MBA Admissions Essay - Leadership Questions

Business school admissions essay section will teach how to structure and write your essay. This section also contains a number of sample admissions essays to help guide you.

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Leadership Questions

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What is the most valuable lesson you have learned in a leadership role? - Kellogg

Part of leadership is the ability to make a difference under difficult circumstances. With this in mind, describe a situation in which you exhibited such leadership. - Yale

The leadership questions usually come in two forms: the kind that ask about your "leadership style" and the kind that ask you to discuss a "leadership situation." You should not try to use a single essay to address both questions, because they require different emphases. The first question asks you to describe principles that define your approach to leadership. Of course, you should then back these principles up with evidence of how you've applied them.

The second question wants you to focus on a single experience (or in some cases two experiences). For these essays, your first objective is to flesh out the details of the situation and the contributions you made. You must tell an in-depth, engaging story before you even worry about the insights and lessons you deduce. Then, when you get to that stage, your insights into leadership should be focused on the story you just told. Don't stray too far by trying to include everything you know about leadership.

After this basic difference in emphasis, the strategies for both essays are essentially the same and include the following:

1. Describe your strengths honestly. You don't have to give much attention to weaknesses or even discuss them explicitly (though if you can mention plans for improvement, that can be very effective). The point here is to show a clear awareness of your personal strengths, as opposed to pretending to be the best at everything. Taking the latter approach will suggest that you only know the cliches of leadership, but don't have a genuine understanding of how to exercise it in real life.

2. Avoid oversimplified principles. You most likely won't have anything entirely new to say, but you can still avoid stating the obvious. Again, the best approach is to stay specific and personal. You might, for example, combine two straightforward principles and show how you've combined them effectively.

3. Show growth. One way to avoid having to cite the obvious is instead to show through examples how you came to understand a particular lesson. Your readers are interested in how you've developed and matured. Start off by indicating your uncertainty, and then frame your newly learned principles not as conclusions to share with the reader, but as an integral part of the story's arc.

4. Illustrate your personal qualities. In addition to conveying your own strong understanding of how to lead, you should also indicate to the reader the valuable qualities you have cultivated for that task. These can include communication, collaborative, organizational, and problem-solving skills, as well as personal characteristics like inspiration, initiative, responsibility, and vision. As always, there's no point in simply naming these qualities. You must show them through example.

SAMPLE ESSAY:

As a Marketing Manager with ADP's corporate marketing department, I have been assigned to lead various product-specific marketing initiatives supporting a diversified group of business segments. Among these tasks, none was more important to the strategic direction of the business than leading the development of ADP's web site, adp.com.

ADP, a leading $5 billion technology company with over 425,000 clients worldwide, lacked a consistent or aggressive Internet strategy. Instead, each business unit or division was driving its own website strategy and execution. More often than not, the result was a fragmented message: a cluttered, company-centric website that failed to effectively communicate our broad range of products and services. Despite its market leadership, ADP was meeting neither the expectations of users nor the needs of clients. The company was also missing a tremendous marketing opportunity and risking losing market share because our competition was operating at a far higher level than ours. Realizing that corporate marketing could add value across the company's business segments, I initiated and led a plan to redesign the website and fully leverage the Internet as a marketing channel to drive branding, product awareness, and sales leads through an integrated and path-driven website.

My role was specific: develop a strategy to improve navigation, communicate the complete range of ADP's products and services, optimize the flow of traffic to drive leads for the business segments, persuade visitors to purchase ADP products and services online, and create a platform for ADP's evolving E-business strategy. This initiative was highly challenging because of the complexity of the service offerings, the diversity of the business, and the overwhelming political bureaucracy within the organization.

With a limited budget, limited resources, and limited supervision, I designed a four-phase strategy to re-evaluate the current website and replace it with an active, path-driven site. The strategy included a review of the company's current navigation and content, a strategic assessment mapping navigation and functionality against corporate and divisional objectives, and the design and architecture of the site. Furthermore, we developed a plan to validate our recommendation with market feedback through client and prospective client focus group interviews.

The first phase encompassed an overall program review, analysis of all current ADP and industry Internet market research, a web traffic audit, and internal interviews with senior management. In familiarizing ourselves with current industry practices, we also reviewed ten competitors and twelve business-to-business leaders' websites. These 22 sites were carefully evaluated for their relative strengths and weaknesses in the areas of navigation, content, degree of user-centricity, and organization. The second phase included a design exploration. Working together with a web design firm, we developed five different design options. In phase three, we gathered market feedback through focus group interviews conducted with both clients and prospects based on the current web site and on the new design options. The final phase involved feedback-based revisions to the designs, which will be presented to ADP's Executive Committee in April and launched in May 2000.

The project was a success. Our recommendation was received with exceedingly positive feedback by both the business units and the Executive Vice President of Marketing. In addition, I have been awarded with the honor of presenting the project to the Executive Committee in April. Our long-term goal is to develop an entire adp.com team dedicated to servicing clients and marketing on the Internet.

The management skills I have gained from this project have been invaluable to my career growth. I have learned the value of qualitative and quantitative research, experience in fiscal management and project management, and the importance of matching corporate strategy to Internet strategy. More importantly, the experience has taught me the value of gathering senior management "buy in" through the progression of a project. I was able to successfully gain the support of senior management by maintaining open communication and making them part of the process. Ultimately, this support was critical to the success of the project, which has brought my department and me increased visibility within the companya development that, in turn, has led to more important projects. Through the success of adp.com, I am now regarded as an effective and respected manager who has the ability to analyze and lead complex projects from concept to completion while gaining the support of senior management.

COMMENTS:

This applicant focuses his first six paragraphs on the details of his project and the roles he played. He includes specific duties such as the following: "My role was specific: develop a strategy to improve navigation, communicate the complete range of ADP's products and services, optimize the flow of traffic to drive leads for the business segments, persuade visitors to purchase ADP products and services online, and create a platform for ADP's evolving E-business strategy." Because he focuses on concrete examples, he does not need to tell us about his ability to strategize or communicate. We can deduce for ourselves the kinds of skills he shows in his work.

In his conclusion, the writer avoids citing generic cliches about leadership and instead focuses on practical lessons learned. There are implicit broader principles behind those lessons, but it's more important that we see how he has applied them to his specific case. For example, "the importance of matching corporate strategy to Internet strategy" speaks essentially to the importance of aligning goals, which applies to all leadership situations.