An underperforming-team question at Grade 7 tests whether you can restore standards while building capability and protecting delivery. Get the Your Guide to Passing Grade 6 and Grade 7 Civil Service Interviews before your interview so you can prepare the evidence, leadership choices and follow-up the panel will expect at senior level.
Question
“Tell me about a time when you led an underperforming team and improved its results.”
What Is Being Looked For
The panel wants a clear diagnosis of the underperformance and evidence that you addressed it promptly and fairly. At Grade 7, the answer should cover team direction, individual accountability and the wider service effect. Show how you used performance data and staff feedback to separate capability gaps from process or workload problems.
Use B-STAR to explain your belief about clear standards and practical support. Keep the Situation and Task concise. The action should show the expectations you reset, the support you introduced and the decisions you made when progress remained weak. Senior leadership also means creating conditions where people can raise problems before they become failure.
The result needs more than a temporary improvement in one measure. Explain how quality, delivery or confidence changed and how you kept the improvement in place. Prepare for a follow-up about an individual who did not improve and be clear about the fair route you would use.
Example Answer
I believe underperformance should be addressed early with clear evidence, realistic expectations and support that helps people succeed. The team also needs to understand how its work affects the service outcome.
As a Grade 7 operational lead, I inherited a national support team that had missed its response target for four months. Quality checks were inconsistent, staff survey comments described unclear priorities and senior leaders had begun escalating individual cases directly. The team had experienced several management changes and was working from local task lists with no shared view of demand.
I reviewed service data by request type, age and quality outcome. I held short listening sessions with each grade and met team leaders individually. The evidence showed two connected problems: work was assigned by arrival date even when customer impact differed, and several officers lacked confidence in the new guidance for complex requests.
I set a clear service objective and introduced one prioritisation method based on impact and deadline. I gave each team leader responsibility for a daily demand view and a weekly quality discussion. I arranged focused guidance sessions using live case themes and paired less experienced officers with trained reviewers for four weeks. I also removed a duplicate reporting task that took time from casework without supporting a decision.
I published the measures and discussed them openly at weekly team meetings. Where one team leader continued to miss agreed checks, I used specific evidence in a private conversation, agreed an improvement plan and provided coaching from a stronger peer. I reviewed progress regularly and kept expectations firm.
Response performance returned to target within eight weeks and quality results improved. Escalations from senior leaders reduced, and staff feedback showed that priorities and support were clearer. The daily demand view and weekly quality review remained part of the operating model. The team leader completed the improvement plan and later led one of the quality sessions.
Choose an example where your diagnosis and leadership decisions are visible. Use the Your Guide to Passing Grade 6 and Grade 7 Civil Service Interviews before the interview to test whether your answer shows Grade 7 scale, fair accountability and lasting improvement.
