Scholarship / Chevening Essay on Relationship building and shared learning [2]

Treat Others the Way You Want to Be Treated

As a social creature, building and maintaining relationship is a basic element to be a human being and key aspect to success in the professional realm. From my experience, building a strong and meaningful network not only has given me access to a wide range of new opportunities and expanded my knowledge, but it also makes me to be more empathy with people's perspectives. By understanding people's background and being an active listner, this approach suits me well to develop new relationship as well as maintain existing relationship in personal and professional level.

This kind of relationship helped me when I worked at Peatland Restoration Agency where I had co-created with co-workers and external parties, such as researchers, to develop an early warning system for peat fires in Indonesia. The platform development was pretty intense where I have to conduct series of internal discussion with the researchers to develop and translate the mathematical equations from the research paper into programmatic languange and make it as an automatical system for the stakeholder. To support me in developing processes, they linked me up to another engineer from their end who happened to have an experience to develop an automatical platform, in which something I found to be intriguing for shared learning. In addition, I was also working together with the researchers to conduct site visit to peatland area to take samples for system validation, where I found myself have been exposured with practical and theoritical aspect at the same time. The development process went well and the platform eventually integrated with multistakeholders' platforms in the national government level where I also serve to lead the integration process with the researchers. By reflecting the process, the way I build and maintain relationships with people has made it easier for me to expand my knowledge and gain access to more opportunities. I am also very pleased that the outcomes of my efforts and lessons learned throughout the project can be shared and used for wider benefits in the scope of the company.

In my opinion, treating people in a way that you want to be treated is the best approach which has proven to help me in developing more solid, trusted, and lasting relationships throughout my professional career. Furthermore, alongside with the advance of internet of things where people can easily connect to each other through social media platforms, I strongly believe the face-to-face conversations with people we encounter daily are still much engaged and can have a significant impact. Together with these values, I am confident that I will be able to make the most of the diverse and multicultural Chevening network and make great contributions to the Chevening community and beyond. Finally, I aim to utilize the knowledge, network, and skill I acquired from my study in the UK to promote not only my professional career but also Indonesia's development and leave a positive legacy behind.

Scholarship / Chevening Essay on Leadership and Influence - Forest Restoration Leadership [2]

Leadership and Influence essay

The most prominent aspect that I believe one leader, as well in human relationship, should has is a trust: leading with trust not only possitively affects peers' or subordinate's performance and satisfaction, but it also can deepen commitment and bond to each other as a team. Giving the trust by my parents to living nomad while I was going to college for my undergraduate and my current working time, I conciously grew up learning this leadership value that having and giving a trust are a priceless thing that you can share with somebody. This leadership example set by my parents has now been the core of how I am as a leader in later life.

Throughout my career, I have consistently exercised my leadership skills. As the restoration and behavioral research specialist at World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia, I am responsible for leading restoration projects with multistakeholders, as well as manage the development of an individual carbon emission calculator and sequestration through crowdfunding platform with partners. While it is a not necessarily a leader title job, however I recognized my leadership capabilities and continuously develop my leadership skills as the projects' progressions and many challenges appeared. Two things that I aware through my journey in developing my leadership: having a direction and communication. Having a direction and be able to delegate and communicate your missions to your peers, colleagues and subordinates are the great values that one leader can has to bring the team to achieve their goals, in addition with leading with trust. These leadership types have continued as I progress through my involvement in managing restoration projects and presenting to donors and relevant stakeholders. Even though I am fully aware that there will be unexpected problems in the process; as a leader, I take responsibility when problems arise, accept feedback, and strive to enhance the work quality of my team.

Within the community, however, I have most enjoyed exerting my influence as a leader because it has helped me contribute to society's betterment in my little way. I constantly improve myself and try to contribute to the advancement of a larger society. During my undergraduate study in Bogor, I had the opportunity to serve as the leader for one of the groups in Community Service Program to promote environmental awareness for elementary students in Bogor and co-create water resources management plan with local community. I discovered that I genuinely enjoy the opportunity to help and interact with indigenous people to explore their local knowledge and create innovative actions to solve problems at the local level.

To conclude, for me, leadership is about being authentic, logic, and empathy to build trust and drive people to fully realize their own capacity and power. Being a leader is being a person who can nurture and respect his or her colleagues. I believe that if I were given the opportunity to be a Chevening scholar, I would be able to maximize my role and have a greater impact on society.