I believe that leadership is losing its true meaning lately - LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE ESSAY

LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE ESSAY - you kind suggestions and corrections will be of great help

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.

I believe that leadership is losing its true meaning lately and is becoming an insignia for people who want to be acclaimed or acknowledged somehow. The world has become a much colder and an extremely competitive place in which our society encourages you to outstand from the rest to become a leader sometimes based on what is mistakenly consider as the path of success.

i mention this because I have learned that to become a leader you have to serve others rather than yourself, moreover, you have to put your necessities aside and acknowledge the necessities of others so you can genuinely inspire and influence people around you; which is the only way to truly lead.

During my experience I had some opportunities to lead in groups or tasks. In school I participated in a group against bullying that held activities between different classes and supported new students; in collage I joint a nonprofit organization for community development for poverty called XXX in which I went to different providences as volunteer and later performed as team leader for a small group of new volunteers.

But one memorable occasion that changed my point of view was when I was working as a telecommunications consultant. My job was making site surveys and technical feasibility reports for the expansion of mobile networks in rural areas; during one journey I found a small community near the designated area, when I got in contact with the people I noticed they barely had basic amenities, so certainly they didn't have any idea about internet or mobile phones whatsoever.

I felt the need of going beyond, during my staying, I spent hours a side from my tasks organizing discussions with the community to explain some of the uses of TICs, despite they noticeable enthusiasm it was an enormous challenge to communicate and share information them due people in this areas have different cultures and ideas of progress than people from the urban area -in our country we have more than 35 different cultures and ethnicities- I had to be patient and flexible to understand their point of views and necessities in order to provide a suitable guidance while respecting their culture and customs. Additionally, i conducted meetings with the chief and representatives to start a campaign and formal requests to the City Council of the district to engage projects related to educations and access of TICs in that region.

This was a clear example of the huge Digital Divide in our country, only 9.6% have internet access at home and only 36% has other type of access or knowledge related to the use of TICs (INE: MECOVI, 2013). It was hard work but I felt great satisfaction helping and guiding this community and they were deeply grateful and eager to endure with these actions.

i have learned that communication is an essential pillar for leadership, sharing your knowledge and experience allows to create bonds and influence others.

Alexis, speak from the professional point of view and based upon your professional, personal experience. This is where the strength of your essay lies. The discussion about your definition of leadership, that is acceptable provided that you do not launch into examples based on starter leadership roles in high school and college (not collage). This essay is already good and can portray your leadership and influencing abilities to the reviewer with a definite sense of purpose and hopes for the future. You just need to edit out the unnecessary aspects of the essay.

What are these unnecessary aspects? In my opinion it would be the paragraphs that relate to your school activities. The leadership roles that you portray there are too infantile in nature to have truly developed a remarkable leadership ability or influencing skill that could work to the benefit of all concerned. So which are the necessary or usable parts of your essay?

Develop the professional experience that you related in the essay instead. Mention the year and the meaning of TIC just in case the reviewer doesn't know what the acronym stand for. That whole paragraph can be better developed with additional information that can show the reason behind your sense of lack of leadership in the community and how the community benefited eventually from all the work that you did to help them increase their technological literacy. That is how you improve and strengthen the statement you are making regarding leadership and influencing in this essay.

Holt, thank you very much for you review, i can see you put real interest and provided honest suggestions.

i just came back from work and checked your suggestions. for the paragraph of school and college i changed it for something shorter and more general, So i can focus more on the labor experience as you mentioned.

In my experience I had some opportunities to lead others as I often participated in groups and communities since I was young.

frankly i have been struggling with the amount of words in the essays, there is so many things i consider important but i have such a short limit that i feel i cannot express the ideas completely.

i would like a suggestion on this, is it better to state short and general aspects of several experiences or maybe a more detailed description of one experience that shows the depth of the ideas

thank you very much for the support, it is really helpful

You aren't the only student who has had to wrestle with the word count Alexis. That is a common problem of the students at this forum. I always tell the students that I help, both in person and through this forum, that it is always best to write well beyond the word limitation when drafting the essay. It is most important that you get all your thoughts down on paper before you begin editing. That is because you never know which statement will be more important than the other. The only way to analyze your essay for important content, will be after you have written everything down. Then you can actually read what you are presenting to the reviewer before you actually send it out. That is the point when you can decide whether your essay benefits from multiple presentations or a singular, but all inclusive presentation. That is also when you will be able to better edit the essay and make sure it meets the word count. There is no one perfect way to write an essay.