'Leadership is within you' - Chevening essay about leadership

to go out from own inferiority

You do not need to wait until you become a great person with compelling talents to be a leader, leadership is within you. The words came from a mentor four years ago and still becoming my mantra to motivate myself whenever I feel down.

In October 2016, I joined XXX Training Camp, a training program to prepare volunteers who will be an education facilitator in remote villages in Indonesia. At that time, I lived with 39 young inspiring people from different educational backgrounds, ethnics, and personalities. Back then, I was an extremely introvert person who did not know how to show my potency, so that I felt frustrated and insecure because of the others talent. Some of them are leaders in their local communities, the others have their own initiative programs in their hometown, most of them have a satisfying public speaking skill and they can influence people easily.

Then, my leadership skills were awoken when all of us got the mission to learn how to survive for 3 days and 2 nights in XXX mountain forest. At the moment, I was chosen by the mentor team as the group leader of 40. It was a nerve-wracking experience when I was given tasks to take initiative action and made decisions for all the activities. My responsibilities were to ensure we had a safe temporary camp and enough food so that all of us ready to attend learning session in nature for two days.

I discussed a plan with more or less five members who had prior experiences. After that, I divided the group into three groups; cooking, housing tent, and communal tent. I let them to choose freely but decided the numbers of each group. I tried to coordinate all the members and the mentors as well. In the session with mentors, I tried to accommodate what members need and communicate to the mentors in a good way. Even though I did not have much experience, I prepare myself to learn from other members who knew better and readily to help any group who need hands. At the end, with encouragement and guidance from the mentors and support from all the members, I could pass the storm and encountered my insecurity to be a leader. Even though my act could not satisfy all the members, overall we could accomplish our mission as a team and grew our close relationship since then.

From the experience, I learn that to be a leader you need to lead yourself first to go out from your inferiority. As a leader, you not only must be ready to be an example for others but also open your heart and mind to learn from your members. Being a leader means being a life long learner.

Leadership is more than just about knowing how to delegate tasks. Which is what you presented in this essay. Discussions are not the same as influencing. You need to revise this promising essay to reflect your influencing skills during that period of time. Stop downgrading yourself by constantly saying you did not have experience, you had to refer to other mentors, and other similar indicators. Are you a leader of a follower? From the way those aspects were discussed, you come across more as a follower who was trying to lead rather than as a leader who knew what he was doing. The influencing part is the weakest because you are presenting yourself as being influenced rather than being the influencer. You need to revise that part to be more attuned with the leader and influencer expectations of the review committee.

thanks for the feedback. I'll try to revise it :)