Chevening Scholarship Leadership Response - the potential to be a leader

Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders and infulencers

in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

minimum word count 100, max 500 words

Really need some help with my essay, what are your thoughts.
Thank You.

Leadership

Personal Leadership

In my opinion, being an effective leader stems from being able to manage one's self. Being self-aware and self-motivated has allowed me to overcome many obstacles throughout my life. From the challenges experienced during my childhood, growing up in a single parent household, I was able to create systems and habits geared towards achieving my personal goals for my family's development. My determination to succeed has propelled me to excel both academically and professionally.

Professional Leadership

Being an Accounts Clerk at the Commission has contributed to the development of my leadership abilities. By leading departmental projects and occasionally acting as the Assistant Accountant, I am constantly placed in the position to lead.

For instance, during this year's internship program, I was responsible for supervising the interns. This opportunity allowed me to provided training in government accounting procedure, customer service, communication, work ethic, professionalism and time management.

By assigning tasks and projects for their development, these students were exposed to the operations of the Budget and Finance department. Not to mention, I also provided career guidance based on my intern's interests so that upon completion of the internship they have clear goals for the future. This advice resulted in an intern to pursue the certified accounting technical (CAT) qualification, to further develop her skills in the accountancy profession.

Leadership can be a difficult task, especially when having to deal with instances where my subordinates aren't performing efficiently. This forced me to put aside my personal sentiments and allow my professional and ethical training to guide my actions to deal with the matter.

Future Leader
Living in a society where the government consistently excludes citizens from decisions that are likely to impact their livelihood, indicates a significant flaw in ...... leadership style.

By forwarding their own agenda,........ leaders have allowed corruption to spread throughout the government thereby hindering the country's development. In a recent Transparency International (TI) article, ............ ranked .............based on the 2017 corruption index, although this ranking has improved,........... is still considered a highly corrupt nation.

However, with the influx of financial resources from oil extraction activities,...........can become one of the richest countries in ........... But how can there be hope for ...... development when in the past politicians and leaders were unable to adequately manage the country's existing resources.

Finally,......... needs fresh thinking leaders and influencers who value a system of good governance and who possess the determination, skills, and competencies to drive ............ developmental efforts. As a future leader or influencer, achieving the Chevening Scholarship will provide an opportunity for me to further develop my leadership skills. Through my interactions with other Chevening scholar and the courses I intend to pursue, I believe that I can become a change agent focused on developing my country.

Hey, as a fellow Chevening applicant, firstly I would like to say good luck to you.

In my humble opinion, although you have mentioned several examples of occasion in which you get to showcase your leadership skills with your position as an Accounts Clerk at the Commission, you have not shown a clear example of your leadership skills.

My advice would be, pick one out of the following as mentioned in your essay -> ... training in government accounting procedure, customer service, communication, work ethic, professionalism and time management.

After you have chosen one out of the above (or if you have any other example, it would be great, but decide on one) I think you will be able to focus more on how you showcase your leadership skill.

Also, I think it would be nice to do a re-check on your grammar. You can ask someone to proofread it for you.

Clay, you are not really responding to the task requirement as indicated by the Chevening prompt. There is no need to outline your leadership skills. There is no need to define your understanding of personal and professional leadership. These are all a waste of the reviewer's time. You will lose his interest if you do not answer the question directly by simply providing a clear example of your leadership and influencing style and indicating how this should be considered an appropriate example of a leadership and influencing style that can influence future generations in the country.

Take your example from being an accounts clerk. You led the interns at that time right? As such, you were able to influence one of them towards a professional direction that fulfilled his ambitions. Discuss how you led that particular intern and how you influenced his decision to take the CAT. As far as any reviewer is concerned, that is a clear cut example of a person with a potential to become a national leader and influencer in the future. Everything else you stated before and after this section in this paper are throwaways that do not help your application at all. Focus on the prize, that is the proof that you are a leader and influencer in your country in a small scale at the moment. This is the part that highlights of effective a mentor, leader, and influencer you are and that, is what the reviewer may just decide to take notice of.