First of all, Kellogg here is asking for ONLY one experience. You can use any story from your professional life or from your extracurricular activities. However, I prefer that you use a story from your professional career. But, if you have a fabulous story from any side hustle, nonprofit experience, sports or music, then feel free to use that story in this essay.
Now, how to select the best story? Have you championed any Six Sigma initiative in your company? Have you spearheaded any strategic project that significantly improved your company’s bottom-line or led an initiative to launch new products in the emerging markets? Have you supervised your company’s social initiatives or been a board member of any nonprofit? Well, all these are appropriate examples of “creating lasting values”.
Focus on the word “brave” in the essay prompt. It implies that there were risks involved in the process as without any risk, bravery is simply not needed. According to Francesca Cornelli, Dean of Kellogg, thinking bravely refers to thinking out of box and being bold enough to challenge the status quo. Don’t just measure the significance of an experience solely on the dollar amounts saved or the percentage improvement made in your companies’ quality process. Evaluate the challenges that you faced and the lessons you have learned while solving those challenges.
Write this “leadership experience” essay with a masterful mix of personal anecdotes, sparks of insight and applicable pieces of wisdom. The details about exactly what you did, said and learned will provide valuable information about how you approach issues and learn from experience. Write down few sentences to set up the background of the story, and then use the majority of the space to describe specifically what you did, thought, felt and how you behaved. Use details to entice the reader and differentiate yourself from hundreds of other Kellogg applicants.
Show them how you faced the challenges along your path. Did you manage global teams based in Asia or Middle East? Did you stretch yourself to coordinate with virtual teams located across different time zones while managing clients’ expectation? Did you face any inter-personal challenge from a hostile colleague with whom you struggled to develop good working relationship? Did you manage any third party vendor or purchased industrial products from vendors in China or Korea and face substantial cross cultural challenges in that endeavor? The crux of this essay is what you learnt from this experience. You should highlight the transferable skills that your acquired or sharpened during this challenging phase of your career.
Don’t forget to mention teamwork, which is a core value of Kellogg’s culture. Choose a leadership example that showcases your ability to rally others around you to achieve a target and guide them toward an objective. Keep in mind that ability to seamlessly work with people from all walks of life demonstrates maturity and social skills.
Values are our fundamental beliefs. They control our subconscious mind and guide our actions. For instance, if you believe that your time on this planet is a finite resource that would get exhausted one day, then you are not very likely to procrastinate. You will respect timeliness and are most likely to complete your tasks on time. On the other hand, if you believe that stress is a major problem in your life and reducing stress is one of your priorities, then you are more likely to relax and not get jittery about deadlines. Hence, two human beings who have different core beliefs behave in totally different ways.
Some examples of core values are - Dependability, Loyalty, Commitment, Open-mindedness, Consistency, Honesty, Efficiency, Innovation, Creativity, Compassion, Spirit of adventure, Positivity, Optimism, Courage, Perseverance etc. Now the million dollar question is - what are your core beliefs? Analyze your personality and select three values at the max (as you have 450 words only) that are significant to your life. Thereafter, explain with suitable anecdotes how these values have shaped you as a leader as well as a human being.
Values and beliefs are little vague in nature. It’s often difficult to pinpoint our own values unless we thoroughly understand our psychology. In case you want to brainstorm with an expert to uncover your values, talk to me.
Is there some aspects of your leadership personality that has not been covered anywhere in the application? This is the right place to write that. But in case of any gaps in your profile such as low GMAT, layoff and so on, you can address it here.
Keep in mind that attempting the optional essay demonstrates your seriousness. In a cut-throat globally competitive B-Schools admission process, seriousness of the applicants is one of the most important factors. In case you don’t have any gaps in career or low GMAT, this essay is another chance to portray your uniqueness. But be sure to avoid repetition!
Please review my tips for Optional MBA essays in my blog page here.
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