Abstract We introduce the notion of quasi-triangular Leibniz bialgebras, which can be constructed from solutions of the classical Leibniz Yang–Baxter equation (CLYBE) whose skew-symmetric parts are invariant. In addition to triangular Leibniz bialgebras, quasi-triangular Leibniz bialgebras contain factorizable Leibniz bialgebras as another subclass, which lead to a factorization of the underlying Leibniz algebras. Relative Rota–Baxter operators with weights on Leibniz algebras are used to characterize solutions of the CLYBE whose skew-symmetric parts are invariant. On skew-symmetric quadratic Leibniz algebras, such operators correspond to Rota–Baxter type operators. Consequently, we introduce the notion of skew-symmetric quadratic Rota–Baxter Leibniz algebras, such that they give rise to triangular Leibniz bialgebras in the case of weight 0, while they are in one-to-one correspondence with factorizable Leibniz bialgebras in the case of nonzero weights.