Provide a candid assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.

I am a leader, and I would like to emphasize a few characteristics I have found to be especially important in terms of my leadership skills. In my opinion, the biggest challenge of leadership is taking responsibility rather than assigning it. I’ve always taken responsibility. For me, personal example is not a slogan, but a regular practice. I believe that a real leader is someone with full integrity and high moral standards and all my life I have striven to keep the highest standards in my personal and professional lives.

I am a very open minded person. While I believe in myself, I am also highly self-critical. My gift, as a journalist, has been to interact with a lot of people who are smarter and more experienced than me. I believe I am a quick learner and for me, criticism is a means of self-improvement. I must admit that I make many mistakes, but I try not to repeat them and to understand what went wrong in order to improve in the future.

I’m a man of action and not a man of words. I know that this statement sounds funny coming from a journalist, but I truly believe first in action. The Jewish leadership includes two items: responsibility and action. A Jewish leader is judged on his deeds, rather than his words.

I tend to make difficult decisions on my own, rather than reaching out for help. This is an advantage when the process requires speed and decisiveness, but I believe that I need to be more open to discussion and that is something I have been focused on improving. I am a very curious individual; over the years I’ve gained an extremely large base of knowledge, but I acknowledge that I lack international exposure as someone who has never been away from my home for more than 4 months. I’m also aware that I don’t have the broad base of knowledge required of a 21st century global manager. I believe studying at HBS could help to address these weaknesses.

Lastly, I am an ambitious and determined individual. My efforts are to keep those characteristics in balance so they will be strengths and not weaknesses. A thorough understanding of personality brings me to the conclusion that balance is the key differentiating factor between strengths and weaknesses. Most characteristics are neutral in nature and the way that you use them determines whether they become a weakness or a strength.