SEO Working Together 250-word statements need to show more than being a helpful colleague. At Senior Executive Officer level, the assessor wants evidence that you built effective relationships across groups, created a shared focus and made sure different perspectives were genuinely considered.
Your best example will usually involve people with different priorities, backgrounds or working styles, where collaboration needed active leadership rather than simply good intentions.
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The complete HEO/SEO guide contains 50 worked examples across all nine Civil Service behaviours.
What Working Together means at SEO level
At HEO/SEO grade, Working Together expects you to encourage joined-up teamwork inside your own area and across other groups. You should establish professional relationships with stakeholders, share information and resources, create a positive team spirit and actively seek input from people with different backgrounds and perspectives.
🤝 Build professional relationships: create trust with people inside and outside your immediate team.
🔗 Work across boundaries: connect teams that need to share information, resources or support.
🎯 Create common focus: make sure people understand the shared outcome.
🌍 Use diverse perspectives: actively seek input from people with different experiences and viewpoints.
💬 Deal with friction constructively: address disagreement before it undermines delivery.
🧠 Support wellbeing: consider the needs of individuals as part of sustainable teamwork.
How to structure a 250-word Working Together statement
💭 Belief: give one short sentence on what effective collaboration means to you.
📍 Situation: explain why joined-up working was needed.
🎯 Task: make your responsibility for bringing people together clear.
🛠️ Action: show how you built relationships, shared information and worked through differences.
📈 Result: explain what improved because people worked together more effectively.
SEO Working Together 250-word example
I believe strong collaboration depends on creating a shared outcome and making it easy for people with different priorities to contribute honestly. I was leading a service improvement involving operations, digital colleagues and an external supplier, where repeated hand-offs were causing delays and frustration between teams.
I met each group separately to understand pressures, dependencies and concerns, then brought them together around a common objective: reducing avoidable delay without weakening service controls. I created a shared process map and made ownership visible so everyone could see where work was stalling.
I encouraged quieter colleagues to contribute by gathering views before joint sessions and used their feedback to challenge assumptions made by more senior participants. Where disagreement developed over responsibility for defects, I moved the discussion away from blame and focused it on evidence, user impact and agreed outcomes.
I introduced a joint weekly review where teams shared risks, capacity and upcoming dependencies. I also made clear that disrespectful behaviour would be challenged and checked workload pressure with team leads so support could be moved where needed.
The revised approach reduced hand-off delays, improved relationships between teams and gave stakeholders clearer ownership of service issues. The joint review continued after the project because teams found it useful for resolving dependencies earlier.
Why this statement works
The example shows collaboration across several groups with genuinely different priorities. The candidate actively creates a shared focus and changes the way information is exchanged.
Diverse input is also demonstrated rather than merely mentioned, and conflict is managed in a way that protects the relationship and the delivery outcome.
Build the rest of your HEO/SEO statements
Use the complete guide for worked examples across Working Together and every other Civil Service behaviour.
Common mistakes
❌ Writing a generic teamwork story: show how you actively improved collaboration.
❌ Keeping the example inside one team: SEO evidence is stronger when it shows wider relationships or stakeholders.
❌ Ignoring disagreement: collaboration is easier to evidence when there was a real difference to work through.
❌ Claiming diversity without using it: explain whose perspective changed your approach.
❌ Using too much background: protect your word count for the actions that show collaboration.
For broader guidance, see the Working Together 250-word statement example.
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