Top 10 Leadership Tools for 2026: Best Practices
Effective product management requires you to develop strong leadership skills alongside technical project management abilities. To lead and motivate your team, you must manage both people and emotions, not just systems and processes.
There are many leadership tools, from lean practices to 360-degree assessments, that can help you enhance your skills. While it might be unclear where to start, the key is recognizing that leadership is a skill you need to work on continuously.
This article covers practical leadership tools to help you strengthen your skills and lead more effectively.
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Key skills a good leader needs
Before looking through the list of leadership tools, it’s useful to consider what skills a strong leader needs to have. We can summarize these as follows:
- Discipline
- Delegation
- The ability to inspire and motivate others
- The ability to keep calm under pressure
- Conflict resolution
- Listening
One of the best ways to help develop these skills is to know where you are now, which skills you already have, and which you may need to work on. The ten assessment tools listed below are a great way to help with that.
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Leadership tool #1: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
The Meyers & Briggs Foundation uses the theories of Carl Jung in the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test. The assessment determines your personality type from 16 different archetypes:
- The Nurturer: Thinks of others – considerate and loyal.
- The Performer: Strong interpersonal skills and often fun to be around. Lively and sympathetic.
- The Composer: Good listeners and excellent friends – fun-loving and spontaneous.
- The Craftsman: Down-to-earth, rational and observant – also spontaneous and enthusiastic.
- The Champion: Perceptive and optimistic – focused on forging their own way in life, based on feelings and intuition. They love to start new projects and quick to see the potential in others.
- The Giver: Principled and charismatic, they relate easily to others – tend to be outspoken, imaginative, and accepting.
- The Counsellor: Caring, reflective, and creative they never take anything at surface value.
- The Doer: Pragmatic problem solvers who are good at negotiating – unconventional and impulsive.
- The Provider: Energised through social activity and comfortable in the spotlight – often thoughtful and harmonious.
- The Supervisor: Orderly, highly productive, and results orientated – tend to have strong traditional values.
- The Visionary: Inventive, logical, and energetic – tends to enjoy intellectual conversation and new challenges.
- The Idealist: Reserved, value-driven, and creative – they tend to find happiness in solitude and giving their imagination free rein.
- The Thinker: A quick analyzer of people and situations – insightful, logical, and observant.
- The Mastermind: Skeptical, strategic, and competent – big-picture thinkers who sometimes struggle with social engagement.
- The Inspector: Organized, hard-working, and socially responsible – often a deep thinker with clear views of right and wrong.
- The Commander: Unafraid to take charge – an effective organizer with strong leadership skills. Decisive and independent.
This will give you an idea of who you are, what motivates you, and where your natural strengths lie.
Leadership tool #2: Harvard’s Implicit Association Test
This test uncovers your unconscious biases – the attitudes and beliefs you have but may not be aware of. The assessment involves categorizing pictures and phrases and associating them as either “good” or “bad” as quickly as you can. Then after a brief survey, your results approximate your attitudes and assumptions.
Leadership tool #3: Leadership Style Assessment
Most of us tend to have an idea about the kind of leader we are or would like to be. A leadership style assessment will tell you what kind of leader you actually are. You take a leadership inventory and work out your leadership style. Each style has its strengths but having the wrong perception of the kind of leader we are can be potentially very damaging, and this test will help to solve that problem by letting you know where you are now.
Leadership tool #4: Leadership Blind Spot Assessment
A leadership blind spot assessment helps senior executives identify areas of oversight across four major categories:
- Blind spots about yourself
- Blind spots about your team
- Blind spots about your company
- Blind spots about your markets
This is incredibly useful for most leaders to know their existing blind spots and areas for improvement.
Leadership tool #5: Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Assessment
Emotional intelligence is now seen as the emotional equivalent of IQ since research concluded that emotional intelligence (EQ) counts for twice as much as intelligence quotient (IQ) and technical skills in determining individual success.
This test helps leaders to understand where they rank in EQ and to understand how it impacts their ability to manage, especially under pressure. An emotional intelligence assessment can help you determine where your emotional weaknesses exist when handling situations involving pressure, criticism, and failure.
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Leadership tool #6: Performing Under Pressure Assessment
Similar to the emotional intelligence assessment, the IHHP Performing Under Pressure self-assessment focuses on the circumstances that may cause leaders to underperforming when leading through a crisis.
