Chevening Scholarship on leadership - "The government is best which makes itself unnecessary"

Hi all,

Appreciate some feedback. Many thanks in advance.

Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement...

My personal thoughts on leadership mirror the high ideals I hold for the role of modern day government. "The government is best which makes itself unnecessary", said one Wilhelm von Humboldt, noted diplomat and scholar. While my career with the Government of xxx in the yyy Service certainly puts me in the business of leadership, I feel it is increasingly important to champion institutions ahead of individuals. As the service aims to develop talented generalists to head departments and agencies at various levels of government, I find it essential to focus on developing sustainable work systems and autonomous teams in an organisation before moving on to the next.

This proves a challenging task as officers are assigned new posts in different areas of public policy and administration every two to three years. At the beginning of my term at a newly established Quality and Innovation Unit under the State Secretary's Office in xxx's east coast state of zzz, I saw the urgent need to not only become quickly knowledgeable on the subject matter, but also to transfer this knowledge to those within my sphere of influence. In my capacity as head of the unit, I led a year-long series of workshops on quality management programs for twelve district and land offices across the state.

To complement this, I took the initiative to internalise all that I had learnt about our core programs in the form of easily digestible guidebooks to help preserve the institutional knowledge and develop competencies of support staff attached to the office. I'm proud to report that by the end of my first two years on the job, all agencies under our purview had obtained basic certification with some recording significant business process improvements. These collective efforts culminated in our own achievement of the coveted five star rating in the 2011 xxx public sector star rating assessment, making us one of only three state offices to do so.

While that may be a certain measure of success, it gives me more personal satisfaction to think I have had some role in providing new understanding towards a gradual shift in culture and mindset, allowing the often unsung heroes at the frontline of zzz's district offices to explore new ways of working. Perhaps more importantly, at the end of my steep learning curve I felt confident passing the baton to an incoming successor, knowing I had established some of the building blocks required to ensure the programs continued running well into the future.

Finally, as an individual still learning what it means to lead others with grace and humility, I have come to realise that leadership often begins with myself, making a conscious effort to adopt a practical problem-solving approach for the workplace at all times. As my career in the public service advances, I will always seek to become an asset wherever I go, charting unknown territory and creating new precedents with the hopes of leaving my organisation better off even when I'm gone.

Meera, there is too much concentration on the theoretical side of your leadership skill and not enough of your skills in action. The same goes for the influencing part of the prompt. Note that I will not trivialize the role that your leadership portrayed in the development of the guidebooks and the like. Your background leadership is just as important in terms of leadership. After all, where would we all be if there weren't people who wrote books about how to lead others right? However, Chevening requires more than just the hypothetical. It requires leadership and influencing skills in practice as well. This is the area where your essay isn't really delivering on the prompt. By any chance, do you have any practical applications of leadership and influencing within the state department that would help to fill that gap in your essay? I assure you, the essay will only get better with that addition to the essay.

Thanks, I actually felt the same way as I was writing it but decided to be honest about it. The truth is, the culture in our civil service does not really allow junior officers to take on such direct roles of leadership. I did have a boss responsible for the department while I did what you've rightly described as background leadership. Nevertheless, i will give it some thought and try to improve the essay based on your suggestions. Thanks again