Leadership and influence means to me making a positive change and a lasting impact on people

LEADERSHIP AND INFLUENCE - CHEVENING

Hello, please I will like feedback on my essay. Thank you.
Leadership and influence to me means making a positive change and a lasting impact on people and the society.

I am passionate about youth development. In Secondary School, I led a group of girls to teach about 30 girls in a public primary school who did not have access to quality education. One of these girls went on to receive a scholarship from the Lagoon Secondary School, one of the best schools in Nigeria.

I also volunteered for the Entrepreneurial, Action and Us (ENACTUS) conference two years in a row in June 2012 and 2013, where I was the lead volunteer responsible for press and media.

I am one of the Co-leads of the Missions outreach of my church. As a Missions leader I go to the rural communities to rehabilitate recalcitrant youths and feed the poor. I also connect them with available jobs and help them develop vocational skills.

I visit the Ikoyi male prison periodically to counsel and encourage the inmates and help them seek legal advice.

During my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme in 2017, a group of Corp members and I conducted seminars for the Lagos State Model College, Badore and Ikota Primary School, for about 500 students on civic engagement. I made them understand that they are the change agents and future of the country. I made them believe that they are not too young to influence the society and they could start influencing change by imbibing and practicing certain integral virtues and qualities which others can emulate.

Asides my work with other bodies, I run a personally funded foundation, where I provide food for the people displaced as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency in the North who now live on the streets. So far, I have fed over a hundred of them through my foundation.

I garnered my first professional leadership experience during my graduate internship at xxx, a highly revered institution in Nigeria and Africa. Despite being an intern, my excellent performance on tasks, made my boss to entrust me with the responsibility of leading various communication strategies for several international programmes and School partnerships. Some of which include: Google 2017 Women Techmakers summit; International Executive Development Programme for the Banking Sector Education and Training Authority, South Africa; Premier of Gauteng, South Africa visit; Academy of International Business Sub-Saharan Africa Conference; amongst others. I got to lead people, who were a lot older and with more professional experience than me.

I am currently next in line to manage a family owned chain of business I currently have the responsibility of making strategic decisions, developing innovative ideas and leading several teams and projects in order to stir the companies in the right direction.

If given the opportunity to pursue a Masters in Business through the Chevening Scholarship. I will deepen my knowledge in innovative global business strategies. This will equip me with the right skills to function effectively in this leadership role ahead of me.

Ruona, you don't sound like you need this scholarship. Why do I say that? You can manage to run a self-funded foundation so that immediately tells the reviewer that you are monied and can very well afford to pay your way at an overseas college. You don't need the Chevening scholarship to student in the UK. That mention alone could be enough to end your quest to win the scholarship. The people who are awarded this scholarship are people who have talent and skills but lack the financial ability to study overseas. While trying to make yourself sound like a good candidate, you overqualified yourself for possible consideration.

Your experiences are all community based which, although good, does not ever place you in an actual leadership and influencing position because you make it seem like these are just activities you are participating in because you have too much time on your hands. That is probably because you come from a family that will be turning over the family business to you. Now, to get to the point. If you want to be considered for this scholarship, focus on your professional aspect of leadership, do not brag, and do not list your volunteer activities. Your community activities are far too many to be able to prove true leadership and influencing skills because you don't really imply actual leadership or influencing in any volunteer instance. Detailing your duties does not prove leadership and influencing skills.

You claim that you are next in line to manage the family business and you are being given the opportunity to make key strategic decisions as part of your training as the future leader of the company. So, discuss what your biggest leadership challenge has been to date and how you resolved the conflict through the help of your company staff. Be specific about the type of influencing skills you had to use in order to make them accept your leadership. Don't just claim leadership and influence, showcase it. Show, don't tell. Prove it through your actions.

As you know, the scholarship is looking for upcoming leaders in your country. That means, you have to prove that you have what it takes to become the head of your family corporation. You do that by showcasing your abilities in action. Not implying them, not listing it as if you were writing a grocery list. You may want to look at the other successful Chevening applicant essays at this forum to use as a reference for writing a totally new leadership and influencing essay for yourself.

More importantly, don't waste time defining what leadership means to you. The reviewer doesn't care about what you understand leadership to be. He is interested in discovering whether you know how to lead and influence people instead. Knowing the definition of a word and actually being the embodiment of the definition are two different things and your essay is proof of that.