Every individual has their own leadership potential. Chevening Essay about Leadership and Influence

I am applying for Chevening Scholarship. Please kindly help me to improve my essay about leadership and influence. Thank you.

LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE QUESTION

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)

Every individual has their own leadership potential. However, I believe that leadership needs to be sharpen through experience. My leadership skills have changed a lot since I joined student organizations. I was interested in joining student council in my secondary school, in spite of my quiet personality. I had gone several nerve-wracking interviews until I finally got accepted. I tried to do all the responsibilities that I got in every school events such as students orientation, competition, school concert, etc. On the other hand, I did not mingle very well because I was really quite. I felt like the other members did not care about my presence. When one year period ended, I decided to leave the organization. Every member had individual assessment by the seniors in the end of period. It turned out that my seniors were satisfied with my performance and they want me to lead the juniors in the next period. After the assessment, I cried by myself because I regretted doubting myself. In result, I knew that self-esteem and appreciation are important for a leader.

I kept joining student organizations in college. During my second year in the university, I was chosen to be the head of human resource development division in Social Welfare Student Association. My division's objective is developing the member's performance. One of my programs is to choose the best member and the best division of the month. It was a great motivation to boost the organization's performance. I had six staffs and we worked together for one year. We had been through a lot of struggles in making team building, trainings, monthly plenary, assessment, etc. I always gave them appreciation after each program that we made and gave them chance to express themselves during evaluation. Most of my staffs had difficulties in public speaking, I tried to improve their confidence through simulations. I felt content to watch their incredible development in a year. One of my staffs became the chairman of the association which made me extremely proud. On my graduation day, my staffs gave me a flowers bouquet to express their appreciation. This made me realize that I gave influence to my staffs about the importance of giving appreciation.

Now I am working as a kindergarten teacher. My students are my best followers because children are the fastest learners who are always curious about everything. It is my responsibility to be a good influencer for my students. I try to give my students character development every day. For example, I teach my student to be responsible. If my students who spill their water or food to the floor, they must clean up by themselves.

To sum up, I have made choices to join organizations and those choices have made who I am today. Being a great leader and influencer is not an instant process. I would like develop myself with further education and organizational experiences to be a better leader for bigger community in the future. (495 words)

Dhea, this essay has the potential to be a stand out leadership and influencing essay if you are willing to do the necessary revisions to make it so. What I would like you to do is remove paragraphs 1 and 2 from the essay then revise the current paragraph 3 to become your opening statement instead. Why is that? Because being a teacher, you are in a unique leadership position. You lead your students towards achieving their full potential and you inspire them to become a success in a way that only a teacher can accomplish. I would like you to concentrate all your efforts on depicting this in your essay. Think of what makes you stand out as a teacher to your students. Why would you consider yourself an effective leader as a teacher to your students? What methods of leading them, in a manner that they understand, do you use? How do you think you can apply that leadership skill in a different scenario of say, leading adults? How do you inspire their interest in learning beyond the normal requirements of class reading materials, projects, quizzes and class discussions? If you can provide an animated essay that responds to these questions, while inserting your own information as you deem important to the discussion, then you will end up with a unique, and possible, quite memorable essay for the reviewer to assess. That just might work positively towards your interests in terms of the application.