Mastering leadership skills; being firm yet resilient, giving your colleges the freedom to improvise

Chevening Leadership & Influence Question

Leadership is about seeing the bigger picture, being patient, aiming to the target, making the right decision but after discussing ideas and possibilities with colleges, being firm yet resilient, giving your colleges the freedom to improvise, act and innovate in their tasks to achieve the greater goal. It's a long path which you can master by experience, hardworking and learning from your mistakes.

My first influencing spark was when I established with 6 friends a student activity in Cairo University. We were targeting +1K students in the first year and the number increased the following year. We were aiming to spread public awareness about problems facing students using public events, brochures, exhibits, etc. Being able to suggest new ideas, make plans and solve so many problems at the beginning got me a repetition to be elected to be vice president of activities committee the following year.

I volunteered in an internship with AIESEC Hyderabad-India. My rule was teaching English in a private school. The students were good at grammar rules but they were shy, not confident to participate and lacking English vocabulary. I tried to influence them to interact which I thought would be better than giving examples and try to solve it. I started by taking about myself, my roots and my country and asked them to do the same. Also, I tried to make friends with them outside the class. Fortunately, they started to participate and talk freely. It was fun but above all they were encouraged to express themselves and improve their English abilities.

After graduation, I was faced with new challenges. I was a freshly graduated site engineer who is responsible of the workmanship, materials and money invested in the project. Being owned by The Administrative Control Authority ACA, The site had a security situation so our activities, moves were limited. We had to follow the security instructions to keep work going so I had to be firm. I had to make right, quick decisions to control the workers to ensure their safety, keep works going according to project timetable and solve conflicts that arise.

During my compulsory military service, my unit commander decided to make a football playground. Being with another solider the only civil engineers in the unit, we were responsible of planning, designing and constructing it. We had the permission to lead other solider to finish the task. As I was a solider too, it was a challenge to lead others of the same rank and to deliver work on time. I managed to lead but in friendly way by explaining the purpose of the playground, dividing work on small teams and recommending the hard workers to the officers. We managed to deliver on time and I'm proud of it.

Sleem, the following are the parts of the essay that you should remove because they do not apply to your professional leadership and influencing skills.

1. The reference to Cairo University.
2. Being a camp volunteer.
3. internship at AIESEC
4. Compulsory military service

Basically, after having removed these 4 paragraphs, it appears that there is no essay left to revise. There is however, an essay that needs to be written. What is left is a space where your professional leadership and influencing experience should have been placed. While this current version cannot offer any information regarding your professional leadership and influencing skills, I am sure that you have several to speak of. Therefore, you should revise your essay in order to better represent the prompt requirement. Failure to do so will have dire consequences for your application.

You need to have an experience that shows you at the head of the team. The highly respected leader. How do you confront a dire situation at the office? What sort of influencing skills must one possess in order to achieve a resolution to the situation? Think of the prompt requirement,

Chevening is looking for individuals that 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.

All of the experiences that you shared do not give you the true leadership and influencing responsibilities, which is why your reference to these information will not help your application.

I rewrote my essay and would be thankful if you can review and state your comments
Leadership is about seeing the bigger picture, being patient, aiming to the target, making the right decision but after discussing ideas and possibilities with colleges, being firm yet resilient, giving your colleges the freedom to improvise, act and innovate in their tasks to achieve the greater goal. It's a long path which you can master by experience, hardworking and learning from your mistakes.

@Sleem Mohamed
by the way.thank you for your feedback. here is my feedback I hope that useful

''...hardworking and learninglearn from your mistakes.''
''...who is responsible of for the...''
''Despite being the youngest in the site''
''That includes monitoring teams of the overall number ...''

The reason that the soldier story won't work is because it did not require you to show any of the military character traits in your leadership. Creating a football field is not exactly an exemplary leadership skill. Specially since you were still subordinate to a higher authority. You were merely "assigned" to complete a task. You were not a group leader of any sort. If you had indicated that you had leadership in a war games type scenario, it might be considered a leadership and influencing skill depending upon what the situation you were facing was. Friendly fire and all, real leadership skills, in a pressure situation is required in that scenario.

Both your current work scenarios describe your leadership abilities in a good way. Your essay would be better improved if you present your traits in an implementable manner though. Use a particular site problem. Explain the problem and what steps were necessary to lead and influence the team. Your current essay makes it sound like your leadership is something that occurred naturally. So justify that with an example of both traits in action. Don't just give a long list of job descriptions. Which is what you have given me here.