Leadership and influence essay
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 word
My capability to distinguish community issues, initiate problem resolving, assemble teams, and inspire people define me as a self-driven, dedicated and passionate leader. During my adolescent, I realised that I have unconsciously been performing as a leader, frontrunner and a path-drawer to my comrades. I have turned to a good listener and compassionate leader to my friends as I matured.
In times when I was preparing for mid-semester exams at university, a dozens of students appeared at my dormitory room. They were students from the 2nd grade at the Civil Engineering faculty, and started complaining about an individual, called Fardeen, whom I knew from school. According to the protestors, Fardeen used to bully with them and beat them up under different pretexts. Following their exit, I immediately managed to send a roommate to ask Fardeen to see me. I discussed the issue with Fardeen as he showed up. I had a great influence on most of the youth in my surrounding, including Fardeen. He listened to my guidance and advise wholeheartedly. Fardeen is now a design engineers working for a government-owned institution in Kabul. He is one of the individuals who I had influenced and I feel so blessed to have shown him the right path.
In 2011, I joined the Specialists Construction company in Kandahar as a site engineer. Although the company had won a great number of projects, lack of qualified personnel had created multiple problems for them. The under-construction projects seemed to have shown no progress because the firm had failed to recruit engineers to assign the labour to simultaneously carry on construction works of their projects at different locations. And, on the other hand, the traditional Eid festival was coming just in few days' which was another burden for the company that had already missed a deadline. After discussions with the management team, I realised that I can step up the construction works. I surveyed the on-going construction activities to identity the challenges and drafted alternatives to tackle the issue and to meet the tight deadline. I held a meeting with the project workforces and allowed everyone to share their fears and recommendations. I then shared success stories at my previous jobs with them and encouraged them to dedicate further time and consideration to fulfil the requirements of the client before the deadline. They felt valued and agreed with my views. The group immediately demonstrated great interest in project completion. Within one month, the ongoing projects that seemed unmanageable were completed and I got promoted to the project manager position. Meanwhile, the client companies showed more interest in continuing to work with the organisation.
This showed me that understanding the project terms and conditions as well as the customers' needs can bring about good results for both the company and myself.
