Chevening Leader Question for full time employee.

advice on Leadership & Influencing essay

@Holt

I am a full time employee with a Bank for a decade now. I have done many roles of strategic importance leading my team as a Department Head...................but again final approvals/authentication are done at Chief / CEO levels. Can you please write a few basic guidelines on how to develop my essay on Leadership & Influencing?

With your number of years experience, you may have alot of leadership skills already.

I may suggest you can start with;
1. Personal Leadership experiences
2. Education leadership roles
3. Work-related (the main course where you really emphasis your detailed leadership skills including your achievements and challenges as a team leader)

You should be ready to go...

Hope that helps.

Thanks, peacock. I have worked on these lines.

Shaukat, since the deadline for Chevening has already passed, it is useless to offer you advice on how to properly develop a leadership and influencing essay at this point. Chevening requirements for leadership and influencing require you to have a true local or national leadership and influencing role as evidence by professional or community practice. You can use your experience as a department head or team head as an influencing example because you have to influence the true leader of the team, the supervisor or department head, to accept your decision and your actions as the correct one for the project.

Your best bet will be to focus on a community leadership role as that still shows a local or national leadership application as required by the scholarship. You have one year to build up your professional leadership role as the focal point that is supported by your community leadership. That is how you develop a Chevening leadership essay. The academic profile is only the foundation or evidence that you have tried to develop your leadership skills from the very start of your evolution into a professional career.

Focus not only on leadership but influencing as well. A leader is more of an influencer because you cannot lead without influence. Think about how you embody leadership through influence and then try to write an essay for the next cycle of applications.

I hope to see you at the forum next year as a real applicant, with an essay for me to analyze for your application. At this point, all of this information will not do you any good since you cannot apply it to an actual application essay anymore. The advice for your essay will depend upon what you write and how it is analyzed for application to the Chevening requirements.

Thanks, Holt. I have already submitted my application. If convenient, I can share my essays with you through email.