Scholarship / Project Management Practicioner - Networking Chevening Essay [8]

Hi this is my essay for chevening application. Helps are very much appreciated. Thanks!

2. NETWORKING QUESTION

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your networking skills, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

I believe that networking is impactful to the advance on individual's or organizations' success. It goes beyond building relationship and sharing information, but also to help each other. Once you change your attitude towards potential partners, their reaction will be positively proportional and inevitable.

Through working in dynamic projects, I had to coordinate and deal with many external parties. It gave me privilege to constantly make a connection with people from different backgrounds and disciplines. When I worked with them, I made sure I engage first with the bosses or owner of their company. At the beginning of project I have always had a kick-off meeting and make sure I get their full support. I approached them doing just like what I do when I casually make friends than just exchanging business card. That is why every time I had difficulties with their field team, I was able to directly contact the owner to have strategic solution and had them push their team to work better.

One time I had a deadlock problem when I was handling one of my projects in Plant Manado. We found micro bacteria in the water treatment so we have to re-cleanse the system. The vendor was already back to Jakarta after they finished the work and we for sure did not expect to do the cleaning again. The timeline was very short so we had no time to wait to send the vendor back since it is so far; 3.5 hours flight from Jakarta and another 2 hour drive from the airport. I asked for help from the plant team and they gave me contact of a local vendor. Unfortunately, unlike our regular vendor, the local one asked us for immediate payment, while the policy of my company is to pay 3 months after the invoice is received. They would really like to help us, but it is a local business practice to have the hard cash. Long story short, I took the initiative to reach the owner of one of the vendor who was also working there too. He finally agreed to pay the local vendor immediately, and afterwards they can charge the company directly with the normal term of payment. The timeline was met and the project was finished successfully. As a bonus, when I went diving at the end of the project, the local vendor offered me discount and free accommodation since he has a friend who owned a cottage near the beach.

Being a Chevening scholar offers the opportunity of meeting motivated leaders from different backgrounds and cultures. This will help me excel my skill of networking. As I advance in my career, the challenge that I am going to take will be harder and require me to reach more significant people. Therefore, I can leverage my network to help me determine strategic action to the problem I am facing using resources, information, and cooperation with them. (487 words)

Scholarship / Student Council & Project Manager - Leadership Chevening Essay [2]

Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

I have the confidence to give direction

For me, leadership is not a character that anyone can get at birth. Although everybody has their own potential, it has to be established and sharpened through life experience. Throughout my life, I have shown my leadership and influencing skills both during college and work. These are two evidences to support my claim;

The first one is when I was appointed as vice head of sport and art division in student council of Engineering Faculty. There was this big competition between faculties in my campus, the University Olympic and Art Competition. Winning the competition was never the intention; even my faculty's participation in the number of games had always been very low. At that time I connected with people from each of major to find their best athletes & artists, and then I persuaded them to join the competition. I also engaged with the faculty dean to support us financially for the preparation. We got bigger budget at and the dean often came to the match to support us too. As a result of my skills to influence, my faculty had the most supporters in every match and had always been the discussion of how far our change is since the previous years. Our aim at that time was never to win the University Olympic, but to increase the students' interest and participate in more numbers of sports. We ended up in second place, participated in more than 85% of the games, and awarded as the best supporter.

Second, in my current job, I was just still finished my management trainee program when I was given the responsibility of being a project manager, continuing the work of the previous resigning one. At first, I struggled so much to cover the entire subject which is under my responsibilities. I often missed important points just to dig deeper to one specific thing. But later I realized I waste so much energy for that. Being a project manager does not require you to understand all at once in short period time. It is about asking the right question to the right person. That is what I have been doing since then; I can avoid micromanaging and I overcame my inadequacy with correct delegation to my engineering supports. I gave them the authorization to directly coordinate with the vendors and gave them challenges of strategic problem solving by their own. By doing that, I utilized their abilities and give them the chance to perform and expose them to bigger scope of team.

To sum up, a good leader can initiate changes to their society and country, being the source of insight to the team and influences a group towards the same goal quality. Towards being one, I believe I have the confidence to give direction and set pace to my team so that they can be as driven as I am. Gaining the Chevening scholarship would help me discover more on leadership and influencing others as it would give me opportunity to the meet the best leaders from around the world.