Drugstore contracts, internship programs for pharmacy students - leadership skills examples

Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers 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 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

Examples showing leadership capabality

I built my leadership ability in the professional career when I signed my first two-year contract with a health company as a pharmacist and as a general manager in a drugstore. It was very interesting to me because I had to build the drugstore from the beginning. It took me four months to provide all the documents and deal with the government to get the license.

As a new drugstore, it was quite difficult to compete with similar companies that have been existing and have a strong reputation. I realised that the strength of our competitive strategy was concern about the satisfying service to all costumers and patients. I manage the team consisting 6 people, and I divided them into two shifts. In each shift, there was one pharmacist. The pharmacist would give the complete information and good advice about the medicines. The data of the patient who needed particular medication would be recorded, then we would follow it up by phone to ask their progress. I also opened consultation by phone to help the customer to get the right treatment, and the medicines would be shipped on the same day. I gained ultimate success in improving the public trust within ten months, so the patients who came for treatment increased drastically.

My second contract is with my current drugstore. It gives me the same position and job description as my previous job. However, it is more challenging for me because I am given full authority to manage the company. It means I could apply all my leadership and managerial skills to manage all the resources.

Since the drugstore is located in the developing area, where the resident as our customers and patients are from middle low economic level. I apply the marketing mix to attract the customer and get their trust. I complete the stock of medicines and health equipment to meet their need and I decrease the margin to accelerate the inventory turnover. I renovate the drugstore and its medicines display to make more interesting. To motivate my team and solve the cutting edge problems, I conduct briefing twice a week. I also lead monthly based-evaluation to measure our success in applying management system and set the new target for the following month. I involve all of my team members in any decision-making process so they responsible in every decision.

During four years duration of work, I experienced handling four times internship programs for pharmacy students which range from high level to diploma one. I teach them the real practical pharmacy service and give them basic knowledge about pharmacy community and health management of drugstore. The general problem of the internship program is a passive intern student. I encourage and stimulate their critical thinking by giving job description and asking them to make minimum three questions related to their job description every day, then we discuss them in our daily-based meeting. I completely believe they will improve their curiosity by stimulating them to ask. I realize that they ask both silly and critical questions. It was the best way to learn and gain their critical thinking by questioning.

520 words

Martson, you are over the limit by 20 words. I feel that the essay is very strong at the moment and truly displays leadership and influencing skills within a professional setting in three instances that you indicated here. The last part though, about you performing as a mentor to the interns seems out of place in this essay. It doesn't really talk about your leadership in a professional setting because when you deal with the interns, you become a teacher instead of a company or team leader. That requires a different job description that you can probably use in some other essay. I am thinking that you can probably find a way to use that experience in the networking essay because there is a reason that a pharmacy school chose to connect with your drugstore for their student's training. That proves a networking skill / ability. By removing that reference in this essay, you will be able to pull down your word count by more than 20 words and keep the essay focused on the required elements alone.

@Holt Thank you so much. I will omit the last paragram and merge it to networking essay.
And I will describe about the achievement of the fourth paragraph.