading HR best practices and benchmarks.

15. Risk Management

Risk management is the method of recognizing, evaluating, and managing risks to an organization's resources and profits. Financial insecurity, regulatory liability, strategic management mistakes, incidents, and natural hazards are just some of the challenges or dangers that could arise. For digitalized businesses, IT security vulnerabilities and data-related threats, as well as risk management techniques to mitigate them, have become top priorities.

Here's how leaders use risk management:
  • Developed 120-hour, graduate-level, university-accredited Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) training curriculum that was marketed globally to customers.
  • Provided guidance, direction, and oversight related to clinical management, financial management, risk management, regulatory compliance.
top-skills

What skills help Leaders find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What skills stand out on Leader resumes?

J

Jessica Tangen Daniels Ph.D.

Associate Provost - Innovation and Partnerships, Program Director/Professor, Ed.D. Leadership in Higher Education, Bethel University

The skills that "stand out" on an educational leader's resume are those that synergize into a coherent story. So not necessarily the skills that are self-identified and listed under a "skills" heading, but those that are evidenced through outcomes achieved appointments/promotions, or other demonstrated successes. For example, in an educational institution, being elected to a chair or moderator position within a senate structure might indicate characteristics of diplomacy, advocacy, collaboration, and wisdom. The resume reader can imagine how those attributes might translate to a new employment space, with much more confidence than if those same characteristics were merely listed as skills. So first, on a resume, prioritize representing your skills through a story, experience, and evidence (rather than self-described adjectives) in a way that reflects your unique narrative.

Now, regarding the specific skills. Some of the skills desired in an educational leader change, based on the institutional context, the previous leader, unique internal or external challenges, etc. However, I would suggest two interminable and foundational skills that will always stand out on a resume and differentiate the applicant: working hard and working with others. Employers want to hire a hard worker, determined, responsible, trustworthy, and strong work ethic. And employers want to hire someone who others want to work with, someone who is collaborative, thoughtful, or in Ingnation or Jesuit language, someone who is for and with others.

Those two skills form a foundation for professional success.

What soft skills should all Leaders possess?

J

Jessica Tangen Daniels Ph.D.

Associate Provost - Innovation and Partnerships, Program Director/Professor, Ed.D. Leadership in Higher Education, Bethel University

With the rapid rate of change, accelerating information turnover, and boundless access to knowledge, certain new soft skills may now be prioritized in our current society. So we all have to be learners, seeking new information, anticipating that we will need to change our mind, and striving for a disposition of curiosity. The specific skill of asking good questions cannot be underestimated.

Employers may be seeking skills like imaginative bridging, humbly and curiously connecting dots. Or the skills of facilitation and curation, with so many different perspectives and lived experiences, and an overabundance of information, an educational leader, must manage people, perspectives, and content like never before.

Employers are looking for skills that relate to not only the day-to-day tactical aspects of educational leadership but also imaginative problem-solving for a thriving future.

What hard/technical skills are most important for Leaders?

J

Jessica Tangen Daniels Ph.D.

Associate Provost - Innovation and Partnerships, Program Director/Professor, Ed.D. Leadership in Higher Education, Bethel University

Many hard/technical skills are incredibly context-specific, so importance varies by role and/or industry. But for educational leaders, generally applicable skills might be related to teaching and learning constructs, finance and budgeting, and basic legal issues awareness. Perhaps familiarity with specific content management systems or learning management systems, but again, this use varies by institution.

List of leader skills to add to your resume

Leader Skills

The most important skills for a leader resume and required skills for a leader to have include:

  • Customer Service
  • Strong Time Management
  • Excellent Interpersonal
  • PET
  • Digital Transformation
  • Work Ethic
  • Sales Floor
  • Client Facing
  • Project Management
  • Basic Math
  • Continuous Improvement
  • Professional Development
  • Business Development
  • HR
  • Risk Management
  • Process Improvement
  • Logistics
  • PowerPoint
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Role Model
  • Direct Reports
  • Sigma
  • Net Promoter Score
  • CPR
  • Public Speaking
  • Twitter
  • Mathematics
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Chemistry
  • Kaizen
  • R
  • Lead Management
  • Community Services
  • Facebook
  • Excellent Guest
  • Media Management
  • Community Events
  • Gross Sales
  • KPI
  • Pricing Strategy
  • B Testing
  • Fine Arts
  • Manage Cross

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

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