Leadership Qualities and How to Demonstrate Them in Your CV

Leadership Qualities and How to Demonstrate Them in Your CV

Leadership Qualities and How to Demonstrate Them in Your CV

Leadership qualities help in all aspects of professional life: from finding a job to effective career development. With their help, a person influences the decisions of other people and confidently goes to the goal set. Thanks to great leaders, it was possible to make Apple popular and create the best sports betting site in Tanzania with thousands of visitors every day.

But it is not enough to describe leadership in one word on a CV. It is necessary to show exactly how it manifests itself and what successes it has already helped to achieve.

Leadership Qualities 

Leaders are people who can convince others and lead them. Fortunately, most often they are not born, but become leaders.

Almost anyone can develop leadership qualities, but they are most important for managers. A strong manager is able to make a cohesive team of employees of different gender, age, character and skills. He is an inspirer, a motivator, an example for his subordinates.

Leadership qualities imply a complex of personal traits and communicative abilities that help to achieve goals: individual, professional or team.

Top 9 Leadership Skills

There are several important skills that form the basis of a person’s leadership qualities. Let’s talk about each of them, as well as give useful tips on how to properly reflect them in your CV.

Communication Skills

Managers have to convey their message. You can have the best team in the world, but if subordinates don’t understand what task, who should do it and when, there will be no result.

A leader also needs to be able to hear the person he is talking to. This skill helps to get feedback in time and coordinate work.

Team Building

Leadership skills allow you to form and maintain a strong cohesive team. Relationship building is one of the most important skills for the role of a thought leader and motivator.

Understanding the people you work with will help you really assess their strengths, delegate tasks, and accomplish your goals more effectively.

A successful relationship-building leader will need the following qualities:

• Collaboration.
• Teamwork.
• Interpersonal communication.
• Empathy.

Delegation

Delegating work is an important quality of a leader. A bad leader is the one who tries to pull everything on himself.

In this situation, there are two possible outcomes:

• Professional burnout. Trying to do everything on your own leads to chronic fatigue, depression, and mental disorders.
• Demotion or dismissal. It is impossible for one person to do the amount of work designed for a team.

A good manager knows how to distribute tasks based on the weaknesses and strengths of workers. This requires the following qualities:

• Strategic thinking.
• Planning and forecasting.
• Attention to detail.
• Coordination.
• A results orientation.

Feedback

Managers are tasked with evaluating the work done by employees. This can be positive feedback or constructive criticism. Knowing when and how to give feedback to staff, and in a positive way, is a mandatory function of the leader.

Conflict Resolution

Unpleasant situations, quarrels, misunderstandings – even in the most ideal team it cannot be avoided. Sometimes conflicts are even useful: they help to reveal hidden problems, to get to know better the people with whom you work side by side. But they can only be useful if the leader of the group keeps everything under control.

Factors that contribute to the successful conflict resolution:

• All sides are heard, points of view are voiced.
• The leader understands and respects everyone.
• A compromise solution is reached.

To successfully resolve conflicts, a person should have a developed emotional intelligence, patience, the ability to listen to the interlocutor and empathy.

Time Management

To be a successful, strong leader means having organizational skills and excellent time management skills.

Dreaming of taking the manager’s chair? Then know that you’ll have to:

• Constantly juggle tasks and prioritize deadlines.
• Tracking progress.
• Re-evaluate everything after completion, all the while, supervising and managing employees.

Start pumping up leadership qualities and skills like planning, financial forecasting, decision making, delegation, flexibility now.

Adaptability

No one is immune to problems and difficulties, even the brightest leaders. But what separates a tough manager from a common man is the ability to cope with the shocks of fate, while remaining positive and objective. This ability is valued by upper management.

Motivation

The ability to motivate others is one of the key differences between conventional management and true leadership. A leader doesn’t just hand out commands to subordinates.

The job of a true leader is to inspire people so that each of them works with enthusiasm.

Each employee should feel that he is valued, his opinion is taken into account, and he is given the opportunity to grow personally and professionally.

Technical Skills

Leaders are responsible for driving innovation, growth and maintaining business performance. A big part of success is knowing how to use technology to your advantage. Applicants for leadership positions should be well versed in this area.

How to Describe Leadership on a CV

You can’t just say “have leadership skills” on a CV. This phrase is uninformative to the recruiter. There are a few working rules that will make the recruiter believe in your leadership talent.

Rule #1. Quantitative expression. Any information is better received if it has specifics, numbers. Prove your leadership with facts.

Rule #2. A great cover letter. There is a limit to how much text you can include, so don’t write everything about your leadership skills.

A cover letter is a good way to summarize all of your leadership experience.

Remember, you only get one chance to prove to the recruiter that you understand the essence of the phrase “a successful leader.” Take every opportunity to emphasize your abilities.

Rule #3. Preparation. If the recruiter is interested in the questionnaire, you will be invited for an interview. During the interview, the recruiter will be sure to ask questions that relate to the leadership skills reflected in the CV.

Give a vivid example, adapt your story to the requirements of the job. Try to use more facts. Talk about what you did. Rehearse your performance in front of family or friends.

Obviously, leadership skills are necessary for everyone from students to first heads of state. Not only do they help you get the job of your dreams, but they help you improve the quality of your life in general.