Some stories confirming my leadership skills. [Chevening] Leadership and Influence Question

Hi! I'm planning to apply for Chevening Scholarship. I would appreciate any feedback. Many thanks!

i have found useful solutions

In Uzbek families, since childhood, people are taught to be modest. May be, because of this reason, it was pretty hard for me to write about my skills. Since I have to, I will share with you couple of stories from my two job experiences where I had to demonstrate my leadership and influence skills.

When I was hired at my first job - "Electronic Government" system development Center - I was a level five student. I had not had job experience before so I was bit flurried. Fortunately, my worries disappeared as I quickly got involved in my work. Very soon I started to be given tasks requiring more and more responsibility. In fifth month of my work, I was appointed as a head of one of coordinating teams. We were given task to design documents of automation of communal services and single billing system. Our team consisted of young specialists and we lacked experience. Moreover, we were provided only 3 months to fulfill the assignment, which meant we would have enough time fix final result, if we something goes wrong. Taking into consideration these two factorsб I suggested the team members to use lean development method instead of waterfall, which was traditional in governmental organizations. Lean method would assist us to realize the project little by little - after completing each part, we "released" it, received remarks and comments from experienced colleagues and moved on next part. Eventually we completed the work successfully since all the mistakes were eliminated immediately after obtaining feedback.

Another story I want to share happened in my second job, where I'm still working. In the second week of working in Samarkanda Travel and Tours, I started realizing that my colleagues had to spend too much energy doing routine work, instead of focusing on more important tasks. It seemed to me that an appropriate software solution would help to optimize some business processes of company. I took initiative automatize this hand-made routine work by introducing information system, which I planned to develop myself. After completing the software, I encountered a huge obstacle-conservatism of my colleagues. They did not encourage to change the way of working they have been practicing for a long time. Initially I had managed to persuade them to use the system to complete at least half of their tasks so that they could assess efficiency of the solution. Now they are happy with the software. Furthermore, they started approaching me asking my opinion about optimizing some more business processes. Honestly I'm proud of inspiring them.

In my point of view, in both stories my leadership skills are embodied in two things - my solutions to the issues and the fact that I convinced people to follow the solutions. The solutions came out knowledge that initially seemed to be not related to these spheres. I believe Chevening scholarship will help me to open new latitude of knowledge that I want to use to contribute tourism sector of my country.

Timur, the tone of your essay is defeatist. Your opening statement tells the reviewer that you are not appreciative of the scholarship, you don't want the scholarship, but you are forced to apply for the scholarship. All reasons that are quite evident in the manner that you are representing yourself in your opening statement. I know you are trying to convey a simple personality and a humble leadership style but that is not what will get you this essay. If you are a strong willed person willing to go to lengths to get what you want out of your current position, then you will not be an effective leader now and in the future. Develop a stronger presentation at the start. Invoke a sense of confidence and willingness to do what it takes to succeed. Those are the traits that make an influential leader. Promote a sense of self belief in your abilities in terms of leadership and influencing. Your body of paragraphs in relation to leadership and influencing, along with the closing statement make a strong case for your application. It is the opening statement that makes is extremely weak and almost not worthy of consideration. If the reviewer does not finish reading the opening statement because of your inability to portray self confidence, then your essay may not help your application progress to the next level.