Leaders are creators of social change. Influence positively on community.

Chevening Leadership essay question

Here is my draft for the Chevening leadership question. Your feedback and comments are much appreciated.

Cries were rising, of what to do and how to approach the assignment handed. Everyone knew we needed a leader. This is when I stepped in organised the brainstorming, distributed the workload and motivated the team towered our goal. Achieving first place in the Red-Crescent competition for humanitarian aid in Libya. My team and the competition instructors praised my leadership ability, vision and practicality significantly. Leading me to head other teams and projects regarding Humanitarian aid and social development.

However, I believe my current role as project manager of a research team tackling issues on sustainable energy has had the most significant impact on my leadership and management skills. Working as project manager transcends beyond the technical capacities required in an engineer where everyone is counting on you for solutions. I am leading a team of three researchers. I am responsible for setting the project's plan, distributing the workload and motivating the team, which requires a lot of logistical prowess and flexibility, where sometimes we must forgo our approach and adopt a new one completely. Being a young professional does not intimidate me, I am always ready to present my ideas and take charge. Working in a multidisciplinary team although challenging, have really helped develop my multi-tasking skills, management and logistics.

I am always enthusiastic and excited to take part in competitions, I have participated in the Honey Well challenge, where I lead a multidisciplinary team of six in developing an axial-centrifugal pump impeller design, securing second place, where the judges praised my presentation and public speaking skills. I have participated in conferences and seminars and have published a scientific paper in a respected journal while working now to participate in the ASME conference on applied mechanics. I am also excited about participating in the international community, I have taken part in many global design challenges such as Boeing control flight challenge. And I have a patent on a digital designing accessory. In addition, I am a co-founder of the LSME (Libyan Society of Mechanical Engineers) working as a social and a research hub for mechanical engineers in Libya. It is a project, which I am very excited about to support and develop Libyan innovation, research and industry. I am working as a managing director of the institute responsible for organising activities, workshops and setting the plans to achieve the aims of the LSME.

Through working as a part-time English teacher in IH Benghazi, I have really improved my public speaking and organisational skills, planning the lesson development, setting the lesson's aims and managing the students. Moreover, I am the lead on the speaking program where I usually have speaking classes with as much as 100 students. Organising the class and helping the student develop their fluency and accuracy.

To sum up, Leaders are creators of social change. As a young leader, I have considerable accomplishments but I endeavour to further develop and obtain more knowledge that will benefit my community. A Chevening scholarship will influence my career significantly, providing me with new skills and experience that I can bring back home to develop the energy industry.

Youssf , remove all but the reference to your current role as a project manager in this essay as a reference to your leadership and influencing ability. Build your statement around the difficulties that you faced in leadership. Offer concrete examples of the obstacles your faced in the completion of the project and how you approached the problem in order to arrive at a solution. Whenever possible, discuss how the team felt and whether or not that had an effect on the overall productiveness in terms of project completion. Explain the steps you took to inspire and influence them into a positive mindset. Show the reader how you professionally handle problematic situations.

The Chevening reviewer is interest only in your professional leadership and influencing abilities. Therefore, all references to competitions, amateur / academic leadership, and your part time job does not apply to this essay. Those are to be removed because these are insignificant parts that do not really offer a professional take on your abilities. Anything in a controlled setting, such as the Red Cross competition, where there were others to assist you in your leadership because they are of a higher rank such as a teacher or mentor, negates the leadership role that you had as you had to seek their approval for your actions. The same goes for the competitions. These are not profession, but rather amateur experiences so it does not qualify as a reference point for your experience. Use only official work related experiences in order to properly address the prompt requirements.

As for the LSME, there is nothing in what you said that leads me to believe that you have done any true leadership activities in the organization aside from helping to co-fund it. So that will not be necessary to present in this essay either.