Scholarship / Coordinating people, communicating, sharing ideas and motivating to achieve the desired goal [3]

Hey there,
Am applying for the Chevening Scholarship 2016-2017 and the deadline is approaching. am almost done with my application but i need feed back on my essay question answers; hope to your feed back shortly.

I have always believed that being a leader is not merely the act of leading and directing a group of people; it's more about coordinating with people, communicating, sharing ideas and motivating the group to achieve the desired goal. I personally believe that I work best when given the independence to share my opinions, include my own ideas in the plan and be responsible of the execution.

My first leadership experience was during the Summer of 2013, I started working in Balance General Trading company in Sudan; I first joined with a one month contract to do a specific task; renewing contractual agreements between the company and the distributors. Throughout my period, my leadership skills shined through, leading them to extending my contract to a full time employment for the rest of my summer break (4 months) as a Contracting Specialist & Indoor Sales Representative.

During the four months, the management saw fit to promote me to a Sales Administrator. As a Sales Administrator, my job was to take the responsibilities of maintaining a good relationship with customers, supervising outdoor sales representatives as well as managing the indoor sales representatives inside the showroom.

During the period i administered the sales department, my team and i succeeded in increasing the number of contractual agreements between our company and the distributors, by attracting and convincing new clients to join: Leading to an increase in the overall performance and net profit of the Company.

What makes a leader is the deep rooted commitment and adherence to take the responsibilities & get the required work done properly in order to lead his/ her team to achieve their goal strategically.

What I learned from my experience in balance is a leader is neither a delegated title nor a description of a position held by someone:

A leader is someone who demonstrates the characteristics, dedication and potentials of an influence.

Scholarship / I can use my previous multinational/cultural networking experience to merge with Chevening community [2]

Chevening is looking for individuals with good networking skills...:

Networking is a fundamental building block in society development: through sharing, suggesting, and exchanging different ideas and opinions that can help development and improvement of one self and the society as a whole.

My first networking skills arose when I was chosen by my university to join the organizing committee of a Medical conference named the Pan Arab Society of Pediatric, Gastroenterology, Hematology and Nutrition conference held in Sudan during 2012

The conference was initiated, hosted and attended by a large group Of Doctors from different nationalities and different backgrounds. Being assigned as a coordinator of the registration team registering the Doctors coming from abroad for speaking and/ or attending the conference besides arranging their accommodation and transport; gave me the confidence to deal with the different nationalities more freely having no doubts about my good communication skills and also gave me the chance to develop and improve these skills.

My second experience that served best enhancing and reinforcing my networking skills was when I started working at Abu Dhabi National Bank - Sudan Branch as a one month intern. Two weeks into the job, I was offered under-job training in the Customer Services Department. I started out with simple responsibilities, i.e. handling the Electronic Cheques Clearing (ECC), handling the day-to-day customers' operations, requests & complaints, the process of issuing & renewing ATM cards & cheque books. After finishing my first month, the department manager called me into a meeting with a big client and told me that the client asked for me to handle his account. After the meeting was over, my manager told me that he was going to test me and assigned me with two other big accounts. After another month, I was handling some of the biggest accounts we had in the branch. When I asked my manager of the reason, why he decided to handle me this responsibility he said because I was the most social employee working in that branch. His answer motivated me to focus more, build more relationships and learn how to put these relationships into good use.

During my time at the bank I met a lot of people also coming from different nationalities and societies, communicating with them was a great challenge and that was when I believed in my good networking skills as I was able to deal with them perfectly & efficiently and they reported satisfaction of my services. And I wish to use my skills to help me precede my future career goal.

I used my networking skills and good relationships with clients as a search engine for accounting jobs and started interviewing immediately, that's how I got my current job...!

Chevening community integrates people from different countries and cultures, these people are chosen with specific chevening standards to fit perfectly into its community and to be the future leaders, engaging with this community will help me expand my perceptions and I can use my previous multinational / cultural networking experience to merge with these people perfectly.