Scholarship / Sharing Knowledge Could Help Efficiency At Work - Leadership and Influence Essay for Chevening [3]

Hi, everyone. Here's my first trial essay that I make. I hope there will be a good feedback.

CHEVENING IS LOOKING FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO WILL BE FUTURE LEADER OR INFLUENCER IN THEIR HOME COUNTRIES

Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

There's no absolute definition about leadership, but there's some criteria that will make someone become a good leader. If we ask some CEO or the leader of some big companies, they could define the leadership in a variety of ways. In The Engineering World, responsibility becomes one of the most important things, especially for the project leader itself. Time management, human resources management, goals management, and financial management in one project will be needed. As a Structural Engineer in my company, I have some tasks that force and shape me consciously or unconsciously to become someone who needs to take responsibility, initiate, maintain flexibility, envision, etc. Those tasks indirectly teach me about aligning and empowering functions even though I am not the project leader.

I was working as a structure engineer for an owner in 2018 to 2020. My job more about design the building structures. Besides that, I have a task to supervise the drafter and check their work, especially for the structure drawing. It's not an easy task, because we have so many projects around Indonesia. In one month, I could have three projects or more to run and I could have three drafters to supervise. And now, I work for construction company, where my function more for optimization the structure design, check the shop-drawing, and approval structure material, but sometimes I have a task to design the building structure when the owner asked my company for design as well.

Some supervise more likely to just correct what their team mistakes. But for me, it's different. Sharing knowledge is important. So, I took initiative to help them to understand some basic structure, such as moment diagram of a beam with distributed load, the concept of overlapping reinforcement, the difference of slab on ground and suspended floor, etc. They found it interesting and there's some of them continued their study in civil engineering. This sharing method gives some good feedback, for example, the drafters are confident with their work because they understand the standard drawing for structure well. Furthermore, the drafter who has more capability to understand what I shared, they can help me to teach and share with the others and help me to supervise some drafter as well. Although I have more than one project to finish in one month, but with the method of teaching and sharing with the drafters, makes our job more efficient.

I have one habit that becomes my strength in my professional fields. I always make a time to check my friends, the drafter's condition. We did not always talk about their work, but sometimes could be sharing session about some problems that they faced at work, then I would help them with give some advice to solve it and vice versa. In my personal opinion, a leader is someone who can comfort their team and can build a good communication with them.

Scholarship / POTENTIAL NETWORKING - it opens up opportunities for international collaboration; CHEVENING ESSAY [2]

Dear Ms Mary Rose @holt, I would love to hear a good feedback for my essay from you. and it's open for you all guys who can give me a good feedback as well. Thank you.

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

POTENTIAL NETWORKING

Networking is an important key to building your future. I realized how important it is since I started working as a freelancer in my hometown. At that time, I faced a hard situation when I needed to finish my detailed engineering design and the construction drawing at the same time. Then, I asked my relative who works in a local university if there's someone who can draft for me and then he introduced me to a civil engineering student who has a good skill to draft. Finally, that student helped me to draft my project.

When I was working as a structural engineer for an owner, I maintained my communication and interaction with the drafters, the architects, the estimators, and my other team mates well. Some of them have great skill in their fields and that could be potential to collaborate together. I approached some of the drafters and architects who have the capability to plan, great at their work and willing to collaborate. I told them about my freelancer job and asked them if they want to join me when I get an order for design from a private customer. Finally, we started to build a mutual network, because sometimes an order comes from their side as well. For the job as well, I will take my part in the structural analysis itself and when it is overloaded, I have a trustable partner to help me, my previous partner. Our collaboration is not only beneficial for some outside project, but gives us some benefit to do our tasks at each company. We keep sharing our knowledge, discussion for some cases and could share some structure calculation system that is already computerized or share the construction drawing examples. Although some of us have not worked in one company anymore, we still maintained our communication, networking and relationship as friends. Furthermore, the way we work separately gives us a great chance to expand our networking. We got to know new skilled people to work together and new potential projects as well.

Besides that, I still maintain good communication and interaction with my university friends, the alumni, and my lecturers as well, because I know their networking could be a potential networking for me as well and they work in a variety of fields. For example, on April 2020, my company looking for a good price for WF steel, and I remember one of my university's friends working at steel company, so I asked her about what I am looking for, then she introduced me to some steel supplier, even though in the end some of them did not become our partner, but I still maintain communication with them. Someday I wish I could develop this networking to start a consulting company and expand it to be a contractor company, even though it is a long way to go. By joining the Chevening community could lead me to know more potential people and could open up opportunities for international collaboration.

Scholarship / RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING SKILLS AND SHARED LEARNING [2]

Hi, everyone and especially Ms @holt, I hope for some feedback for this essay. Actually I feel a bit confused how write it. So, I would love to hear some feedback to revise mine better. Thank you.

chevening application essay

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

In professional life, I built a friendly, respectful and professional relationship. I build and maintain those relationships with good communication, more respect to older co-workers, more compassion to younger co-workers and I put manners and empathy as priority. I learn all of it from soft skills seminars, organization and committee experiences. Besides that, my previous experience as tutor and laboratory assistant in my university led me to be someone who really loves to share and discuss, and I applied it in my work life.

At my previous job, I had to work with some drafters for different projects in one month and all of them came from different backgrounds. Mostly every day, I take a break from my main job as a structural engineer for about 15 to 30 minutes to visit the drafters one by one, even though they are not working with me on one project. During that time, I asked about their progress and what is something that I can help with. Some of them consult about their drawings and I would listen first about their drawing ideas and then give some feedback, and some asked me to discuss the structural design in their projects. At this moment, I learn about their behaviours, especially when they have a problem. Approaching them first is my way to check them and I would open communication whether it is a work problem or personal problem. When there is a problem that I found myself not sure about, I would ask our project manager to join us in discussion. Out of work, sometimes we go out together as friends and sometimes our project manager joins us for food together.

My current job has a different situation because some of my co-workers are at site construction. Building effective communication with co-worker who work on site is not easy, because mostly communication by phone. My solution to maintain communication in this situation is to keep the manner whether it is a message or a call and keep emotional management. When there is a major problem to solve, I would visit the site and discuss it with the chief of workers. Sometimes conflict between site workers and the purchasing team could happen. For example, there is an additional need for material in the project and the purchasing team asked why and the site supervisor did not explain it well. I would become a mediator at this moment. I communicated with the supervisor first and listened to their explanation, then I explained it to purchasing staff comprehensively. In my work situation now, I built more friendly relationships with people in the head office and more professional with the site workers.

Developing effective communication and the ability to observe the dynamic situation at work lead me to build some network with colleagues. And I hope using those skills will be highly beneficial when I get the opportunity to be a part of the Chevening Program and to achieve my goals to build my own consulting start-up.