Civil Service Leadership Behaviour Guide

What does Leadership really ask for?

Leadership is how you behave and the effect that has on the people and work around you, not your job title or whether you have direct reports. At the lowest grades it means owning your role and treating people well. As you move up, it adds explaining where the work is going, dealing with conflict and poor behaviour, and standing behind decisions.

The panel wants a real situation where you did something, not a claim that you are a natural leader. Inclusion runs through every grade.

How does the expectation change from AA and AO to the Senior Civil Service?

The wording below paraphrases the official descriptors. Read the full text for your target grade.

• At AA and AO, you take personal accountability for your role and your own objectives, act fairly and respectfully, consider other people's points of view, support the team's objectives and think about the wider consequences of what you do.
• At EO, you show pride in your work, understand your area of responsibility and its wider impact, role model an inclusive workplace, deal promptly with inappropriate language or behaviour, and give praise and credit.
• At HEO and SEO, you make sure colleagues and stakeholders understand objectives, activities and timeframes, champion inclusion and equality of opportunity, consider the impact on end users, recognise achievements, and manage conflict or misconduct, escalating where appropriate.
• At Grade 7 and Grade 6, you promote inclusion, welcome challenge even under pressure to ignore it, stand by and defend your own and your team's decisions, look for shared interests beyond your own area, and inspire and motivate teams.
• At Deputy Director level (SCS1), you stay visible and approachable, promote the organisation's reputation with pride, inspire people with passion for the long term vision, embed a culture of inclusion and equal opportunity, and work to influence strategy, direction and culture.
• At Director and Director General level (SCS2 and SCS3), you present a clear strategy for the future, act in ways that are highly visible and credible at the most senior levels, protect the Civil Service's reputation, create an inclusive environment, and resolve ambiguity in debate to secure the best outcome for the department.

What does strong Leadership evidence look like?

Strong evidence shows a specific moment, your own action and a resulting change. The examples below are plausible illustrations, not real cases, and the details are invented.

Example at AO. "When two colleagues left and our inbox backlog grew, I agreed clearance targets with my manager and cleared the oldest cases first. I asked a new starter how they were coping and shared my sorting method in a one page note. My queue cleared within the fortnight and the new starter caught up."

Example at HEO. "Two teams disagreed over who owned one stage of a casework process. I set out the objectives and timeframes in a short note to both teams, met each person with concerns, and took the one unresolved point to my senior manager with a recommendation. Ownership was agreed."

Example at Grade 7. "Under ministerial deadline pressure, two senior analysts challenged my decision to keep a quality check. I listened to both, then defended the decision to my director, setting out the risk of dropping it, and told my team why it stood."

Illustrative example at Deputy Director. "After a merger left two directorates with different cultures, I set out one shared direction at a joint session and took questions openly. When staff raised fairness concerns, I asked each leadership team to report on inclusion and changed our recruitment panels. Fairness comments in the next staff survey improved."

Which mistakes cost marks?

• Right behaviour, wrong level. Personal reliability is good AO evidence but reads as underpowered at Grade 7, where the panel looks for defending decisions, and at SCS level, where it looks for direction, culture and credibility at the most senior levels.
• Team actions instead of your own. If the evidence says "we agreed" throughout, the panel cannot score you.
• Duties instead of outcomes. "I manage a team of six" describes a job. It does not show what you did or what changed.
• Treating leadership as seniority. Line management stories alone can miss the inclusion, challenge and conflict points in the descriptors.
• No real difficulty. If everything went smoothly, there is little to credit.

How do you evidence it with STAR or STARR?

Keep the Situation and Task short, then spend most of your words on the Action, since that is where leadership is visible. Say what you did, who you spoke to and why, and close the Result with what changed for people and for the work. Reflection, the second R in STARR, is expected from SEO upwards, and it is worth adding below that grade if you can. At interview, a behaviour answer runs around five minutes spoken, so choose an example with enough substance to fill that time.

Strengths are different. They are assessed mainly at interview, are not named in adverts and are not answered with a STAR story. Do not script them.

Where Koda fits

Koda helps you apply this to your own experience. It works from your real evidence and matches it to the role and grade, with nothing invented, and you stay in control of every word.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• The 9 Civil Service Behaviours, Explained
• The STAR Method for Civil Service Applications (and STARR)
• Civil Service Grades Explained: AA to SCS