A good Communicating and Influencing statement needs to show more than your ability to speak confidently or write a clear email.
The assessor needs evidence that you understood the people you were dealing with, made sensible decisions about how to communicate with them and influenced what happened next.
With a maximum of 250 words, there is very little space for background that does not help demonstrate the behaviour. Your example needs to get quickly to the point and spend most of its space on what you did, why you did it and what changed because of it.
Interview Detectives uses B-STAR for behaviour statements: Belief, Situation, Task, Action, Result. The structure makes sure the important evidence is present without forcing the finished answer to sound like five separate sections.
For the broader behaviour guide, see Communicating and Influencing Civil Service.
What the assessor is looking for
The important part of the behaviour's name is not only Communicating. It is Communicating and Influencing.
Suppose you write:
I produced a presentation explaining the new process and delivered it to the team.
That proves you communicated something. It tells us very little about whether you understood your audience or influenced anybody.
Now compare it with:
I realised experienced staff were resisting the new process because the original guidance did not address their concern about additional workload. I changed the explanation to show how the new check fitted into the cases they handled every day and dealt separately with the concerns of colleagues who remained unconvinced.
Now there are decisions to assess. You have recognised why the original communication failed, adapted what you were doing and given the assessor a reason for the approach you chose.
Choosing the right example
Do not automatically pick the occasion where you communicated with the most senior person.
A fairly ordinary workplace situation can make an excellent example if communication genuinely affected the outcome. A customer who did not understand a decision, a colleague resisting a new process, two teams with different priorities or a stakeholder challenging your recommendation can all give you useful evidence.
What matters is that there was something for you to influence. An example becomes much harder to use if everyone agreed with you from the beginning and all you did was pass information from one person to another.
Also look at the vacancy. If two examples are equally strong, the one that feels closer to the work and level of the role is usually easier for the assessor to connect with.
How to use B-STAR in a 250 word statement
Belief
Start with one short sentence that explains how you approach the behaviour. For example: “I believe good communication starts with understanding what matters to the audience, then choosing the clearest way to help them act.” That is enough. Belief should set up the example, not become a paragraph of generic claims.
Situation
Give just enough context to make the problem understandable. “Our team was introducing a revised quality process, but several experienced colleagues believed it would create unnecessary extra work” is more useful than a long history of the project.
Task
Make your own responsibility clear. The reader should not have to work out whether you were leading the situation, assisting somebody else or simply present when it happened.
Action
This is where most of the evidence belongs. Explain what you did and why. For this behaviour, that often means showing what you learned about the audience, how you changed your approach, how you dealt with resistance and why you chose one method over another.
Result
Show what changed. Use a number when you genuinely have a credible measure, but do not manufacture one because you think every Civil Service example needs a percentage. A clear decision, adoption of a process, a recurring issue disappearing in later checks or a stakeholder changing position can all be strong results.
Communicating and Influencing 250 word statement example
Here is a complete example written at approximately EO level.
I believe good communication starts with understanding what matters to the audience, then choosing the clearest way to help them act.
In an EO casework role, I supported the rollout of a revised quality-check process after several avoidable errors had been identified. Although guidance had been issued, some experienced colleagues felt the extra check would slow them down and were continuing to use the old approach.
I needed to help the team understand the reason for the change and gain enough support for it to be used consistently.
I spoke to colleagues individually first, which showed that the main concern was not the policy itself but how it would affect daily workload. I replaced the original guidance with a short worked example using a common case type, showing exactly where the extra check fitted. For colleagues worried about time, I compared completed cases and showed that fixing an error later created more work than completing the check properly first time.
One colleague remained unconvinced, so I asked them to trial the process on their own cases for a week and tell me what was unclear. Their feedback identified one confusing instruction, which I rewrote before sharing the updated guide with the team.
The team adopted the revised process and the same avoidable error did not appear in the next quality review. The worked example was also reused when new starters were trained.
Word count: 232
The B-STAR breakdown
| Part | What the example does |
|---|---|
| Belief | Sets out the candidate’s approach to good communication in one sentence. |
| Situation | Shows that guidance has already failed and experienced colleagues are resisting the change. |
| Task | Makes the candidate responsible for improving understanding and gaining consistent adoption. |
| Action | Shows listening, diagnosis of the real objection, adapted guidance, practical evidence, a trial and a change based on feedback. |
| Result | The team adopts the process, the recurring error is absent from the next quality review and the material is reused. |
The finished statement itself does not need visible B, S, T, A and R labels. B-STAR is the structure underneath the answer.
