"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself"; my favourite proverb and Chevening

Hello guys! I have just discovered this website. I was about to submit my Chevening scholarship application. Your comments are very welcome, thanks in advance!

LEADERSHIP

Leadership means different things to different people. To me, it's not about managing people, but encouraging and inspiring them through one's actions. A personal favourite proverb of mine:

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."
-Jack Welch, Former Chairman and CEO, General Electric

Many famous people may have spoken on the topic of leadership, but the quote above is my personal favourite because it exactly defines how leadership is about others, not you. Leaders often focus on themselves but this is a short term achievement. If their focus is solely themselves, then they may become an expert or professional, but not a leader. I know that a great leader is the person who encourages and grows people and forges the way for them. I may not have all the answers, but I have my journey and I'm very willing to share it.

As a student I was very hard-working and determined; simply doing the tasks assigned to me was never enough. I have an innate drive to go above and beyond and a perpetual desire to be outstanding. Rather than focusing all my time on studying and achieving good grades at university, I put some time aside to work on extra-curricular projects which would develop me professionally. For instance, the Erasmus Study Mobility Program was very popular among university students; however my lecturer, believing I should go for an advanced alternative, asked me to consider the Erasmus Internship Mobility Programme, which I accepted. No student or lecturer at my university had ever undertaken this programme so I became the pioneer of the complex application processes involved for my university, and furthermore, after having completed the 3-month internship programme in a London-based translation company, became the guest speaker at Erasmus events promoting the programme. Many students across Turkey were inspired by my talks and became very keen to apply, so in between such events I have spent the last year assuming a mentoring role for students preparing them for their foreign internships.

After finishing my degree, I organized a graduation ball for over 100 people and then returned to my hometown. Most of the fresh graduates chose to find a job as soon as possible, but I was keen to gain more developmental experience and discovered the European Voluntary Service (EVS) programme. I volunteered for a Europe Direct desk at the Municipality of Bologna for 1 year and returned to my country for work as an EU Project Assistant for a reputable private company in Izmir. I was highly effective at pre-empting problems, but when they did occur I saw them as an opportunity to improve the service. My duties in this post chiefly involved the coordination of a wide range of events and interpreting when required between three languages. Occasionally I held group talks on my EVS experience which provided people with the opportunity to ask questions and request my recommendations.

I am very grateful for the opportunities I have had so far in life which have rewarded me with the confidence to be a representative and motivational speaker to large audiences and to people on a one-to-one basis.

one essay at time please

Hi Ezgi, welcome to the forum. As newbie, I guess you are not familiar with the rules yet. We actually have an essay ruling of one essay per thread. So you should really have posted just one essay here. If the admin sees the multiple essays, they will delete the other essays and keep only the first one. So, if I were you, I would either edit this thread for content and leave only one essay, or be prepared to post your other essays in individual threads after the admin deletes the multiple essays in this post.

Since I am here anyway, I'll go ahead and give a review of your first essay, which is about leadership. I can only give you advice on one essay as per the forum rules. Sorry about that. Better one advice than none at all right?

If you wish to use the quote in a more effective manner, use it as the opening statement of your essay. Do not give a personal definition of leadership before launching into the quote. Quotes are usually used as the hook to gain the attention of the reviewer. In this case, it loses its impact because of the position it has in the essay. Lose the opening statement and use the quote to open your discussion instead. That catches the eye more.

While I understand that you would like to present the idea that you are an excellent leader by simply glossing over your leadership experience and making it seem so easy, it was almost natural for you, the reality is that leadership is not an easy role to take on, specially if you have to influence people around you. Is there any chance that you underwent some sort of pressure filled situation in any of the leadership roles that you related? It would really help solidify your leadership ad influencing abilities if you could show the reviewer how you perform under pressure and how you influence people towards your side when things are not going according to your plan. It tells the reviewer that you are a mature individual who is ready to deal with the rigorous demands of masters degree school combined with the demands of a scholarship program.

@Holt
Hello Mary,

Thank you for your comments. I really appreciate. I will take your comments into consideration and edit the essay accordingly.

I will post other essay in individual threads now. Many thanks!

Wish you a nice weekend!

Wow! You really got talkative in the essay. That is a good thing. I always say, it is better to edit for content and word count than to leave out something important that you want to say. Here is my take on how you can lower the word count. I hope it helps.

Choose between keeping the quote and deleting the 2nd paragraph line or keeping the paragraph line and deleting the quote. Removing just the quote brings you down to 605 words. Removing both the quote and the paragraph after it results in 583 words in total. In my opinion, both are not really necessary because the most important voice in this essay is your own and that does not come in until the 3rd paragraph. So why not start with your voice immediately?

Now, pay attention to the current 4th paragraph that talks about the graduation ball. That ball is a very minor event in your leadership life and does not really have the ability to make an impression on the reviewer. Deleting those lines, including the minor participation in EVS means the essay comes down to 489 words. You suddenly fall under the word requirement with some word count left to further improve the essay if you wish to. You can also revise the content of the 4th paragraph if you want to keep the EVS information. You should still fall under the word count if you do that.

I think those are the best parts of the essay to position the cuts to meet the word count. It should also help you to consider which parts of the essay you may want to develop further.

Thank you very much for your all comments! I've just deleted the parts you think unnecessary. I was going to delete the first 2 paragraphs, but when I deleted EVS part completely, I had some missing Word count and added my definition of leadership again.

What do you think about the footprinting content? Do you think I could Show that it has something to do with leadership skills, or not.

And do you think it's rude to indicate that trainings prices are really high?

Well Ezgi, I certainly think that you should keep the part about the footprint training. It shows that you understand that in order to become a leader, you have to undergo relevant training for knowledge sharing with your team. That is certainly the mark of an effective and efficient leader. It is a trait that yo were right to highlight in this essay. However, you need to remove the part that talks about the cost of training. A true leader does not look at that cost (even though we know that is not the truth) because nobody can put a price on the skills training of individuals in relation to a more efficient performance of their work related tasks. Be sure to highlight the transfer of knowledge that you had with your subordinates who were not able to attend the seminar.

@Holt
I removed the part that talks about training cost, you are right!

And here is what I add, about knowledge transfer:

"I also organized some internal workshops for the project staff who were not able to attend the seminars and made sure that they feel confident about engaging in the project."

Thanks for your ideas!!