Summary: Are great leaders born or made? While there may be no universally accepted answer to this question, Sanjiv Nanda offers seven essential traits that entrepreneurial leaders must develop to effectively lead their business and team.

“Great leaders are born, not made”. This is a very famous old saying which many believe still holds true for being a successful leader. To some extent one’s leadership quality is an innate trait.

Despite of it being a somewhat inborn trait, learning how to become a more effective leader is what most grapple with. Whether you lead a team in your office or you lead a company, it is essential to be a powerful front runner. If you are aspiring to be an effective leader in your field, then you don’t need to join any institutional programme to learn how to become a leader. According to me there are seven simple ways to become an effective leader:

1. Be active & aware 
It is a quality that needs mindfulness and attentiveness. You must be aware of the things happening around you. Negative situations may arise at any moment but being a business leader it’s your responsibility to be prepared to face it all squarely.

Make sure each task is clearly understood, supervised and accomplished. If you have a clear idea about the short-term and the long-term goals, you will reach your expectations.

Besides, it will prove to be fruitful in making you focus on your work effectively and achieving efficient results. It also increases your ability to make sound, precise and informed decisions.

2. Focus on your commitments 
You must focus on your commitments to make a positive impact on your team members. If you go back on your word it will reflect negatively on your leadership skills.

Being a leader, you must take initiative to start your work and complete it on time and take complete responsibility for the outcome.

3. Develop the ability to motivate
The motivation that drives our behaviour comes from certain extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Extrinsic factors are any type of motivational influence from the environment like rewards, recognitions and memorandums. While intrinsic factors include one’s own needs, desires, willpower and motives.

Being an entrepreneur, you may go through different stages of the startup journey like looking for employees and co-founders, building a team and many more. You must be able to inspire people at every stage. But for this, it is very important to be a self-motivated person as you need patience to get all these things done.

4. Hone your communication skills
Effective communication is a vital ingredient to exchange information within a group of individuals. Your communication skills must be strong enough to create an impressive and a positive impact on your client or team’s mind.

A leader needs to create key relationships with their team to foster a professional environment in the firm. Communication is the key to creating a positive work environment.

5.  Be honest
Honesty is the best policy. Being honest is the foremost character trait of a good leader. A leader must be honest to its members all the time. It is essential to gain the trust of one’s team members, clients and other stakeholders.

If you are honest you will never be in a trouble as you will have the proof to give a truthful explanation whenever required. As a leader, honesty should be your first priority to run a good business.

6. Be a quick learner
Quick learning is one of the most important skilsl that any leader should have. You must be able to learn the task in order to visualize and understand what exactly the project deals with at all its stages. With this you will be able to get an overall idea and take pre-emptive actions to make it run successfully by your team members. Quick learning enables growth not only for an individual but also for the organisation.

7. Be passionate
You must love your work, whatever it may be. You must live and dive into your goals. This trait is useful to bring confidence in you that through the dint of your passion and hard work you can achieve remarkable heights.