I am applying for the chevening scholarship for the first time. this is my first draft of "Leadership & Influence" question. i am applying applying for the chevening scholarship from libya and i would be really pleased with your feedbacks and comments. Thank you in advance.
Q1) 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.
(minimum word count: 50 words, maximum word count: 500 words)
leadership in my opinion, is to have a vision accompanied with ability to guide people towards that vision through inspiration, motivation, and encouragement. and to apply that, a leader needs to influence people through initiative actions to make them believe that his goals are their goals, and to demonstrate his ability to carry them towards achieving those goals. unfortunately, in my country leadership is usually confused with command and authority. its a huge misconception that somehow contributes to the current situation of my country.
My first experience with leadership was back in 2013 when i was at the verge of graduation. along with my partner we had to complete our graduation project within 6 months and to be honest, i wasn't the initiative type of a person at the the time nor was my partner, but one of us had to step up and take the lead in order to complete the project before the deadline. i took the lead on the project planning preparation and engaged my partner through encouragement and motivation giving him clear tasks and making him believe that my success was his too. the project was completed before the deadline and we were able to pass the project evaluation with excellence.
our graduation project required data collection and field measurements, and we were lucky to get support from a new local telecommunication company that was working on a huge national telecommunication project using the same technology as the one used in our project. the company admired our work and as a result i was hired by this company two months after graduation.
soon after my employment i was assigned as supervisor for the company's student support program handling a team of three engineers that provided guidance, training, and support for students that were on the verge of graduation, and through this experience i was able to gain skills that allowed me to handle people and influence their decisions .
shortly after that, i was assigned as the coordination and follow-up team leader. this team was one of the main project teams and was responsible for presenting the company's project to the customers and collecting their requirements to use it as input for our telecom network design. and while working with this team i was able to learn how to exploit other people's skills and direct them efficiently towards achieving our goals through motivation.
In the past two years while working in Etisalat Naweea Co. (ENC) i had many chances and made many contributions that resulted in the improvement of my leadership skills. I may not be able to call my self a true leader as i need more experience for that; but at least i have a vision, and that is to influence the telecommunication industry in my country to improve through effective management and leadership, to contribute to the improvement of our educational system to make it able to produce reliable and highly educated engineers though guidance and mentorship.
Ahmed, I caution you against concentrating this essay on your college project. Regardless of the difficulties that you faced, which do not really seem at all significant in this essay, the fact is that referring to your college experience makes the essay topic seem trivial and does not give it the kind of impact and importance that it deserves to have. It would be more beneficial to your essay to present your professional workplace leadership experience instead.
You should not have trivialized the way that you described your professional leadership development. It is insulting to the reviewer to read that paragraph, which makes your professional experience seem like an afterthought when it should have taken the spotlight in this essay. A true leader does not lead in the manner that you did in college. A true leader possesses the ability to lead and influence people in a professional, unpredictable, and uncontrolled setting. Your college experience can never portray the kind of leadership and influencing ability that the reviewer will be looking for in your essay.
Some of the most impressive and notable leadership and influencing qualities will be displayed by the other applicants in their essay. Anything from military leadership all the way to simply doing an advertising campaign will be presented to the scholarship committee. Their essays will be a thousand times more impressive than yours is at this point. In fact, yours will not only pale in comparison, but it will be effectively ignored by the reviewer and the scholarship committee. If you want to have a fighting chance with this essay, then revise the content as soon as you can.
Focus on a specific point in your professional career that will allow you to display ample leadership and influencing abilities. Relate the situation, what the problems were, and how your leadership and influencing abilities aided you in overcoming the obstacles which led to the successful completion of your project or undertaking. You say that you have had many chances and contributions that helped you to improve your leadership skills. Use that particular paragraph in order to introduce the situation that made the most impact upon your leadership abilities. Discuss it in such a manner that will catch the reviewer's attention and make him consider your application seriously. Right now, this essay is unable to do that.
