Prompt - Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.
Wicked problems that impact societies can never be solved in isolation. As a result, the ability to reach out to relevant individuals and work together towards a common goal is very important. I believe I possess these skills and have demonstrated them in various ways.
To me, networking is comparable to weaving a kente cloth where each thread represents an individual's skills and experiences, and when woven together, they create a rich and intricate design. During the Vision Summer School, I had the opportunity to apply this principle. We were tasked with forming groups for a hackathon, and I found myself in an environment where I didn't know anyone and therefore had no prior knowledge on their research interests or even skills. However, I embraced the challenge and began speaking with each and every participant, asking about their interests and projects. While I was enjoying talking to everyone about their interests and learning from everyone, I also identified like-minded individuals through these conversations. These individuals were smart people who had the aim of working on creating an assistive solution for visually impaired individuals, a field similar to a project that I had already worked on during my time in my lab.
We faced more issues. When it was time for us to develop a specific solution, I realized that everyone, including me, came to the discussion with different perspectives on the matter, perspectives that did not completely merge. This led to a situation where the rest of our group members were hesitant to share their ideas and were just comfortable working on only one person's ideas. This was not ideal, as I believe that everyone had something good to contribute. To break through this roadblock, I organized brainstorming sessions where I asked everyone questions on what they envisioned for the project. This straight-forward and collaborative approach led us to put our heads together, compromising in some aspects, to create a Question and Answer Mobile application for the visually impaired capable of effectively communicating in Swahili, Amharic, and English. Ultimately, our efforts led us to winning the competition and securing a mentor to help bring our solution to life.
This experience showed the value of networking and collaboration, highlighting how uniting individuals with shared interests can lead to innovative solutions and meaningful outcomes even if the approaches to the shared interests differ at first. In future projects, especially within the Chevening network, I hope to apply my networking skills to build diverse teams that bring levels of various expertise together. My network may also provide access to additional resources, knowledge, and support. Therefore, I would be able to use my connections to collaborate on projects that align with Chevening's goals, particularly in areas that impact communities in my Ghana.
Wicked problems that impact societies can never be solved in isolation. As a result, the ability to reach out to relevant individuals and work together towards a common goal is very important. I believe I possess these skills and have demonstrated them in various ways.
To me, networking is comparable to weaving a kente cloth where each thread represents an individual's skills and experiences, and when woven together, they create a rich and intricate design. During the Vision Summer School, I had the opportunity to apply this principle. We were tasked with forming groups for a hackathon, and I found myself in an environment where I didn't know anyone and therefore had no prior knowledge on their research interests or even skills. However, I embraced the challenge and began speaking with each and every participant, asking about their interests and projects. While I was enjoying talking to everyone about their interests and learning from everyone, I also identified like-minded individuals through these conversations. These individuals were smart people who had the aim of working on creating an assistive solution for visually impaired individuals, a field similar to a project that I had already worked on during my time in my lab.
We faced more issues. When it was time for us to develop a specific solution, I realized that everyone, including me, came to the discussion with different perspectives on the matter, perspectives that did not completely merge. This led to a situation where the rest of our group members were hesitant to share their ideas and were just comfortable working on only one person's ideas. This was not ideal, as I believe that everyone had something good to contribute. To break through this roadblock, I organized brainstorming sessions where I asked everyone questions on what they envisioned for the project. This straight-forward and collaborative approach led us to put our heads together, compromising in some aspects, to create a Question and Answer Mobile application for the visually impaired capable of effectively communicating in Swahili, Amharic, and English. Ultimately, our efforts led us to winning the competition and securing a mentor to help bring our solution to life.
This experience showed the value of networking and collaboration, highlighting how uniting individuals with shared interests can lead to innovative solutions and meaningful outcomes even if the approaches to the shared interests differ at first. In future projects, especially within the Chevening network, I hope to apply my networking skills to build diverse teams that bring levels of various expertise together. My network may also provide access to additional resources, knowledge, and support. Therefore, I would be able to use my connections to collaborate on projects that align with Chevening's goals, particularly in areas that impact communities in my Ghana.
