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LEADERS BORN NOT MADE - Chevening essay about Leadership and influence [4]
LEADERS ARE BORN NOT MADE
Dear fellows, please kindly check my essay about leadership and influence to be submitted as a requirement for chevening scholarship. There are so many things I would like to tell in this essay, so it results exceeded 500 words max. Please review it on grammar, and what to take out and what to add. Very appreciate for your help. Thanks in advance!
There is a common adagium stated that leaders born, not made. Well, based on my life experience, I agree with that adagium. Since I was a child, I was shown two types of leaders : a born leader and an artificial one. I refer a born leader to my oldest brother, yes my older brother because my father passed away when I still 4 years old, so since then he became the leader of the family. Since he was in college, he earned money to support the life, the education, and even the pleasure of his 6 siblings and our at home mother. When my mother attacked with the stroke disease 7 years ago and forced her to bed rest because the whole left side of her body had been paralyzed, my oldest brother support my mother's treatment and medication. From this story, I can conclude that my oldest brother was a born leader and since then he has being my role model to become a leader. Unfortunately, he was passed away last year because of heart attack.
The artificial leaders I met in my life were some of my school teachers and some of my managers at the office. I believe that a good way to lead is to give example in doing something, not to order his/her submission to do something without any real example of doing. Some of my teachers and managers are became leader because of his/her position, obligation, and status. In addition, they were given leadership training, so they were obliged to do some leadership because they get paid to lead not because of their willingness and passion.
Based on my view above, I can categorized myself as a born leader. Since I was in elementary school until high school I used to be appointed as a class chairman based on my style in giving example to my classmates of how to follow a lesson and how to act properly in class. Despite of my status as a class chairman, I could still managed to be the best student in school for 6 years in a row in elementary school, a year in junior high school and 3 years in high school. In high school I showed leadership capability by becoming the chairman of school's nature lover and outdoor activity club while I could still managed to do my duty as member of class representative board for school. As a chairman of outdoor club, I led my club-mates to plan and execute programs for the club, also led the team when there was an expedition trip to forest or mountains. It shows that I capable to lead not only in school environment but also in outdoor environment such as forest and mountain.
Based on my previous leadership experience, I felt that I still have to learn to be a better leader, so in university I joined LK2 FHUI (Scientific Study club of Faculty of Law University of Indonesia). In this organization I learned about how to lead the discussion, where it's not only about delivering my own opinion, but also listening and taking good and relevant points of others. It's not purely skill to develop but in addition, it's an art of leading a discussion to result the best solution to problems.
After graduated from law school in 2009, I began to work in the biggest bank in Indonesia based on asset. Here, there are so many leadership lessons to take. My first position is assistant manager in change management office where my key responsibility is to make sure the business and organizational transformation in the company is in line with the company needs to boost the income for the country since the majority shareholder of the company is Republic Indonesia government. My job here was not suitable with my education background, but that made me push myself harder to learn something new. I think I succeed to learn this new thing, because later I was appointed by the director to become his executive assistant. In this role, my responsibility was to gave some advice to the director and deliver the director initiatives to the middle management.
After 2 years in this place, i requested to move to Legal Group because since the beginning my passion is in law field. So from then until now I become senior manager, I have been doing a lot of work that taught me about leadership, specifically to lead in a discussion and to make sure that all the legal advice were accepted by the business unit before they took the business actions.
So yes, leader born not made because I never took leadership or management class but people can see me and trust me to be their leader.
