'A leader from the ground' Leadership Essay [CHEVENING]

Below is my leadership essay for CHEVENING Leadership/Influencer question. Please kindly help review it and I am more than welcome for any suggestions!

A leader from the ground

In my early age, being a leader in the class was one of the things Thai kids were afraid of. In fact, this type of idea has been deeply rooted in Thai culture since I can remember. If you are the one to raise your hand in the public, you will be likely deemed as a show-off by surrounding people, which is not the nicest thing you would expect from the society and in my opinion, is one of the first national problems needed to get fixed. As I grew up, I learned to aware of how important being able to influence people from my own experiences, it all started during my senior year at university where our group had encountered a chilling machine malfunction in the middle of the night, thankfully I noticed that the beverage shop had ice seller contact glued to the wall, so we survived that crisis as I could successfully convince my teammate to ditch the machine and go back to cooling the liquid with ice. It was the time when I really realized decision-making is crucial, otherwise the project would have been further delayed. In my working experience, I began my career as an investment consultant at Maybank Kim Eng Securities (Thailand) where my leadership started to directly impact my life. Working as investment consultant had been always fun, I had to analyze all sort of data to create an investment plan to offer customers a practical and profitable strategy. However, acquiring customers can be done neither sitting in front of the computer nor selling ideas on phone, that was when I thought of doing an intimate customer approach, so I published the idea of setting an exhibition booth at a crowded office building to introduce the company's products to my manager. The experiment came out successful and I did a lot of things in order to achieve corporate target, nonetheless, greater than the number of customers and experiences we gained, the task had me realized how much we would have lost if nobody would be willing to lead the team to initiate something selflessly and let the opportunity passed by. Which in this case, I am grateful that I happened to be the person to lead the team. To sum up, my leadership has been evolving from the ground and it will strongly continue to strengthen over time. With opportunities coming in my life, I hope I could develop my knowledge, communication skills, creativity, and become the person who can be an inspiration to the society with wisdom, bravery, and ethics.

Nat

Nat, this essay will simply not do. The Chevening prompt is clear about the leadership requirement. It must be an experience that you gained during the accomplishment of your job / profession. It can never be related to a college experience because the leadership that is shown in that instance is one that takes place in a controlled setting where you have support coming from the teachers and other advisers to help you accomplish the leadership tasks. What the reviewer is looking or is a strength of character and a leadership ability that will prove that you have the ability to become an influential leader in your country. Your essay is very weak in that presentation because it relies on weak leadership experience. This essay cannot compete with the inclusion of that reference and will immediately end your quest for the Chevening scholarship the minute the reviewer reads the first few lines that you wrote. Remove the reference to the college task as soon as you can.

Bear in mind that you will up against some pretty impressive executives and leaders in their own right from various countries representing various industries. Their experience in this field will be far more diverse and important than a college based task. You need to come up to that international level of leadership and influence in order to even be considered for the scholarship. With that said, your professional reference is also very weak and does not represent the kind of strong leadership and influencing skill that you should be able to accomplish within your line of work.

Your professional experience does not show the international or advanced level of leadership and influencing required of a Chevening scholar. The whole essay is not going to be able to even catch the attention of the reviewer at this point. I strongly encourage you to read the other leadership application essays here and compare it with yours. That will help you to better understand the weakness of your essay and how you can improve it in order to create a stronger leadership experience for yourself.

At this point, what you discuss in your professional experience makes you appear as a greenhorn who doesn't really understand what leadership and influence upon his peers is supposed to accomplish. Your presentation makes it seem like you are chasing a job promotion, instead of a highly coveted international scholarship. The leadership experience is not about fun and easy tasks. It is about the strength of your character and analytical skills. It is about reflecting your positive mindset upon your subordinates so that they become inspired to help you accomplish the common team goal. It is not about impressing your manager by completing an exhibit booth. Don't make it sound easy because leadership and influencing of people is never easy. Just ask your supervisor or manager. You make it sound like a piece of cake. That is the wrong approach to take.

@Holt

Thank you for your comment. I totally understand what you are pointing out for me. Surprisingly, I did have your answer before you actually commented as I felt the same way. My friends have also reviewed the essay and found it weak as well. The question is, as I didn't really get involved in any role as a leader or any position that could represent my leadership professionally, how would you suggest me to write up a good essay about leadership without making up, which is never in my thoughts for whatever reasons. Thanks!

Nat