The Performing Under Pressure assessment is geared towards the individual and how well you handle stress, anxiety, and criticism. Once completed, you get a score and brief description of strengths and weaknesses under pressure, as well as suggestions and where to improve.
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Leadership tool #7: LinkedIn Learning’s personal effectiveness tips
Formerly known as Lynda, LinkedIn Learning is LinkedIn’s online training resource covering a multitude of topics and practical skills. One of the most impactful topics on there is personal effectiveness, and here LinkedIn Learning contains a great course on personal effectiveness by personal effectiveness guru Dorie Clark.
This practical course is offered in bite-sized episodes and includes practical exercises to help your learning. It also contains a section on identifying your own leadership blind spots and covers less common but very useful subtopics such as how to find a mentor and how to deal with change.
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Leadership tool #8: Clifton Strengths Assessment
This assessment is for managers and teams who are serious about improving their overall team effectiveness and dynamic. It consists of three steps:
- Take the assessment – The test takes about an hour and contains 177 paired questions in which you have to choose the one that best describes you.
- Get your results – These will show your greatest talents and how to explain them.
- Use your CliftonStrengths – Now you’re more aware of your talents, you’ll be able to identify opportunities that better match your abilities.
When you know your team members’ strengths and weaknesses, it is easier to assign tasks and challenge them in areas where they can develop professionally and personally.
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Leadership tool #9: Free leadership skills assessment
While many of the tools on this list represent a significant investment, you can also take the free test offered by MindTools to evaluate and improve your management skills. It is free and short enough that you can do it during a lunch break or one evening after work.
You answer a series of questions designed to assess your abilities in the following main areas:
- Self Confidence
- Personal Outlook and Attitude
- Emotional Intelligence
It doesn’t require much commitment, but the results could be eye-opening and help you identify opportunities to build on your strengths to become a more impactful leader.
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Leadership tool #10: Optimal Thinking Leadership Assessment
This tool is another leadership traits assessment. The assessment has been taken by an estimated 350,000 leaders from around the world including politicians, Fortune 500 executives, military leaders, and graduate students. The assessment consists of 25 statements in which you are required to answer “A” for “Always”, “F” for “Frequently,” “S” for “Sometimes,” and “R” for “Rarely.”
Once you take the test, you get some positive recommendations on areas where you could improve.
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Bonus: Essential Digital Tools to Support Leadership
While assessments help sharpen your self-awareness and leadership style, the right digital tools can support how you lead and collaborate every day. Here are a few standout solutions every modern leader should know:
- Teamhood – A visual-first project management tool that supports leadership through task delegation, timeline planning, workload management, and real-time collaboration. Great for keeping projects on track and teams aligned. It has a powerful built-in Gantt and Kanban combination you might want to try.
- ProofHub – An all-in-one project and people management platform ideal for leading remote or hybrid teams. Includes built-in chat, Gantt charts, reports, and file management.
- Toggl Plan – A simple, intuitive planning tool for leaders who prefer ease of use without sacrificing clarity. Ideal for fast-paced teams and small project groups.
- Weekdone – Helps leaders guide teams through OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Includes built-in coaching, alignment tools, and a structured approach to goal-setting.
- Timely – Automatically tracks time spent on tasks, helping leaders understand productivity trends and identify opportunities for optimization.
- Slack / Microsoft Teams / Chanty – Communication is key to great leadership. These platforms make it easy to stay connected, share updates, and manage feedback loops efficiently.
Whether you’re managing people, projects, or your own performance, combining introspective assessments with smart tools creates a more holistic approach to leadership.
How Teamhood can help develop your leadership skills
Now you understand more about the tools available to help you develop your interpersonal leadership skills, you need the right project management software to help you lead your projects effectively.
Teamhood is full of project management tools to help you:
- Streamline your work
- Visualize on project boards
- Delegate tasks
- Uncover and solve potential bottlenecks before they become obstacles
- Gain complete 360-degree visibility into your workflow, deadlines, and schedules
- Produce charts, dashboards, and reports to help you make key decisions
Continue exploring our tool guides below:
- 20 Best Free & Paid Microsoft Project Alternatives
- 10 Best Kanban Boards
- Best Tools for Managing Project Dependencies
- Best 15 Project Management Dashboard Examples
Get started today with a free trial and see how Teamhood can help improve your project management leadership skills and make your work easier.
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