Leadership as an IT Specialist - Leadership skills for Chevening scholarship

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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.

(minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)"

"Innovation is what separates leaders from followers," said Steve Jobs, founder of Apple. To innovate is to constantly seek to improve what already exists. Since the beginning of my career as an IT specialist in 2017, this constant seek for innovation has always been one of my main assets, making me a reference and a source of reliability, in short a leader in the company where I work.

Several events in my career have reinforced this vision of me as a leader. One of them is the time when my team was in charge of rebuilding a company's software that was starting to be outdated, was suffering from many problems, and with which new users were generally dissatisfied. To overcome all this, in the new version, we had to make an effort to choose the most suitable technologies and tools so that the final product would be extensible and maintainable. Many of the company's engineers already had their routines when it came to building software. These, despite being functional, were cruelly backward and suffered from many flaws. Most of the time, this resulted in softwares that were far from the current quality standards. It was from this observation that I took the decision to modernise the company's working methods. Several of my colleagues were surprised by my proposal, as I was the youngest and lacked experience compared to some of them. On the other hand, I had already proven myself in previous projects and my colleagues were aware of my abilities as an IT specialist. I was therefore able to use good arguments and examples to get most of my colleagues to accept my choices.

Changing working methods is not an easy task. It required everyone in the company to become familiar with new technologies and tools. Being the main instigator of this, the future of the project was already resting on my shoulders. I had to help my colleagues solve some of their problems, answer their questions and make sure that everyone followed good working practices. It was a great experience for me and it helped me to gain the respect of my colleagues and to be recognised by some of them as a leader.

In the end, despite the inconveniences caused by the change in technology, the project was successful and the company's customers were pleasantly surprised by the new version. Obtaining the Chevening scholarship would be a way for me to improve my leadership skills, thanks to the incredible experience I would gain from learning in English universities, which are renowned for the high quality of their training. It will also allow me to improve my social skills by being exposed to a different culture from the one I am used to.

Hi my friend, I'm applying for Chevening too. Due to Alumni tips on various groups, I suggest you to give at least 3 examples of what you've done till today on leadership and networking essays. Maybe you could summarize a little bit of your story details to give more examples instead.

Never use a quote from another person to start your essay. You need to use your own words to define what leadership and influencing means to you. These words must be defined based upon how your narrative will depict your strengths in these areas. So, what do you believe is your strongest leadership skill? Why do you think that is important? That is your leadership definition. How do you view influencing others as a leader? If it is a mentor role, then explain why influencing as a mentor has made you an effective leader. After those definitions have been done, use 2 examples in the essay. One strong leadership and one strong influencing example. You don't need 3 examples of leadership. You need one strong example of each that highlights your strengths as a leader and influencer on a national or agency wide scale.

There is no "we" in the leadership essay. You have to establish your identity as the leader in the project you are discussing. How did you end up leading the project? What leadership skills did you use? What other departments or sections were involved where you needed to use your leadership role to make things happen? You really just gave an overview in this essay but did not effectively prove yourself to be a leader or an influencer.