Leadership and Networking: Your Core Values
Following the right structure is your key to writing a powerful Chevening's Leadership and Relationship Building essays.
This will focus on the first two essays of your Chevening application.
DISCLAIMER: This year’s application has new guidelines for writing the essays. The word count has been deducted to 100-300 words, and the requirements are also a bit different in some context. This article represents my OWN point of view and recommended approach according to my experience; therefore, use it wisely.
First of all, let us as usual start with the boring formal stuff: the instructions from the official Chevening website.
Leadership experience:
Describe a time when you demonstrated leadership. In your answer, please address the following:
What was the context or challenge you faced? What specific actions did you take as a leader? What was the outcome, and what did you learn? How has this experience shaped your approach to leadership?
You must enter a minimum of 100 words and a maximum of 300 words.
Relationship Building and Influence:
Tell us about a professional relationship you have built and maintained. In your answer, please address:
How was the relationship formed, and what made it important? What did you contribute to this relationship, and what did you gain? How have you sustained or developed this relationship over time? How will these skills help you build connections within the Chevening community and beyond?
You must enter a minimum of 100 words and a maximum of 300 words.
As you can see. Chevening is not just a degree, you do not ONLY get selected based on your academic excellence, professional experience, or good-looking LinkedIn. They want people who can influence others, have a proven ability to lead, can communicate well, and are able to build mutually-beneficial relationships and long lasting friendships. You must be able to, with examples, show them that you are going there to kill it, not just finish a degree and leave. How do you do that needs certain criteria and structure.
Both Leadership and Networking essays have the same structure. Let me tell you what it is first then we dive into how each paragraph can be written.
I actually wanted to do a visual illustration for the structure but felt too lazy, so bear this boring-looking post. Okay, the way you do it is by first starting with a brief intro, stating what Leadership or Networking is, from your perception. Then, you mention 1 example. 300 words max is barely enough to show your value, that is why I suggest focusing on 1 powerful example and give it enough space and articulation instead of being distracted with 2 examples. What matters is how you write this example, which you will find down this paragraph. Finally, you wrap up with a conclusion statement describing how Chevening would help you to further enrich your leadership or networking skills.
Well, well, well, now the examples themselves, the interesting and challenging part. First and foremost: you might think: do I have examples to mention? If you think this way, you’re not alone, amigo. Preferably and ideally, the example should be related to your profession or what you want to study, but if it is not, that is absolutely alright. Think deeply, you’ll find something that you did before, at work or uni, that showcases your potential.
The distinction between the 2 essays is that when you talk about Leadership and write your examples, the examples should focus on the qualities of a leader and influence. In your example, do not say I have a vision, I am a good influencer, I can communicate well, blah blah. Rather, show this by mentioning a situation, what challenges you faced, what did you have to do, how did you do it, and what was the outcome. Yes, if this triggered something in your mind, then you’re on the right track: it is THE STAR APPROACH! It is extremely critical that you follow this approach when you write your examples, refer to my post on it here. You talk about a situation when you faced a challenge that you solved using you leadership qualities (research what and how a leader must be, and show that in real-life actions). What is new this year is that you should 2 more pieces of information. This is to talk about what did you learn from that example and how it shaped your approach to leadership. I believe this is clear enough, just state the obvious, supplemented from your own experience.
When it comes to Networking or how they call it relationship building and influence, it is quite different this year than how it used to be. A bit trickier I would say. My suggestion is that you also use the STAR method here and make it look like a story, not just answering the questions. Do the same as leadership, start with a very brief intro and then focus on one example, then conclude with answering the final question in the instructions (How will these skills help you build connections within the Chevening community and beyond?). This very last part should be in a separate final paragraph. In the previous one, where you talk about the example and tell a story that answers the required questions within the context, do it in a way like what was the situation through which you formed that professional relationship? What made it important? (the S), what did you have to do in that situation? How did you help that person or entity in the relationship, and what benefits that had on you? All T, A, and R fall here, but in a certain context. What I believe is that you have to be very smart in combining both the questions needed with a real-life scenario from your professional experience in a way that looks like a story that covers the STAR and look coherent and in a proper flow. What I am thinking of as an example, it could be something like you participated in a project, or you had task through which you had to collaborate with an organization or someone from a different team or company to accomplish that task. Mention what the task or project was, focus on the collaboration, what did you have to do, how did you contribute to this or how you helped that person, for instance, and how was that reflected on your work or improved or resulted in the desired outcome. The conclude the example with how you developed this relationship over time. Bare in mind that this specific piece can be within the example. By this I mean, you helped someone in a project, then you maintained this relationship with that someone, then at some point in time, you needed something, help, or anything in critical situation and that person helped you (this answers both what you gained from the relationship and how you developed or sustained it). See? It is tricky and all questions should be embedded within the example in a clever way.
Make your own research. Know what the qualities of a leader are, think deeply and connect it to yours, know what networking is, think of what you did before, and finally, familiarize yourself with Chevening, its global network and how you can contribute to it, and how Chevening focuses on stuff beyond just studying a degree.
Take the instructions, structure, and write your own story!