LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE QUESTION
Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders. Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries.
Hello everyone,
I appreciate your feedback.
I think leadership is about making good decisions. A good leader must have ability to influence other and motivate them towards various goals; besides the personal qualities any leader must have such as initiative-spirit, integrity and honesty. However, in this essay I am going to explain two examples about how I developed leadership and influencing skills during my career.
The first example is when after graduation from the University of ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, in 2009. I worked at ......... Consultancy, a local engineering company; the project was reconstruction of 5 primary schools as a resident engineer. My main job was to supervise work on daily basis and writing regular reports on the work progress. However, I found the job is rather challenged role because I was also in charge of coordination between different disciplines in the project which are electrical, mechanical and architectural to ensure that we were stick to the timetable and plans and this had put me in a leadership position because coordination required initiating solutions to the problems may arise in the project, for instant we had an issue in making gutter drainage for classes' roofs, however, I suggested in the meeting regarding this to use steel instead of reinforced concrete because it would save nearly 40 % of the cost and it is lighter and easy to erect and it has done successfully. The project was an opportunity for me to develop leadership and influencing skill.
The second example is my work as a project manager (in ................ Co. Ltd.) in a residential complex project in ............ At first, I started working as a resident engineer and then after 5 months I got a promotion to work as project manager project due to my hardworking and dedication. I was in charge of leading the teamwork towards successful project completion; the teamwork was consisted of 3 engineers, an accountant and sub-contractors (with more than 80 labors). To deliver this project at the specific completion date and under agreed budget was tough job because it required a lot of effort and using of interpersonal skills such as communication and negotiation with subcontractors to reach reasonable prices for work. Furthermore, I was responsible of leading the teamwork; encouraging and motivating them thus I used different tools for motivation purposes including praise, recognition, involving the teamwork in decision making and incentives.
I realized that people get motivated not only by money but also the mentioned tools had a great effect on boosting the teamwork's productivity. After all, the project has completed at the planned time and under agreed budget and it was rather challenging role to thrive my leadership and influencing skill.
Overall, I believe that leadership skill is a key quality to inspire others, empower human capital and make a mark on any field. However, being a Chevening scholar would allow me to broaden this skill so that I can utilize it towards the development challenges in my country as well as exchanging ideas and initiatives in the Chevening community.