Chevening Essay on Leadership and Influence - Forest Restoration Leadership

Leadership and Influence essay

The most prominent aspect that I believe one leader, as well in human relationship, should has is a trust: leading with trust not only possitively affects peers' or subordinate's performance and satisfaction, but it also can deepen commitment and bond to each other as a team. Giving the trust by my parents to living nomad while I was going to college for my undergraduate and my current working time, I conciously grew up learning this leadership value that having and giving a trust are a priceless thing that you can share with somebody. This leadership example set by my parents has now been the core of how I am as a leader in later life.

Throughout my career, I have consistently exercised my leadership skills. As the restoration and behavioral research specialist at World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia, I am responsible for leading restoration projects with multistakeholders, as well as manage the development of an individual carbon emission calculator and sequestration through crowdfunding platform with partners. While it is a not necessarily a leader title job, however I recognized my leadership capabilities and continuously develop my leadership skills as the projects' progressions and many challenges appeared. Two things that I aware through my journey in developing my leadership: having a direction and communication. Having a direction and be able to delegate and communicate your missions to your peers, colleagues and subordinates are the great values that one leader can has to bring the team to achieve their goals, in addition with leading with trust. These leadership types have continued as I progress through my involvement in managing restoration projects and presenting to donors and relevant stakeholders. Even though I am fully aware that there will be unexpected problems in the process; as a leader, I take responsibility when problems arise, accept feedback, and strive to enhance the work quality of my team.

Within the community, however, I have most enjoyed exerting my influence as a leader because it has helped me contribute to society's betterment in my little way. I constantly improve myself and try to contribute to the advancement of a larger society. During my undergraduate study in Bogor, I had the opportunity to serve as the leader for one of the groups in Community Service Program to promote environmental awareness for elementary students in Bogor and co-create water resources management plan with local community. I discovered that I genuinely enjoy the opportunity to help and interact with indigenous people to explore their local knowledge and create innovative actions to solve problems at the local level.

To conclude, for me, leadership is about being authentic, logic, and empathy to build trust and drive people to fully realize their own capacity and power. Being a leader is being a person who can nurture and respect his or her colleagues. I believe that if I were given the opportunity to be a Chevening scholar, I would be able to maximize my role and have a greater impact on society.

Remove the reference to your parents, leading a nomad life, and the community participation that you had during your academic career. Those are not the leadership and influencing focus points that the reviewer will be looking at. You need to revise the essay to enhance a single, marked leadership and influencing situation that you experienced during your professional career.

Avoid taking yourself down in the eyes of a reviewer. If you led a team, then you were a leader. How you led should be shown, rather than defined or explained in the essay. Your influencing experience should coincide with the same leadership situation. That way you create a comprehensive presentation for the essay. Try to enhance your professional appeal. You are really weak at that in this version.