Scholarship / Chevening Leadership Essay - Leading Ourselves And People [4]

Hello everyone, I need your help to review and give a feedback for my Chevening Leadership Essay. The question is :

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.

(minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

Here is my answer:

Leadership is not only about leading others to achieve a goal but include the capability to direct ourselves towards our dream. Meanwhile, persuading others is highly required skill since decisions are often in other's hands. The following are instances of my significant leadership and influencing skills.

First, I took my two kindergartens, four elementary schools, and three universities in different cities to obtain an undergraduate degree. I faced many obstacles, such as multiple personas, both for teachers and classmates, different cultures, and regulations. These require high adaptation skills and persistence that I can manage, but I had an enormous undergraduate study problem. I study at IPB, a reputable university. Despite my best, I got four subjects with no final exam score because my attendance was inadequate as I often came late and counted as absent. It was because my office is 1.5 hours from the class. I am depressed for weeks as I need the money from my job to pay my living and the tuition, but retaining the situation will drop me out. I persuaded myself to rebuild my motivation to pursue my dream and transfer my study to a university near my office, despite not as reputable as IPB. Ultimately, I lead myself to obtain a degree that enables me to get a better career.

Second, in 2019, I am working as a Senior Technical Consultant. There was a project opportunity in a rail transportation company with many stations and needs solutions to connect them with reliable and efficient WAN connections. I ask to lead the opportunity because I have the answer named SD-WAN solution. So I performed multiple presentations to either the customer's BoD, which I give the specific presentation about the business benefits to persuade them, and the Network Engineer team, which I present the easiness of SD-WAN operation. The railway company eventually asks to perform PoC(proof of concept) of the solutions in their three stations with their production environment for at least a month to prove my presentation. I negotiate to give three months minimum as it will run in the production, which requires careful steps. Then, I invite two implementation engineers with their superior approval, which I need to persuade him because PoC is actually a Technical Consultant's primary job. We had many debates regarding the concept of the PoC and other technical stuff, as this technology is new for us. So, I direct to find the official documentation for our baseline. As there were many additional requirements, concept changes, and misinformations from the customer, I conduct weekly meetings and constant discussions with the customer to solve those. Finally, we successfully did the PoC, the customer was satisfied with our job, and we get the project, which becomes my office's first project in SD-WAN and our first project in this railway company.

In conclusion, I have performed leadership and influencing skills, whether in my own life and the professional area, so I believe that I am a potential future leader and influencer.