Chevening scholarship Leadership essay - Community access road improvement

Hello members,
Please read through my leadership and influence essay for Chevening scholarship 2019/2020. I will be grateful for any feedback.

stakeholder engagement and effective communication by a leader

For me leadership is the art of influencing people regardless of their socio-economic status so as to deliver a common objective using resources, ideas or skills they have at their disposal.

In 2015 when I was working as the Estates Manager of a neighborhood shopping center called The Village Mall, I realized that one of the access roads called Bandali Close to the mall was in a bad condition with many potholes and dusty during hot weather. The road measuring about 120 metres also served other nine properties which were both residential and commercial in use, it served as a delivery access road for our the shopping center with heavy trucks and other light vehicles using it to deliver stock to tenants. However there were no funds to have the road upgraded to bitumen standard since the developer was investing his monies in other property development projects.

I requested a friend of mine who is a roads engineer to get me an estimate of the cost of having this road stretch tarmacked, which he did and estimated it to Ushs. 70,000,000. Armed with the quotation, I persuaded the mall developer that I could mobilize owners of all properties along the road to contribute funds towards having the road tarmacked in a self-help model with the mall contributing the highest proportion (40%) since we were the major user of the road. The developer bought my idea and gave me a green light to kick start the project on condition that all people had to contribute money with no exceptions.

Together with my shopping center management team, we sent out letters to all people who had buildings along the road inviting them for a stakeholders' meeting to discuss the matter. I prepared the presentation notes for the meeting and I had them reviewed by my team members, I included the quotations and the methodology of determining how much each landlord was to contribute. Majority of the landlords were receptive of the initiative and pledge to contribute and support the project since it was cheaper than constructing it singlehandedly. I collaborated with our procurement person to invite more five contractors to present quotations for the project from which we selected the lowest bidder at Ushs. 53,000,000.

Letters were sent out to landlords advising them of the amount each was supposed to pay with a detailed project work plan and best evaluated bid. Funds were contributed as per plan and I was tasked by the mall developer to supervise the works and regularly report to the stakeholders on the progress. The road was successfully tarmacked which improved accessibility to the mall and neighbouring properties, the dust from the road which was a leading cause of flu to residents was also conclusively dealt with.

From this I learnt that stakeholder engagement and effective communication by a leader is key in realizing the objectives of any undertaking.

Kizire, this essay is almost perfect. There stakeholder management skills that you present definitely show a strong leadership potential on your part. However, you focused so much on the leadership discussion that you forgot to display your influencing skills. Since you said that a majority of the tenants were receptive to your message, that means a section of the group was not. It is this section that is important in this essay discussion.

As a leader, who listened to both sides, what was the reasoning or apprehension of the apprehensive group? Were their concerns warranted? How did you decide to resolve their issues? Did they eventually pay their share? How did you convince them that this was the right thing for them to do? That is where the influencing skills come in.

Revise the essay in order to allow a full paragraph discussion for the influencing topic I mentioned. It is important to add that to the essay in order to highlight your potential as an influencer and your corresponding influencing skills.