Civil Service HEO Behaviours

[StevieK89]

I have been an EO for a while now, managing a team of AO advisors. I decided I wanted to progress to HO but I have been really struggling with the behaviours.

I feel like I have all the right strengths, experience and behaviours. I’ve also had senior team members as why I haven’t moved on with all the examples I should have.

My problem is I just can’t think of what examples to use for certain behaviours. I write them down and then read them back but they just don’t seem write. I have had a few come back but I’m only hitting 3’s. The problem with this is that they don’t provide feedback so I don’t know where I’m failing.

The behaviours I have been writing are mostly, Leadership, Developing Self and Others, Working Together, Delivering at Pace and Making Effective Decisions.

Any help would be much appreciated 😊

Do you have someone to help you with this in your department? You need someone more senior who has experience with behaviours drafting to help you. Ideally I'd get someone SEO or above. Is there someone you could ask?

Your line manager should be able to check them for you or you could sign up for one of the mentoring schemes potentially.

As a LM, I would help my team develop their evidence for applications. Is there nobody within your department or the department that you're applying for that would help you?

Alternatively, I'm SEO with extensive recruitment experience from CS and happy for you to message me and see what I can do to help 😊

Have you asked if feedback possible?
CS applications are so hard to crack. I got feedback last time & the person told me it was very obvious I could do the job but the examples weren't quite clear enough. It's like sitting oral exams

Also happy to have a look (G7 here). Are you being too descriptive and process-ey? One of the things people sometimes do is not focus enough on the 'next level' elements of what they are doing- e.g. for working together I want to understand how you understood how to get people working together more effectively based on their interests and motivations, the range of strategies you employed, etc. Rather than just a description of working well in a team. And if you can link this back to policy and strategy that's a better win!

Obviously the types of situation you would apply this to are more complex as you go up the grades.

It can be quite hard to do if you don't have the grade experience though- are there any TPs or TDs to the next grade you could apply for to get the experience?