Whenever we hear the term “Leadership”, some political leaders might pop in our mind or some entrepreneur. But we all have our own opinions and views regarding leadership. Often, people say leadership is a talent that one is born with. Is it really a talent? Can we learn leadership as a skill?

Well, in my opinion, leadership is a skill that can be mastered with practice just like any other skill. However, the ability to learn depends upon the person. Just like playing guitar can be learnt but it depends upon the willingness of a person to master it, same is the case for leadership. Leadership is the act of undertaking responsibility to reach a certain goal under uncertain circumstances. So, basically we all can be called leaders of our own life. But what about leadership in a group? For that, first of all we need a purpose. Every leadership journey begins with a purpose for which you strongly stand for. Politicians claim to stand for development and justice, entrepreneurs stand for building an economic empire and so on. Then, based on the story of your leadership, you can start gathering people. Reaching out to ones who can resonate with the purpose that you stood up for. 

Once the team is formed, you can move forward with the structure. Every team needs a structure to function autonomously so that everyone fully understands their responsibility. This is essential as “Everybody’s responsibility is nobody’s responsibility”. Now we have the fundamentals down. Then we can move towards the strategy building. Who are your competitors? What are your challenges? How to best utilize the available resources for optimum results? These questions are answered and planning is done in this phase and finally the plan is put into action. These steps are relevant for any action of leadership. 

So, it’s basically like learning the chords of guitar or learning to swim. There are fundamental steps that need to be learnt and a procedure to be followed. Once you get the basics down, you need to apply it practically and be open to learn from others to be an effective leader. Leadership is a skill and everyone can be an effective leader.