As a Chevening scholar I will further improve my leadership and influencing skills

Good day people. Please help critique my essay. Its a little over 500 words, so assist by telling me which experience to remove. Thank you.

Chevening Leadership and Inflencing essay

Leadership and influencing go hand in hand. All good leaders have to lead by influencing, but not all influencers have to be leaders. Many people subscribe to the maxim that 'leaders are born not made', I prefer to think that a good leader has to first be a good follower in tandem with the words of John C Maxwell "a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.

I have had the opportunity of leading and influencing people throughout my life and I have come to know that a leader doesn't have answers at all times or even make right decisions at all times, but a leader should seek to motivate, educate and enable his followers. Let me give some examples of my leadership and influencing experiences.

As the first child of three children, I assumed an influencer position at a young age. I had to influence my younger ones both by word of mouth and actions to act rightly to make my parents proud. Some ways I influenced them was motivating them to do their homework, carry out household chores properly and behave decently in the presence of visitors.

My experience as a labor prefect in secondary school was a good one, as I was awarded best prefect and highly commended by the principal for showing initiative. The role of a labor prefect in summary is to organize students in lower classes to carry out cleaning activities within school environment. I was able to spur the students under my command to work harder and put in their best, by introducing incentives for people who did the best work in each cleaning session, commending them and giving talks to motivate them.

The next experience I would like to share was when I was camp director at the NYSC clinic during my one year national youth service program. The few of us in the clinic had to provide medical services for over three thousand corp members at the camp. It was tedious work, I had to organize and coordinate the staff so that we could provide services round the clock. I encouraged and commended the staff regularly to boost their morale and settled disputes amicably between staff and clients when such arose. At the end of the three week camp activities, the official in charge of the clinic commended us and said we were the best team he has worked with in the past three years.

Lastly, I would like to share my experience as a group head during a voluntary outreach in a rural community. This was a trying one, the organizing committee disappointed us in many ways and most of the people in my team decided to leave without participating. I had to cajole and reason with them to see that if they left, they were no better than the people who disappointed us. After much persuasion, most stayed back and the outreach was a success.

I chose some of my good experiences to relate, that doesn't mean I haven't had bad experiences, as no one can rightly claim to be a perfect leader. Learning is an important aspect of being a leader and an influencer as there is always room for improvement.

I believe that being a Chevening scholar will further improve my leadership and influencing skills, so that on returning to my country I can serve in a better capacity.

Ediru, unless you have some leadership and influencing experience that relates to your profession and professional setting, then you cannot apply for the Chevening scholarship. The experiences that you relate in this essay for both criteria are only good for college level narrative essays, not applications. These cannot be used as valid experiences for any major, international scholarships. What you need is just one impressive work related work experience that clearly depicts how you handle crisis management in the workplace. That said, if you are a mere rank and file employee with uverifiable work experience in relation to the prompt requirements, I don't see how you can write an essay that will qualify you for consideration for such a prestigious scholarship grant. This essay cannot be used for Chevening application purposes. You need to reflect on your work experience first. Discover how it turned you into a capable team head and then narrate thst development. Use the singular, pivotal experience that you can think of. Draft an essay based on that and you should be on your way towards writing a far more related experience for your application.