I was thinking about Kellogg's essay on leadership experiences.
Essay #2
Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences (600 word limit).
Word limit - 600, this means that one can share 2 and the most 3 experiences. I decided picking up 2 experiences. Now, a person can demonstrate leadership traits in various spheres of life aka "Professional", "Social-Service", "Extra Currics" etc. It's my personal opinion that one should include 1 experience from outside the professional life. Career assessment done in essay 1 will cover few leadership traits demonstrated in professional life. I chose 2 experiences - representing my efforts in professional and extra currics spheres.
Next, i started thinking about leadership in general and came across the following quote:
"Leaders don't wait. They shape their own frontiers. The bigger the challenge, the greater the opportunity."
I have highlighted few key words in the quote above. In absense of a challenge it's hard to demonstrate true leadership. "Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm but it requires a true leader to steer the ship in stromy seas"
List down all the success stories from your life and now sort them in descending order of the challenge that you faced in each of those incidents. Share the challenge that you faced...Show how you shaped the frontier {crafted the solution to the problem}, show the impact of your solution and don't forget to summarize the learnings from the incident...
Challenge -- Solution-Orientedness -- Impact -- Learning....
I believe any leadership experience essay can be answered while keeping in mind the above mentioned 4 key words....
Suggestions are most welcome!!!!
4 comments:
Nice post! Just my 1 cent. In addition to challange solving, I think leadership could also be demonstrated in ways you convinced your people to believe and follow your "out of box" views...
What say?
Hi, KT. It looks like you're already putting a lot of thought into your essays as well as sharing some helpful advice with others as well. I'm Kaneisha, and I am a Harvard Business School graduate who owns an essay and career coaching company called The Art of Applying. I'm offering free and discounted essay coaching services to selected MBA applicant bloggers and I'd like to give you more information. Please send me an email so I can tell you how to participate!
Best,
Kaneisha
The Art of Applying
http://theartofapplying.com
Yes, writing about leadership can be quite a challenge. Leadership questions tend to be quite specific, and yet somehow vague at the same time. Check out our special report on leadership -- it provides a nice jumping off point for thinking about leadership and some practical tips for writing about it for b-school essays.
Best of luck!
Sarah P.
www.accepted.com
@A -- you are absolutely right..that's what is called thought leadership :)
@Kaneisha -- thanks..ll surely mail you
@Sarah -- thanks a lot :)
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