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Delivering at Pace: Civil Service Behaviour at HEO and SEO
The behaviour Delivering at Pace is about showing drive, focus, and responsibility for achieving results. At HEO and SEO grade this means keeping work aligned to top priorities, supporting your team to meet objectives, and ensuring quality outcomes within agreed timescales.
Applicants are expected to demonstrate how they organise workloads, adapt when priorities shift, and make sure that resources and support are in place so that deadlines are met. It is also about holding yourself accountable while giving others the space and authority to deliver their part.
In a 250-word statement, you should aim to cover:
⏱️ A belief statement that shows your commitment to delivering timely and high-quality results.
⏱️ A situation that had clear deadlines or required careful workload management.
⏱️ The actions you took to keep progress on track, manage resources, and respond when challenges or competing demands arose.
⏱️ The results you achieved, ideally supported by evidence such as meeting a deadline, improving efficiency, or achieving a measurable impact.
The B-STAR method is especially useful here because it encourages you to highlight how you managed competing demands and kept performance on course. Be specific about your personal role, and explain how your actions ensured successful delivery.
The image above shows a complete example statement for Delivering at Pace at HEO/SEO grade. Use it as a guide to structure your own statement, focusing on accountability, adaptability, and results.
What Delivering at Pace means at HEO/SEO level
Your existing page already covers priorities, resources and adapting when work changes. To make the statement stronger, show how you managed delivery through other people while keeping overall responsibility for the outcome.
🎯 Keep focus on top priorities: make sure the team understands what matters most.
✅ Use appropriate procedures: protect required controls while still allowing people to improve how work is done.
🧰 Provide the right resources: make sure colleagues have the tools, information or support they need.
📊 Monitor against milestones: keep a clear view of progress and consider individual needs when allocating work.
🔄 Reassess workloads: change priorities promptly when competing demands threaten delivery.
🙌 Give people authority: allow colleagues space to deliver while remaining accountable for the overall result.
How to strengthen the example already on this page
Keep the existing example as a model and make sure your own statement shows a point where the plan came under pressure. That is where the assessor can see your judgement. Explain how you decided what to protect, what to move and what support the team needed.
A strong HEO/SEO answer normally shows more than personal organisation. The useful evidence is how you maintained visibility of delivery and helped other people meet the objective.
Example of the level of evidence to aim for
I believe delivering at pace depends on clear priorities and early intervention when work starts to drift.
While managing a policy delivery team, I was responsible for producing a set of implementation materials against a fixed external deadline. Halfway through the work, two urgent requests arrived that required input from the same specialists.
I reviewed the plan and separated the activities that were essential for launch from work that could move later. I agreed revised ownership with the team and moved one experienced colleague onto the highest-risk material while giving another member responsibility for coordinating routine updates.
I introduced short progress checks against the remaining milestones and asked colleagues to raise blockers immediately rather than waiting for the next scheduled meeting. When one approval was delayed, I escalated it with a clear explanation of the impact and a recommended decision.
I protected the required quality checks and gave colleagues freedom to decide how they completed their allocated work within those controls.
The implementation materials were completed by the deadline and the urgent requests were handled without creating a later backlog. The clearer allocation of ownership was retained for the next delivery cycle.
Quick statement check
✅ Is the priority clear?
✅ Can the assessor see how you allocated work or resources?
✅ Have you shown how you monitored progress?
✅ Is there a point where you reassessed the plan?
✅ Did you give others enough authority to deliver their part?
✅ Does the result show both pace and quality?
For interview preparation, see our HEO Delivering at Pace interview guidance.
