I am in the beginning of my journey to achieve my dreams - Chevening Scholarship

Hello, I am planning to attend Chevening Sholarship, hepe you guys can help with by proof-reading the draft of my leadership skill essay. Thank you

1. Leadership and Influencing skills: Chevening is looking for individuals that 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.

my developed leadership skills

In my opinion, leadership skills are started with the individual's self-ability to lead themselves to make positive change for themselves and the people around them. A leadership skill is not a gift given when we were born, but it's a skill that built and developed with self-development, experience and dedication.

The first way to build our leadership is by motivate and trust people in our teamwork to contribute and take their responsibility in their best way. My memorable leadership experience was when I and my high school mate were a representative for Central Java Province in a National Table Tennis Championship. I was the captain and the only in my team who has experience competing in a national levels. However, I motivated and trusted them and until we made our way to the final stage and finally we won a bronze medal. Another experience was I and my father established a volunteer program of table tennis training for children from small villages. We took those children to our house and gave them some training for free.

Secondly, leadership skill can be built through experiences that encourage us to influence people to be brave. When I was participated on a training program that took place in Okinawa in 2016, I actively joining sports, dance team, and helping Japanese children on learning English. On the other hand, there was a friend from Tanzania who is Moslem as well but she was very shy. She said she won't joint any other activities because she was afraid of people might look down on her because she is wearing hijab. I told her not to feel ashamed of ourselves and I invited her to join Eisa (Okinawa's traditional) Dance Team. Finally, she joined the dance team and we were performing together on Tedako Festival where thousands of audience watched us.

Furthermore, my work experience with the other national and local governments or organizations has also taught me that leadership is not always about ordering people, but rather about influencing and motivating people. I have been working as a staff who have responsibility to analyze the region's potential for the development of center for small and medium scale industry (SMI's center). Therefore, I have visited more than 15 regions in Sumatera and Kalimantan where I took part in helping local government to analyze their local resources potentials. This job has now becoming my passion to help rural communities. In addition, I have another responsibility to evaluate Special Allocation Fund management of the development SMI's center in more than 15 regions where I have to deal with people from local government who have different backgrounds and different issues.

I am so grateful of experiences and achievements in my life so far, but it is not the end of my journey to achieve my dreams. Through this Chevening Scholarship program, I want to enrich and broaden my experience to help this country help rural communities to improve their welfare as the outcome of SMI's center development.

Dewi, while you were able to establish your training in terms of leadership, it takes up more than half the essay. It doesn't you with any room to prove that you are in a line of work that allows you to fully establish, develop, and use your leadership and influencing skills. the academic level of leadership that you present does not translate into a work related leadership experience that is preparing you to take over the vital role of leader in your profession and country. From what I have read, you can safely establish this presentation by developing the influence and motivating factors that you used when you participated in the local government program in Sumatera and Kalimantan. Use that to establish your problem solving abilities, leadership potential, and influencing style. It is evident from the short paragraph that you shared that this was the point in your professional career when you began to exhibit this potential. You must build on that in order to create a stronger perception of your leadership and influencing style in a manner related to your profession. It has to connect with your profession because that is where Chevening is expecting you to grow and become a notable person after you complete your masters degree.