Scholarship / Earning the role - Leadership and influence (Chevening Scholarship) [4]

Leadership is not about a title or a designation.

According to Robin S. Sharma, I quote: "Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence, and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers". This brings me back to my first leadership role where it happened that I am also able to motivate my colleagues. Flashback to my days at Opex Oil and Gas as an intern student, where we are working at the Oando Gas and Power Compressed Natural Gas Plant (CNG). The working hour is a 24 hours job with two days off for rest and recovery. Intern student is always assigned to work along a lead shift Engineer; we assist them with the operation and technical issues that may arise during the cause of the operation hours. After completing our duty of the day, the lead shift must send an operation sales and activities report that happens during the shift. All intern students are always eager to go home during the completion of their shift for the day but, I am always waiting behind while I assist the lead shift engineer with our shift report. This extra commitment of mine makes me the first intern student at Oando gas and power to know how to prepare and send an operation duty report to the company management and board. Other intern seeing this also try to change their mindset and commitment when I was rewarded a permanent job to become a staff but I declined the offer because I am still looking forward to furthering my Education beyond the National diploma certificate. This extra effort of mine earns me the role of internship student head where I need to guide any newly employed intern student the activities of the company and put them through the shift operation result.

In as much I don't like to put myself up for a leadership role, my activities as a subordinate keep earning the role. During my final year class at the Universiti Putra Malaysia, we are to take a course named Aircraft Vehicle Design (AVD) one and two, it's a group project where we have to come up with a design report for a proposal requested which involves the study and design of domestic transport aircraft for a "thin haul" scheduled or on-demand operations servicing small airports and short routes. My group comprises of five members during the first semester of the course in which we did excellently well. For the second semester of the course AVD two, I was appointed the group leader of my team which now comprises of Eleven people based on my commitment and role during the first semester of the course. In the second semester, we are tasked to produce the prototype of the aircraft we proposed during the first semester. After the project presentation, many of my junior colleagues approached me for guidance as it a compulsory course for them to take.