Leadership example. What kind of example to use?

[Carolhh]

I thought this was one of the easy ones, but still my example of how I managed the team and all customer services targets were met didn't score well. Wondering what else needs to be covered for this behaviour?

I'm writing it at HEO level for a civil service application, Thank you

Try to find a more specific example, where your leadership skills helped achieve a good result, rather than a general management one. A time where something was going wrong, a crisis, half your team off sick...and how you led your team through it. Include lessons learned, changes or improvements you made as a result.

So you are demonstrating the qualities of leadership, rather than telling them your job responsibilities. Think around problem solving, motivating team, good decision making, innovation.

Do think about the difference between leadership and management. Leadership in the civil service sense is usually about motivating and inspiring others towards achieving a goal, while management tends to be more about the logistics of e.g. rotas and checks. Make sure your example actually shows leadership, not just organisation.

Also, have you found the Success Profiles guide on gov.uk? Have a read of the relevant elements (should be listed in the job spec), and get a sense of what your recruitment panel are looking for for each criterion.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/success-profiles

Thank you all great tips. I've got the success Profile thank you.
I used this example but scored only 2, so this is perhaps not great. Could I amend this perhaps? thanks a bunch.

Leadership
I covered my Team Leaders position while she was away. No rota or duties had been allocated ready for staff to start the week.

I called a meeting to discuss how we were going to cover all roles to ensure our customers, internal and external, received an excellent service. I asked for two volunteers to man the phones. I reminded everyone that we have been doing well recently due to the teams effort so have a good chance to secure future funding and that we owed a first class service to the clients.

I asked for ideas about the rotas and duties, ensuring everyone had a say, including those with alternative working patterns and law placement students.

I maintained team morale with positivity and humour.

There were disputes around who wanted to do what and accusations of cherry picking. I suggested that we worked to our strengths to maintain service and that I would schedule a meeting for later in the week to discuss this. All working patterns were taken into account, some staff swapping roles during the day. My suggestions were adopted.

The outcome was, we met our customer-service targets that week and clients were happy.

I did hold a further meeting about work allocation, all views were aired and feedback taken on board by everyone.

I had taken responsibility and by employing the individual skills of each person, fostering inclusion and accounting for the individual diverse needs of people, I led the team to a peaceful successful week.

Candidly, I would probably choose a different example - the one you have there falls pretty squarely into management rather than leadership. The outcome isn't particularly compelling ("nothing broke"), there's a lot of description of process rather than impact/ results ("You held a meeting" - so what? Did it achieve anything?), and you tend to make statements rather than explaining your thought process (e.g. "took views into account" - did you weigh some concerns more heavily than others? Why? What factors did you take into account when you did that, and how did you justify your decisions to the team and get them to agree with you?).

If it helps, think of an expedition to the North Pole - the manager is the one making sure there's enough food and organising sled rotas, but the leader is the one who's lit the fire in people to want to walk to the North Pole and is motivating them to keep going through the snowstorm even though they're freezing and tired. Do you see the difference?

Also, people tend to talk about times when everything went perfectly, when actually, you'll often show leadership skills most clearly when things have gone completely belly up and you need to lead the recovery effort or change tack.

Hopefully that helps in thinking of another idea?

@DuvetCaterpillar thank you for your feedback. I'll think of another example and post back great tips from you, it really helps. cheers.