chevening essay (leadership and influence skills)
A good leader is not produced instantly but it is formed through a long process and long-time with training, experience, and hard work. I feel so lucky that I passed all these processes from child trained and prepared myself to be a future leader. That improves me in good qualities, especially in leadership and influence skills.
My leader skill has been emerged and honed since I was child. Six years in elementary school, always elected as a chief class even until in junior high school. When I was in senior high school, I was elected as head of the student council for two periods (2006 and 2007) which was chosen by voting more than 1000 students, teachers, and committees. In addition, in my study term, I indulged myself in many social activities and organizations, for instance, boy scouts, Indonesian Junior of the Red Cross, sports, and national flag hoisting troop.
I have a big spirit in competition because I am used to competing. I participated in more than a hundred international conferences and seminars in Indonesia or even abroad. In 2018, I was invited to participate in Taipei global health conference held by the Taiwanese government and in 2019 I participated in the international tuberculosis forum held by WHO and ministry of health Indonesia. Moreover, the government of China had been awarding me a scholarship to study in Taiwan in 2018.
Organization activity is one of my favorite part that I really passionate. I had a great opportunity to improve my skills when I organized an event on a national zero waste even in Indonesia in 2018. This event campaigned to take an action to clean our environment by picking up trash and collaborated with the government of Kediri, East Java, about a thousand participants participated in this event. It was difficult and risky to arrange a big event by involving many people. Owing to my influence skill, I got security assistance from the police department to safeguard us. This event was successfully organized.
My influence skill was assessed when I worked in a primary health care in a rural area. There was a problem when the number of multidrug resistance of tuberculosis was significantly increasing. This occurs when patients noncompliance in taking medicine and did not obey the instruction which directly affects many patients failed in the treatment. Finally, after discussing in cross sectors, we encourage health promotion as the best intervention to tackle this issue. Moreover, as a nurse, the skill to influence people are needed here and the result, after one-semester evaluation, the number of drug resistance was decreased while the percentage of compliance was increased significantly.
In summary, leaders create opportunities to change their communities and countries, influencing groups toward understanding goals to improve quality of life. As a young leader, I have good achievements, the Chevening scholarship will advance me, I will gain new knowledge, which I bring back to my country to develop knowledge and health system.
