Hello EssayForum community! I am a Chevening Scholarship applicant for the year 2019/2020. I would really appreciate some suggestions on the below essay. Thank you so much!
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 first leading experience happened during the first year of me working at my current company. At that time, our client requested a feature from us. In the beginnning it looked like a pretty simple and straight forward feature, just like any other feature, however after a few meetings with one of the clients we realized that the requirements given were very vague, and we were not even sure that the clients knew what they wanted.
Time was moving fast, multiple meetings were held but we did not produce any meaningful progress, even though the deadline was nearing. The design prototypes we handed out to them never seemed to address the problem. Amidst team's frustration with the condition, I suddenly remembered about a research methodology I learned from my experience in the previous company. This methodology always helped my previous company find the root cause of problems they were facing. However none of the business analysts in my current company had any experience with the methodology.
With this knowledge, I took the initiative to convince and influence the product owner, business analyst and designer in my team to work together with client using this methodology. I explained to them the benefits of this methodology and how with great teamwork, this would find the root cause of the problem and solve it using a proposed feature. Eventually product owner trusted me to lead the project on this particular feature.
This methodology is called Sprint, where we tried to identify solution to a problem and tested it out to real users within 5 days. We all mapped out the problem, tried to come up with a bunch of solutions, prioritized which solutions were worth to try, built few prototypes from the prioritized solution, and tested the prototypes to users. During the Sprint, I encouraged all team members to contribute in building the right solution. We ran into a problem that there were too many solutions that seemed to be the right one, but I quickly solved that by appointing the product owner to have the final say. In the end, the clients seemed happy with the prototype we tested out to them, and we successfully developed and deployed the feature that solved the right problem.
From this experience, I have learned that being a leader is not a matter of being someone in an higher authority position, but rather being able to influence other people to solve an ongoing problem. I hope to practice my leadership skills on a bigger scale if I am chosen to be a part of Chevening scholar.
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.
to practice my leadership skills on a bigger scale
My first leading experience happened during the first year of me working at my current company. At that time, our client requested a feature from us. In the beginnning it looked like a pretty simple and straight forward feature, just like any other feature, however after a few meetings with one of the clients we realized that the requirements given were very vague, and we were not even sure that the clients knew what they wanted.
Time was moving fast, multiple meetings were held but we did not produce any meaningful progress, even though the deadline was nearing. The design prototypes we handed out to them never seemed to address the problem. Amidst team's frustration with the condition, I suddenly remembered about a research methodology I learned from my experience in the previous company. This methodology always helped my previous company find the root cause of problems they were facing. However none of the business analysts in my current company had any experience with the methodology.
With this knowledge, I took the initiative to convince and influence the product owner, business analyst and designer in my team to work together with client using this methodology. I explained to them the benefits of this methodology and how with great teamwork, this would find the root cause of the problem and solve it using a proposed feature. Eventually product owner trusted me to lead the project on this particular feature.
This methodology is called Sprint, where we tried to identify solution to a problem and tested it out to real users within 5 days. We all mapped out the problem, tried to come up with a bunch of solutions, prioritized which solutions were worth to try, built few prototypes from the prioritized solution, and tested the prototypes to users. During the Sprint, I encouraged all team members to contribute in building the right solution. We ran into a problem that there were too many solutions that seemed to be the right one, but I quickly solved that by appointing the product owner to have the final say. In the end, the clients seemed happy with the prototype we tested out to them, and we successfully developed and deployed the feature that solved the right problem.
From this experience, I have learned that being a leader is not a matter of being someone in an higher authority position, but rather being able to influence other people to solve an ongoing problem. I hope to practice my leadership skills on a bigger scale if I am chosen to be a part of Chevening scholar.
