Leadership...

A very good article by Stacy on Leadership:
http://blog.stacyblackman.com/2006/07/16/what-is-leadership/

I am posting it here for my reference:

« From the Trenches: Insights from Successful Applicants
What is Leadership?

Stacy Blackman consulting reference:

By Jeremy Dann

You’re going to need to figure out the answer to this question very, very soon. Some applications—like Harvard’s—have explicit questions about your defining leadership experiences. While some others don’t boast a “leadership” question per se, the best applications will serve up a heavy dose of this particular “L word” in other essays on personal achievements, passions, etc.Applicants need to think through their past experiences to find the episodes that best illustrate their leadership skills. Sometimes, the best examples are not the first that come to mind. Many applicants automatically tag some of their greatest personal achievements as perfect examples of leadership. However, this is not always the best formula for a strong leadership essays.Your “leadership” essay will often be different from an “accomplishment” or “achievement essay. Just because you achieved something outstanding does not always mean leadership skills were involved, especially if you did most or all of the work. The work of the leader activates or improves the work of others; find anecdotes in your work and extracurricular history that illustrate this kind of pattern.What kind of experiences will make the best tales of leadership? Think about challenges where the following came into play:• Identifying/defining a problem• Articulating vision• Resisting conventional approaches; challenging status quo• Convincing others of importance of problem• Marshalling resources to address problem• Motivating others• Making good use of others’ talents• Being open to new information, input, etc.• Building consensus with appropriate stakeholders• Guiding strong mid-course corrections; overcoming mistakes• Building on successo Permanently upgrade organization’s capabilities; institutionalizing solutiono Illustrate methods for other individuals, organizations, etc.
And remember: leadership is not just about the titles. Some candidates build their leadership essays around the fact that they were selected for or elected to certain positions where they had a high level of authority and responsibility: editor-in-chief of a college paper, fraternity president, captain of the hockey team, director of product development, V.P. of marketing, etc. But what did you do with this position? An editor of a college daily could write about how she was constantly challenged to maintain high levels of editorial excellence, manage staff assignments and hit all deadlines. This is definitely an esteemed position with tons of responsibility, but Ms. Editor, if you describe your role like that, it sounds exactly the same as the role of the other 798 editors-in-chief of college papers. Define the leadership challenges you faced, not the management challenges. Did you have to deal with a certain writer who falsified interview notes? Was there a sticky campus scandal that forced you and your staff to walk an ethical tightrope? Did you have to fire student editors? Did you lead a transition from a weekly to a daily with all of the scheduling and human resources rigors that entails?Collecting impressive titles does not make someone a great leader—helping a team overcome great challenges does.

Target Schools

So's here my almost list of target schools:

1) Stanford
2) Harvard
3) Wharton
4) Kellogg
5) Haas
6) UCLA
7) Sloan/CMU Tepper/ROSS ????

As of now, 6 schools selected, but may change in the next two weeks, which is my self imposed deadline for finalizing schools...

Countdown....

Harvard, Stanford, Sloan, Haas, .... They all have released their questions.. the countdown has begun. No more delaying now... This is what I must do .. get organized and get cracking on the essays... :-)

stanford questions for mine and your reference:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/essays_activities.html