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drnishi · Wed Sep 09, 2009 12:36 pm

I am an entrepreneur (cofounder of a Startup that is doing well). My background in short: I am a medical doctor who changed her career and helped start an Internet company. I have five years of experience running a small company, A Masters in Nutrition from the US, a 4.0 Grad GPA, average undergrad GPA (Can't get exceptional GPAs in medicine), a GMAT of 770 and a fairly good story to tell.

My second essay topic is about a significant leadership experience and what it taught me about my strengths and weaknesses. I have two options in mind:

1. We bagged a huge project (2007) and there were conflicts between the sales and operations team. I helped resolve the situation and ensured the success of the project. Strengths: My ability to create better understanding between teams and resolve a situation. Weaknesses: my eagerness to bag the project which was one of the reasons for the conflict, my attempts to salvage every project (sometimes it is just not worth it)
2. I mentored an employee to become more confident and succeed in her job responsibilities. I had initially given up on her but I eventually gave her space to grow. And she has matured into a good leader herself. Strengths: my ability to nurture employees, my mentoring skills Weaknesses: My initial impatience, how I overwhelmed her with too many ideas.

Though option 2 is more personal and more "different" I am worried it does not involve managing several teams of people or making a significant difference in revenues (though I have done all that at my startup as well). Quoting what I read elsewhere "Teaching is not really leadership. Mentoring is not leadership either. Real leadership is taking people who don't necessarily agree with you and steering them through a situation, problem, or crisis. When you take a large group of diverse people and get them to follow you in thought and action to make a significant impact on an organization, company, or community, then you've led. Until you've done that, you have not led."

Is it mandatory to include "leading teams" in the leadership essay, especially if I say I have done so in my resume?

Which one would you pick and why?

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Paxton Helms - Kaplan · Fri Sep 11, 2009 12:25 pm

Hi and thanks for your note.

I think that the first option is probably the better one; but, my more general concern is with the lessons that you are drawing from these experiences.

"Eagerness", for instance, is not necessarily a vice and "ability to create undestanding between teams" sounds good but will need to be taken down to a more operationalized level.

I would say, just based on the very little bit that you have said about the experience, that more concrete insights might look something like:

S's: strong general manager; whatever techniques you used to resolve the conflict (i.e., focus on interests instead of positions); ability to inspire a team to coalesce around an idea, etc.

W's: lack of foresight and limited insight into team dynamics (even your own team); limited understanding of how to manage growth and the impact that a large contract would have across the company... (you can see how each of these tie into your "why an MBA" essay...).

Whatever you say, you need to be very concrete and I suggest that you tie them into some of the "Why an MBA?" themes that you will have developed elsewhere. E-mail me or post to this board again and I'll tell you the model / metaphor that I use for describing MBA applications.

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