My leadership has significantly arose since my work as a project officer at the learning institute.

MY LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE SKILL

Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

My leadership has significantly arose since my work as a project officer at the learning institute. On behalf of the leader of a project focusing on enhancing climate change adaptation in rural community, I am responsible in ensuring the project action plan is implemented effectively and efficiency in timely manner based on log-frame and budge plan.

I work focused on leading the project team consisting of a project assistant and a technical assistant to implement the work plan. First problem arose when starting to conduct a research at the project site. My team encountered a difficulty in applying participatory rural appraisal due to limited capacity and experience. We were complicated in designing research methodology whereas everyone had difference idea. As a newly leader, I used my previous research knowledge and experience to solve this problem. Firstly, I reviewed various researches related to our research and made the methodology which consisting of participatory rural appraisal tool and questionnaire. Secondly, I asked for a review from project manager and executive director. Finally, I took the result to discuss with my team. As a result, we can finalized the methodology in applying to the research.

I have applied this solution in conducting training needs assessment to identify soft-skill needs of water management committee. Getting the real needs of the committee is not easy since most of them are older people. My team aimed at using a suitable tool that will be effectiveness and efficiency but their idea focused on provincial level rather than commune level. Through my experience in commune level, I proposed a meeting among the project and management team to present my methodology that I adopted from previous assessments. The methodology was finally decided to use and we defined the real needs of water management committee.

Aside from my leadership, my influence skill has been applying along. The biggest problem in this project was to establish the village water management committee which mentioned above. It was a difficult situation to mobilize local people to be parts of the committee since they were mainly focusing on their agriculture activities. At that time, I was thinking of how to influence them to care about water management. I was working with my team to influence them with a clear massage based on our research findings. It is "water shortage is occurring due to poor management, not only by drought occurrence. To ensure the sustainability of water use, water management committee needed to be established''. Through conducting a few meetings, local people seemed understanding about their responsibilities for better water management in their commune. As a result, they actively participated in the activity and village water management groups were finally established.

This is just the starting point. To be a future leader, I must seek for education to strengthen my current knowledge and capacity. By studying in UK, I believe my capacity will be improve through its high standard and quality of education towards my future development work in my country.

As far as I am a chevening applicant also, I like it is a good essay.

Otdam, the leadership story is acceptable. However, it doesn't really have a strong sense of leadership style because it is based more on theoretical management rather than people management, which is what the leadership essay is all about. Maybe you can try to create a more team management related story that integrates the theoretical aspect of this problem with the actual leadership aspect of the job. What happened after you presented the methodology to the team? You can create a more focused leadership and influencing essay if you do not try to insert the story about the community and instead, focused the connecting the leadership story with the team influencing story. That would create a more connected and smoother presentation in the essay instead of presenting two separate stories that cover two different topics. The current presentation, because of the separate stories, makes the presentation ill effective and cuts the interest and attention of the reader midstream. A more connected presentation helps to make the essay memorable for the reader.

@Holt

Thanks a lot for your comment! I have updated it here and need your review again.

My leadership has significantly developed since I have been working as a project officer at the Learning Institute. On behalf of the project leader, I am responsible for and leading the project team consisting of a project assistant and a part-time technical adviser and ensuring the project action plan is implemented effectively and efficiency in timely manner based on log-frame and budge plan.

First problem occurred when starting to conduct a research. We encountered a difficulty in applying Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) due to limited capacity and experience in the team. My team was complicated in designing research methodology. Everyone had difference idea. I was trying to compromise to reach a common destination but it cannot be done since I had inadequate proof. Later, I proposed everyone to separately design methodologies and be back again.

As a newly leader, I used my previous research knowledge and experiences to solve this discordance. Initially, I reviewed various researches related to our objective and tried to synthesis the methodology which consists of PRA tools including questionnaire. The next step was a need for reviewing from the senior management people first because I was willing to make sure that my initiative is acceptable. The discussion with project manager and executive director provided me more positive feedback to prove my initiative to be more effectiveness and efficiency. Afterwards, I brought it to discuss in the team. At the beginning, everyone presented each methodology and they still focused on their own as the priority. To overcome this situation, I suggested them to think every methodology is not came from us and start prioritizing the one that is proofed with references with a reflection to the study site. We discussed one by one and entered same objective. It is everyone decided to come together and work to synthesize for the improvement of my methodology. The common one was applied to the research with a fruitful result, at the end.

Besides, the biggest problem in this project was to establish the water management committee in the community. The difficulty was to mobilize local people to be parts of ...

This is just the starting point, I must seek for education. By studying in UK, I believe my capacity and knowledge will be improved through its high standard and quality of education towards my responsibilities as a future leader in my country.