MBA Essay Tips for writing about a time when you convinced an individual or group to accept one of your ideas

This MBA admission essay is a means of exploring your convincing and persuasion skills. The admission officers are interested to find out how good your convincing power is. The admission committee wants to gain an insightful understanding of your people skills, with a stress on negotiation skills. This essay will demonstrate your potential to handle opposition while managing interpersonal fall-out in navigating the situation. A befitting professional incident or an extracurricular activity where you demonstrated your emotional aptitude would be an ideal anecdote to state here.

The idea might be significant or insignificant; the one(s) you are convincing might be an individual or a group. A group might be a team; it might be a client; it might be your friends; alternatively, it might be any senior management of your organization. What you want to do is, explain what the idea was and the way you convinced the individual or a group to accept it. Provide a simple, understandable, and succinct explanation of the idea. Focus on your ability to convince others about an idea and focus on the methods you used.

The task of convincing others to take you seriously would have definitely been a hard job. However, narrate the experience in your essays on a lighter note to make it clear to the admission panel that you were actively into convincing rather than just persuading. You should also concentrate on describing your dealings and the thought processes behind them, rather than the results.

You can follow the SAR (Situation, Action and Result) framework in your essay to explain the anecdote. Ensure to consider the following elements while developing your essay.

• What was the situation that made you convince someone?
• When did you realize that you needed to convince someone to accept one or some of your ideas?
• What was your strategy and how did you succeed to convince the group or individual about your concept?
• Did you convincing strategy was based on numbers, rationality and logic?
• How you collected relevant information and presented to the individual or group?
• Did you exhibit your emotional intelligence?
• Were you able to create a win-win situation?
• Was it hard to convince them? (If it was not hard to convince them, this essay will likely be very ineffective because it will be a poor test of your ability to convince other people.)
• Conclude with the result. And elaborate what you have learnt from the whole exercise and how your people management skills and convincing skills have improved from the whole incident.

Highlight your ability to plead your case and inspire others to accept your ideas in a positive manner. In doing so, you can highlight your problem-solving and leadership skills, thus showing the admission officers that you possess the abilities to succeed through challenges at your b-school as well as your future careers. This essay will significantly demonstrate your skill to lead a group, or to manage effectively in situations when you are not even in command.