Chevening Leadership & Influence Question: My Answer is TOO LONG, & I can't short it ?!
Every Human being is a leader in his own right. Whether he leads just himself, or his family, or his group of friends, or a team of people, or an entire company... we are all leaders in one way or another. Whatever the extent of our circle of influence is at the moment, the waves of influence of this circle will propagate through time and experiences. I have been in positions of leadership since early times in my life, during my childhood since I am the eldest brother; I had to take care of all my brothers, through my study at university and eventually in my work both at university and field.
Through my life I have learned the huge difference between a leader and a manager or a boss, some lessons I have learned by the hard way , through trial and error and consequently by the humility that esteemed from overcoming those mistakes. Other lessons I learned through observing those I do believe to be great leaders whose dreams have given the civilization all it has of value and whose examples I seek to follow. Through it all I found the true leader that I do believe lie within myself.
A leader fulfill his goals by putting his plans into actions with these traits: vision, persistence and dedication. First, vision is a trait that every leader should possess, in order to persuade all the people in his periphery with his dreams and he must take on himself the responsibility of initiative and to be ahead in lines to guide because he can see widely not because he wants to. Since the second year of my study the geology course then the drilling course drew my attention. I found myself in my final year picking a graduation project specialized in drilling engineering stated as Casing Drilling Technology, since it was a new, complicated and quiet uncommon technology, I strove to convince my colleagues to join me in this project, the challenges were that the disability to download scientific papers from the internet due to the sanctions on Sudan, difficulty to acquire actual drilling data from companies, engineering design challenges moreover the challenge of convincing the interview committee to accept the project. I suggested to connect with one of our seniors who was doing his postgraduate studies abroad to download the papers, introducing ourselves to one of the oil and gas companies with a formal letter in order to acquire the drilling data and sheet costs, my main part of the project was the engineering design considerations; in which I deliberate all the engineering aspects related to the new technology in contrary to the conventional method of drilling. My perseverance to pick this project and to culminate it to its full potential despite the hardships led to beyond earning the highest degree among the other projects and watching with prideful glee as the project discussion went smoothly, my expectations and goals as a future leader were also evolved consistently during the project process.
Directly after my graduation, I worked as a part time teaching assistant in the petroleum and natural gas engineering department, In spite of I was working on my national service period with a company, I felt that I had a debt towards my university, my faculty, my department and the students of the department of petroleum engineering; so I was working in the field and office of the company and in the same time I worked at the university to give the students the link between the professional life, practical industry and the academic courses. I was surprised by the interest of these undergraduates and students in their future industry, they were keep asking me about the nature of the work and what does it mean to be a site engineer and I was keep answering that it means to be in a multinational environment where you influence and get influenced by the diversity of people you meet.
During my national service period, which I consider the most effective period in my carrier so far, I worked for almost fifty days as a site engineer, it takes both hard work and dedication to enroll in such harsh environment in which you have to keep on good relations with client representative and third party contractors and to satisfy their requirements in both the quality and the quantity of work done every hour, in the same time you have to navigate good manners and integrity with your workers and teammates (I was responsible for a team of 7 people) to ensure the continuity of work, for example we had a very viscous oil in some well and we needed rubbers to wipe the oil from the pipes, the problem was we had a 3.5 inches rubbers while the pipes were 4.5 inches, so we were working against time and the client representative was asking for the rubbers by any means, we are about to stop working and he was about to give us a down time (zero rate), when I decided to modify the available rubber using a cutter to be reconciled with the pipes, during the surprise of all of us it worked well and due to this and the good work of all the rig crew during the month, we were awarded the prize of rig of the month with a financial award and a motivational certificate.
To sum up, future leaders are the people who truly know themselves and what they stand for. They know their values and the rules they abide by, regardless of the hardships they encounter. As a future leader I should allow people around me to shine, and as well as I let my own light shine, I unconsciously let others shine. Integrity is the very core of my influence, that which gives me credibility and allow others to place their trust in me.
