Scholarship / Leadership & Influence: A journey to enrich (Chevening Scholarship) [2]

Leadership & Influence essay:

Question: 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.

Please help me to review the essay below. Thank you in advance.

In my student life, by winning the "Future Entrepreneurs" Contest, I had a great opportunity to meet and talk to Indra Nooyi in New York, former CEO PepsiCo Global who consistently ranked among the world's 100 most powerful women. I was inspired by her leadership style and leadership model that she shared with me - PepsiCo Leadership and Individual Effectiveness that defines key competencies and behaviors driving success at company:

Decision making
Innovating
Driving for results
Building talent
Motivating & Inspiring others
Collaborating & Influencing
It is very useful model that reminds myself of behaviors I should strive toward every day to enrich my leadership ability and contribute to my own success.

My first experience to apply leadership model was the environmental education project. There were short courses with interesting activities related to environment. Our mission was to raise children's awareness and responsibility towards environment. However, as a project leader, how to run project and spread out messages to community without cost was my challenge. I had to seek out solutions, leveraged all my resources and networks to drive for results. By persuasive proposal, I successfully convinced the board of management of school to allow us organizing this project. I also tried to approach leading Vietnamese's leading newspapers to influence them to offer free media exposure by showing my excitement and meaningful impact on environmental education aspect. As a result, my project is featured on leading newspapers and TV channels as well. Mr.Ngoc Trai - Former CEO PepsiCo-Vietnam stated:"The project proves Thy's leadership and influencing skills, especially her strong passion towards environmental education".

Another example demonstrates my leadership ability when I was a senior-assistant brand manager. My line manager had 6-months-maternity-leave, so I had a great opportunity to act as brand manager. It was also 6-challenging-months to perform my leadership skill and my competence as well. At that time, the brand's sales was decreased for half year, and 2017's revenue was expected to reach only 80% of target. However, I proactively proposed with Director that I wanted to set a more challenging goal delivering 90%. To begin with, I reviewed all marketing plans, cut inefficient activities and balanced resources to achieve goal. I approached other departments to share new KPI and adjusted plans. I always motivated and inspired them even after-work by small talk, motivational emails, incentive offers also, especially sales team who directly drive business' result. Consequently, 2017's revenue significantly achieves 100% of target. I cannot imagine how I can reach an incredible result without my team. Driving for results and influencing people are 2 key learnings to strengthen my leadership skills.

After 6-challenging-months, with good performance and strong leadership skills, I am promoted to International Marketing Manager, in charge of Vietnam & international markets. I consider this as an important milestone in my career until now, as from this, I have been given new professional responsibilities in bigger projects by company. The leadership skills really helps me map out specific development areas deigned to foster my growth both as a professional and a leader.

Scholarship / Eating alone - Your network is your net work (Chevening scholarship) [3]

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.

Please help me to review the essay below.

"Never eat alone"

Since I was a freshman, I read the "Never eat alone" which is the most famous book on networking. It brings me lots of precious learning how to build strong networking both personally and professionally. For me, networking is a particularly valuable skill, especially when I move up higher levels. It helps me not only to become a strong leader but also to achieve my own success.

My first experience to build networks was started when I was a founder of a non-profit organization about environmental education for primary students in 2011. I have to build and utilize my networks to operate the projects. To begin with, I developed appropriate networking plans to approach enterprises, NGOs and press. With persuasive sponsorship proposal, I convinced them to offer financial sponsor and free media exposure for these projects. As a result, my organization got strong supports during 3 years and became one of the biggest environmental organization in Vietnam. From this achievement, I gained wider network which helps me to open up my mind and acquired more valuable soft skills. Despite 4-leaving-years, I usually keep maintaining these networks via calls, emails, coffee-talks. Until now, these networks are still useful to me especially when I work in marketing field and look for supports with environmental marketing campaigns.

Together with building career plans, I always strive to create networks as much as possible. During the "Future Entrepreneurs" contest, I was received training and coaching courses from investors, CEOs of large companies in Vietnam and US. I tried to reach out these people to build relationship and engagement by sending thank-you letters, sharing my passion and intended careers also. I thought it was the best way to make me stand out from the crowd. As a result, I got the good offers for marketing job at PepsiCo right after contest thanks to good connections.

As an International marketing manager, I have great chances to meet up and work with partners both locally and globally. I build a strong network with technology-company such as Google, Facebook, as well as agencies across industries: advertising, digital, market research... Beyond that, connecting influential people from different fields by holding events, workshops and seeing what these relationships yield are also my passion.

I strongly believe those samples demonstrate on how networking skills were supposed to be utilized in order to make a positive influence. Hence, if I am awarded scholarship, I want to become a Chevening Ambassador who actively promote Chevening scholarship and develop community throughout my networks. In term of online channels, my aim is to maximize Chevening's exposure by utilizing my social media networks of Facebook, Google and press network such as Thanhnien, Tuoitre...On offline channel, I will encourage more people applying for scholarship, share UK's culture and history as well as community's activities to future scholars. Besides, I expect to share passions and exchange experiences about marketing with other scholars and alumni, to extend my international networks and also to enhance my capacity as a marketer.