Why this example works
The situation is ordinary enough to be believable, but it still contains a genuine influencing problem. The original guidance has not worked and some experienced colleagues are actively resisting the change.
The candidate listens before deciding what to do. They discover that the objection is about workload, not the policy itself, and adapt the communication around that concern.
When one person still disagrees, the candidate does not simply repeat the message more forcefully. They create a small trial, invite criticism and improve one confusing instruction as a result. That makes the communication feel two-way rather than performative.
The result is also proportionate to the story. The team adopts the process, the specific recurring error is absent from the next quality review and the worked example becomes useful training material. There is no need to bolt on a suspiciously neat percentage.
Want more examples at your grade?
One worked example is useful for seeing how B-STAR fits together. The full grade-specific statement guides give you complete examples across all nine behaviours, written at the level of responsibility expected at that grade. Use them to compare structure, depth and evidence before you write your own example.
Build the rest of your behaviour statements
The grade-specific packs cover all nine Civil Service behaviours with full worked examples at the level you are applying for.
Show the reasoning behind your actions
One of the easiest ways to strengthen an Action section is to look at each important step and ask yourself why you did it.
If you arranged individual conversations, why were they better than another team meeting? If you changed written guidance, what had you learned about the original version? If you used data, why was evidence likely to move that particular stakeholder?
You do not need to write “I did this because...” after every sentence, but the reasoning should be visible often enough for the assessor to understand your judgement.
What changes at different grades?
AA/AO
A credible example might involve helping a customer understand a process, adapting your explanation when somebody is confused or keeping a difficult conversation clear and respectful. Do not invent strategic stakeholders.
Executive Officer
The example should usually show more independent judgement: persuading a colleague, explaining a change, dealing with resistance or helping a team adopt a better approach.
HEO/SEO
Look for greater complexity. You might be influencing several teams, explaining a recommendation to senior managers, communicating sensitive information or resolving genuinely different stakeholder priorities.
Grade 6/7
The evidence needs to show senior influence through the scale of the decision, the people involved and the consequences. Cross-organisational agreement, difficult strategic messages or influencing senior leaders can work well when they are real.
Ready to build the rest of your application evidence?
Choose your grade for the full all-nine-behaviour statement pack.
Do not turn B-STAR into a formula
B-STAR is useful because it stops you missing important evidence. It becomes less useful if you treat it as a rigid word-count template.
Belief might be one sentence. Situation and Task together may only take a few lines. Action can easily take more than half the statement. That is fine.
The framework is there to make the evidence easy to score, not to create five perfectly balanced sections.
Common reasons statements fall short
Communication but no influence. The candidate gives updates, sends emails and holds meetings, but nobody’s understanding or position changes.
Too much background. By the time the candidate acts, half the 250 words are gone.
Actions with no reasoning. The assessor can see what happened but not why the candidate chose that approach.
Influence asserted rather than shown. “I persuaded them” skips the part that actually demonstrates the behaviour.
A manufactured result. A strangely precise percentage with no obvious way it could have been measured can make a natural example sound less believable.
Too much “we”. Team context is fine, but the assessor still needs to identify the applicant’s own decisions and contribution.
Should you use numbers in the result?
Yes, when you genuinely know them.
If your team had a recorded quality score, you know how many complaints were received, a documented backlog fell from one known figure to another or a project finished three weeks early, those facts are useful.
But do not force a number into every answer. “All three operational leads agreed the revised approach and it moved into implementation” is already specific. No invented percentage improves it.
Final check before you submit
Read the statement as though you have never met the candidate. Can you clearly see the communication problem, what they believed good communication required, what they were responsible for, what they personally did, why they chose those actions and what changed?
Then check the word count. If you have space left, do not fill it automatically. Add something only if it strengthens the evidence.
Use examples like the one above to understand structure and level. Your final statement still needs to be based on your own experience.
Preparing for interview instead? Go to Communicating and Influencing Civil Service Interview Questions.
