My recent leadership skills came during my working as a senior credit analyst in Banque Misr

Leadership Essay for Chevening

The ability to make an impact does not necessitate a leadership position, to take full advantage of the opportunities that come along does require a certain set of leadership skills. Hence, my recent leadership skills came during my working as a senior credit analyst in Banque Misr, facing many problems which require effective decisions to be made.

In Dec 2017, I've got the opportunity to hold a meeting with a multi-national company to target it to my portfolio. They were having a bad impression about public sector banks due to the routine and delay in the process but tried to present the bank and its achievement and our willingness to work with such a large firm, so we agreed about specific deadline get the approval for proposed facilities.

There was a major challenge on the routine of the other departments in the bank as a public sector bank and the delay from them which may affect the agreed deadline, so I decided not to stay in my office and wait them finish their work on the case. I took the document to the investigation department instead of sending it because it will take days to start working on the case. Also, I went to the Economic court by myself to issue bankruptcy certificate for the company because the legal department refused to issue it urgently, which may affect the agreed deadline and my bank image will be worst and maybe lose the credibility which leads to the loss of a large client.

In the end, I got the approval by the agreed deadline and their perspective about our bank has been changed. This company now became one of the largest clients in our team portfolio.

Mohamed, this is the essay that you write when you first do not know what to say. You do know that the essay requires evidence of leadership and influencing abilities right? That means, you cannot be a one person team in the essay presentation. Evidence must be presented to convince the reviewer that you know how to lead people and that you have the ability to influence them when the time is right. This essay is nothing more than a practice in brain fart clearing. It cannot be used for a Chevening application in the range of leadership and influencing abilities.

You must focus your next version on a work related task that required you to put together a financial management team with you as the leader. Discuss the situation, what the requirements to accomplish the goals and objectives were, the size of the staff under your leadership, the steps required to resolve the issue, problems that arose both within the team and / or outside of it that you had to resolve using your influencing skills, and finally, what the result of your leadership and influencing abilities on the project was.

The minute the reviewer reads your opening sentence, he is going to set this essay aside. For all intents and purposes, you should never tell the reviewer that "The ability to make an impact does not necessitate a leadership position". The whole point of the prompt is to prove you have leadership and influencing abilities. That sentence alone will be enough to get your application disqualified from consideration. The fact is that leadership and influencing abilities are requirements for any leadership position in any office. This essay informs the reviewer that you were a pencil pusher at your office and you never progressed from that. Which further weakens this presentation.

When a financial company targets a company or conglomerate for its portfolio, they normally put a team of their best people on the job. Not just one man in pursuit of one client. That tells the reviewer you were a new employee at the company who still needed to prove himself. That isn't going to help you prove leadership and influencing skills. However, leading a team of people in the pursuit of a portfolio increase just might do that.

The essay must involve a clear project, goals, conflict resolution, and a positive result. These are the points you have to present in order to imply that you have any sort of leadership and influencing skills. This essay doesn't do that. Even though you say that the added client increased the team portfolio, the fact that you worked alone throughout the project eliminated the core requirements of the essay from your presentation.