Leadership is about influencing human behaviour to help achieve a common goal. Chevening essay

Leadership and Influence

Leader and influence. With example.

I firmly believe that Leadership is about influencing human behaviour to help achieve a common goal.
I am currently leading a team of 9 risk professionals. While my team is responsible for the calculations and delivery of global regulatory reports such as Capital requirements report, Key Risk report and Economic Risk capital report delivery for Credit Suisse, we are also responsible to incorporate all the methodology, process and infrastructure changes in the bank in our reports. This needs me to constantly interact with various stakeholders like Methodology team, Risk Managers, IT , Data delivery teams etc. while each of these stakeholders have their own priorities and mandates, it is important for me to bring them on the same table so that we are able to extract correct numbers from the systems for our regulatory reporting. This requires excellent leadership and influencing skills so that we have everyone's cooperation to achieve the goal..

In my previous Organisation ( Barclays Technology Centre of India), we had only 15 % female inVP roles. The organization was struggling to get women in technology leadership roles. I formed an internal employee network called Women in Technology. I started by defining a mission statement for the forum which was then adopted by Barclays at the Global Level.

WiT mission statement- 'The Barclays WiT Network's mission is to empower women in Technology to develop to their fullest potential by helping them navigate and leverage available resources'.

The purpose of network was to provide a platform to expand their network, showcase their skills and provide them with opportunities for professional development. In the first year, we organised 4 "Tech talks" on latest Technology by women employees. As I lead and Chair of Women in Technology forum, I also influenced the management to change the hiring process by ensuring that we had a woman in the interview panel so as to remove any unconscious bias. My regular and constant engagement with Senior leadership team and an effort to create awareness about the reason of leaky pipeline when women leave workforce because of life changes like child birth, we were also able to increase the Maternity leave in the organisation from 3 months to 6 months.

I also engaged with a NGO called Lila poonawalla foundation to provide computer education to under privileged girl child so that they become comfortable with computer at an early stage and may pursue career in STEM.

My leadership skills at this forum was recognized and I was felicitated global level for the contribution to this cause.

I believe that leadership, inflencuing and interpersonal skills are something that we all need to constantly work on and improve.. it is a journey of self awareness and self realization

Kavita, it appears to me that the Barclay's network development is more attuned with the requirements of leadership and influencing skills in this essay. That is why I strongly urge you to remove the reference to the 9 person team that you are working with in this essay. You will be creating a stronger impact if you focus your essay on the method by which you led the development of the Barclay's Network instead. Additionally, I also suggest that you use the same network and how you developed it in the networking essay for your application.

Going back to this essay, quit using the "we" reference in terms of the work done by the network. Rather, use the first person pronouns instead and make sure that you remove the references to the mission statement and purpose of the network for now. Move that information to your networking essay instead.

If you cannot define your leadership role in the Lila Poonawalla foundation, then do not include it in this essay. You only need one effective leadership experience anyway and I believe that you can accomplish that with a properly developed essay centered on your Barclay's project.