The concept of leadership was first instilled in me during my undergraduate studies.

Chevening Application - Leadership and Influencing Essay

The concept of leadership was first instilled in me during my undergraduate studies. I rose through the hierarchy from being Sub-Treasurer to President of our academic organization. The leadership role provided me a platform to spearhead the tutorial initiative wherein senior students would tutor their junior peers in accounting subjects. The said initiative was unique to our organization as it provided students supplemental learning activities in handling their accounting subjects. In addition, interactions with students, professors, and university officials improved my people management skills. There was a time that I had to convince our University President to allow the entire senior class to participate in an academic conference as the university had a policy of sending only the contestants to attend said conference. I had to justify the need of my peers to attend said conference not only academically but it would serve as an avenue for future professionals to interact. Ultimately, the senior class was allowed to attend.

Under my leadership, our organization placed second in the competition for the Best Academic Organization in the college. Though being new to the leadership role, I developed the values of management and responsibility and realized that I have a natural inclination to be a leader.

In my work at the xxxxxx I do offsite supervision of financial institutions specifically banks. One of my main roles in the central is formulating an appropriate supervisory strategy that is commensurate with the risk profile exhibited by the bank. The assessment of the risk profile is done quarterly for problem banks and semi-annually for non-problem banks. After devising the supervisory strategy, it is my job to justify the strategy to higher management for implementation. It is a constant exercise wherein I use my people management skills to justify the supervisory strategy. Though disagreements are rare in the job, there was an instance wherein I stood my ground as to the appropriate supervisory strategy I devised for my bank.

Leophil, it would be best if you simply condense the meaning of leadership and influencing to you in the opening paragraph. There is no need to delve into the details of your undergraduate studies and how you learned how to lead there because the assumption in this case, is that you already know how to lead and influence people. Hence the focus on leadership and influencing skills in Chevening's search for future leaders in the countries they are sponsoring scholars for. You need to be existing in a leadership role within management in an office setting. Not an academic setting. While future leaders are trained in college, actual leaders are honed, polished, and created within the profession. Unfortunately, your work set up is mostly based on paper work and you do not have much interaction with other office staff it seems. Maybe we can find an appropriate leadership role for you within your dealings with the problem banks? Since you do not handle a team of people, I am uncertain as to how you can prove your leadership skills. Your explanation of standing up to a higher boss with regards to an appropriate supervision strategy might work in this instance. I can't be sure because you decided to summarize that part instead of focus on it. Try to revise the essay to concentrate on the supervisory strategy situation instead. It seems that is the best bet for you to highlight your leadership and influencing skills.

@iceman2017
I think you need to go deeper in your presentation and find a really influencing moment where you put efforts to lead a team to an achievement. May be I couldn't get your point perfectly, but sending correspondence to change policies or conditions I would say doesn't necessarily translate into influencing leadership skills. Do you lead a team in your work? Do you work within a team? Did you manage to convince them before to take a step in the work that will positively impact your business after they were against it? This could be a concrete situation to showcase your personality. I hope this helps. All the best.