leadership and influencing essay
Hi. i'm trying to apply for chevening too. Hope anyone can comment on mine.
Throughout my education years and until now, I have had several leadership responsibilities ranging from club treasurer, liaison person for department functions as well as numerous courses. I have always been, should I say 'marked' to lead a crowd whenever there is an upcoming project or event.
During my A-levels I was in charge of organizing a weekend trip to a nearby waterfall. I planned and delegated a few task to ensure it ran smoothly, from sourcing our food for the day to transportation which I dealt with a local company. Come day of trip, everything went smoothly and we arrived at the base of the waterfall without hassle but our journey had just begun. To get to the waterfall, we had to hike approximately 10km and it was proving tough for some. All along the way, they kept asking me whether we've reached our destination and I in turn kept encouraging and pushing them onwards saying we were quite near even though we've only covered half the distance. Getting them to push themselves to not quit paid off handsomely when we were rewarded with mothers' nature beauty.
During my first 3 years, I worked as logistic pharmacist and had to manage the procurement of hospital medicines. The pharmacy logistic unit is heavily staffed and consist of diverse characters and workers. As a leader, I believe one should be accountable for what their subordinates or team player does. Example, there was once an incident where my clerk had asked for temporary absence from a particular course she had to go to and I had permitted it. It turns out, the organizing committee required a written approval first before she was permitted to be absent and in turn my clerk was reprimanded for her actions. On knowing the action of the organizer, I explained to them the situation and in turn provided them with a written explanation claiming the mistake.
A recent event gave me an opportunity to embrace that call of being a leader again. I am involved in a national committee, representing my home state. Now this committee consisted of renal pharmacist from all over Malaysia with most of them having experience more than 6 years in the field. I as compared to them, am quite new with only 3 years' experience. Earlier this year, one of the agenda was to discuss about this years' World kidney day events which were many. One of it was giving a talk on a television channel which would be broadcasted live; the talk main goals is to enlighten the public on the dangerousness of taking herbal supplements not regulated by the authorities. We had the topic, knew who our main audience would be, which TV station that was going to screen it, all that was left was selecting the presenter. You would have thought that an opportunity of going on TV would be grasp quickly, but no one wanted to do it. After a quick round table of asking everyone on their willingness to do it, the room fell quiet for a while. Seeing that the issue was not going to settle, I raised my hand and said 'I'll do it'.
For me, leaders other than being assertive and bold, should also be respectful of the more experienced and knowledgeable.
Hi @lymeq
I'm applying for Chevening too, and allow me to give my view for your writing.
I received many feedbacks that we should try to explain our leadership experience during our professional days, and I thought your story in the fourth paragraph is more relevant to the request. Maybe stretch the story a little bit and you're in right track.
Also, the piece on the fifth paragraph you can use it as your base story for second essay question which is the networking skill.
Good luck!
Holt Educational Consultant - / 15393 Hidaya, the leadership examples that you provide are not very impressive. Both your professional presentations are light and unimpressive due to the workplace situation you were handling at the time. Simply explaining a situation and handing over a written explanation does not prove leadership nor influencing skills. Neither does volunteering to appear on television. You need heavier examples of your leadership and influencing skills. Don't even think about falling back on your academic leadership proofs because that is not considered a true test of leadership and influencing abilities due to the controlled setting of the situation. As a logistic Pharmacist, did you encounter any problems with regards to the procurement of hospital medicines? Was there any instance when you had the influence the supplied towards delivering stocks early for a highly important reason? If you answer yes, then that is an example of influencing skills. With regards to leadership, try to consider an office situation where you had to take your staff to task and get them to work together to solve an office problem or a situation between two warring staff members. That would be a better example of a leadership skill than you have now. This essay will not pass the first round of considerations. You need to strengthen it and make sure that you present your skills in a notable manner.
@Holt
Thank you for the comments.
As a logistic Pharmacist, did you encounter any problems with regards to the procurement of hospital medicines? Was there any instance when you had the influence the supplied towards delivering stocks early for a highly important reason? ==> yes i did infact. I had not thought of that. I have re-written my essay to include it.
During my first 3 years working, I worked as a logistic pharmacist and had to manage the procurement of state hospital medicines. There have been many instances of supplies running low due to sudden increase in usage by end user and by one way or another, I had to make sure it was enough. One incident in particular involve a shortage of Morphine stock due to suppliers withholding their shipment as they themselves were running slow on productions and could not keep up with demands. It was nearing a long weekend with a public holiday and I knew what stock we had was not enough to cover the whole duration. Discussions were made with the supplier and they agreed to release the stock but wanted to send them after the long weekend. After much convincing and negotiating again, they finally agreed to send earlier even though they did not operate on that weekend.
During my initial year in logistics, stock of medicines would often go either nil or expired. This was because there wasn't a systematic way to the assistant officers' work which was managing inventory, a crucial task. I guided them with proper procedures, discuss problems that they were facing and asked them for assistance in identifying ways for us to be more efficient. After a few months, the list of expired drugs became shorter and there were lesser incident of drugs becoming nil.
My recent work in clinical renal area has me lead a team of pharmacist involve in managing renal patients. Every week we would have a counselling session with our chosen patients. Often there would be patients that defaulted their follow up causing them to be drop from our session and progressively reducing our statistic overall, which was a problem since we had to keep a certain ratio of patients at all time. I scheduled a meeting to discuss options and strategies to solve it. The best solution to the problem was simple, to trace back the patients' appointment each and every time patient defaulted and also increasing our session days. Ultimately, most of the defaulters were back on board and we manage to increase back our numbers.
@holt
Hi mary. i re-wrote the essay. would highly appreciate your feedback.
NEW ESSAY
Throughout my education years and until now, I have had several leadership responsibilities ranging from club treasurer, liaison person for department functions as well as organizing numerous courses and events.
During my first 3 years working, I worked as a logistic pharmacist and had to manage the procurement of state hospital medicines. There have been many instances of supplies running low due to sudden increase in usage by end user and by one way or another, I had to make sure it was enough. One incident in particular involve a shortage of Morphine stock due to suppliers withholding their shipment as they themselves were running slow on productions and could not keep up with demands. It was nearing a long weekend with a public holiday and I knew what stock we had was not enough to cover the whole duration. Discussions were made with the supplier and they agreed to release the stock but wanted to send them after the long weekend. After much convincing and negotiating again, they finally agreed to send earlier even though they did not operate on that weekend.
During my initial year in logistics, stock of medicines would often go either nil or expired. This was because there wasn't a systematic way to the assistant officers' work which was managing inventory, a crucial task. I guided them with proper procedures, discuss problems that they were facing and asked them for assistance in identifying ways for us to be more efficient. After a few months, the list of expired drugs became shorter and there were lesser incident of drugs becoming nil.
My recent work in clinical renal area has me lead a team of pharmacist involve in managing renal patients. Every week we would have a counselling session with our chosen patients. Often there would be patients that defaulted their follow up causing them to be drop from our session and progressively reducing our statistic overall, which was a problem since we had to keep a certain ratio of patients at all time. I scheduled a meeting to discuss options and strategies to solve it. The best solution to the problem was simple, to trace back the patients' appointment each and every time patient defaulted and also increasing our session days. Ultimately, most of the defaulters were back on board and we manage to increase back our numbers.
I greatly appreciate the opportunity if given this Chevening Scholarship and look forward in using and enhancing my leadership skills further.
@lymeq
Yea, Good luck to the both of us;
From the comments that are given your last essay is much better than others. But I think you can remove the last paragraph and try to summarize your paragraphs in short terms.