arifkoushik
Nov 6, 2016
Scholarship / Requesting review of Chevening "Leadership & Influencing" Essay [4]
@Holt
Hi, good day, and here is the revised one. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. :)
Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how ...
Leadership is the quality that sets a person considerably apart from general population en-masse. People with the stronger version of this quality can make others dream for heights previously seemed unattainable, have the resiliency to sail the boat even in the most difficult of circumstances, and can squeeze out the best out of his team by instilling sheer motivation. Therefore, in today's knowledge based business & social environments, this quality is more important than any other time in the history.
Even though I was continuously engaged in numerous extracurricular and social activities since my boyhood, and successfully lead different groups with hugely different personalities, the first real opportunity to demonstrate my leadership qualities in professional life arrived when I was working for Airtel Bangladesh. Our cellular service was going to be officially launched in less than 15 days, and the General Manager of Customer Services suddenly realized that the inbound contact center agents needed an internal web portal to provide real time and accurate information instantly, instead of the previously planned "Memorize your SOP" type of obsolete strategy. There was too little time to hire outside consultants, and internal developers/programmers were extremely busy with the launching looming in the horizon. Dearth of options led to huge concerns for the managers, because they felt the service level of the employees would be hugely compromised without a strong and fast portal with complete information.
At this pinnacle of crisis, I offered help with my wee bit of knowledge in web development, gathered a small team of 3 amateur developers, and jumped into work. We had to do it all after our regular work, so it was a monumental task to gather all the information, conceptualize the design and the flow of logic, portal's layout, UI, and of course, error testing. I kept the team motivated throughout by leading from the front; and took the ownership of making it flawless and to deliver on time. We worked day and night, and completed the portal in the early hours of 10th May, the day of launching.
With that experience, I was handed the leadership of a $2m ERP project in my next job at Hamid Fabrics. We had a vendor with all freshly graduate developers who had little or no knowledge of the business side, and our internal users had no knowledge about the constraints of software development side. Soon after the development began, both teams became frustrated of each other. I had to use my ever acclaimed communication ability to bridge the gap and motivate both the sides with my sheer resiliency. I worked in detail so that the quality of end product exceeds the expectations of users and the top management. And to my excitement, it certainly materialized.
I think my resiliency, ability to connect with people and inspire them to fulfill their potential have always been my greatest leadership assets. I aspire to enhance them even further with Chevening and contribute to my country at a much higher level in future.
@Holt
Hi, good day, and here is the revised one. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. :)
Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how ...
Leadership is the quality that sets a person considerably apart from general population en-masse. People with the stronger version of this quality can make others dream for heights previously seemed unattainable, have the resiliency to sail the boat even in the most difficult of circumstances, and can squeeze out the best out of his team by instilling sheer motivation. Therefore, in today's knowledge based business & social environments, this quality is more important than any other time in the history.
Even though I was continuously engaged in numerous extracurricular and social activities since my boyhood, and successfully lead different groups with hugely different personalities, the first real opportunity to demonstrate my leadership qualities in professional life arrived when I was working for Airtel Bangladesh. Our cellular service was going to be officially launched in less than 15 days, and the General Manager of Customer Services suddenly realized that the inbound contact center agents needed an internal web portal to provide real time and accurate information instantly, instead of the previously planned "Memorize your SOP" type of obsolete strategy. There was too little time to hire outside consultants, and internal developers/programmers were extremely busy with the launching looming in the horizon. Dearth of options led to huge concerns for the managers, because they felt the service level of the employees would be hugely compromised without a strong and fast portal with complete information.
At this pinnacle of crisis, I offered help with my wee bit of knowledge in web development, gathered a small team of 3 amateur developers, and jumped into work. We had to do it all after our regular work, so it was a monumental task to gather all the information, conceptualize the design and the flow of logic, portal's layout, UI, and of course, error testing. I kept the team motivated throughout by leading from the front; and took the ownership of making it flawless and to deliver on time. We worked day and night, and completed the portal in the early hours of 10th May, the day of launching.
With that experience, I was handed the leadership of a $2m ERP project in my next job at Hamid Fabrics. We had a vendor with all freshly graduate developers who had little or no knowledge of the business side, and our internal users had no knowledge about the constraints of software development side. Soon after the development began, both teams became frustrated of each other. I had to use my ever acclaimed communication ability to bridge the gap and motivate both the sides with my sheer resiliency. I worked in detail so that the quality of end product exceeds the expectations of users and the top management. And to my excitement, it certainly materialized.
I think my resiliency, ability to connect with people and inspire them to fulfill their potential have always been my greatest leadership assets. I aspire to enhance them even further with Chevening and contribute to my country at a much higher level in future.