Developing Self and Others EO Example Statement (250 Words)
At EO, assessors want you to do more than learn passively: show you chose a development need, pursued it, and put the new skill to work for the team. Evidence of you helping a colleague develop — sharing knowledge, coaching a task, giving useful feedback — lifts a statement from acceptable to good.
Example statement
SI handled billing queries in a utilities contact centre. I was quick on the account system but nervous with angry callers, while my colleague Asha defused complaints brilliantly but struggled with the system.
TI proposed a six-week skills swap: I would coach Asha on the system, and she would coach me on handling difficult calls.
AWe agreed two thirty-minute sessions a week, alternating who coached, and I booked a quiet corner of the breakout area each Tuesday so it felt like real coaching, not a chat. For Asha, I broke the system into five everyday tasks, wrote shortcut cards for each, and sat with her on live calls until she could navigate without me. For my coaching, Asha listened to my recorded calls and picked out the moments callers turned angry. She taught me to acknowledge the frustration before explaining anything, and to summarise what I had promised before ending the call. I practised her phrases on every difficult call that week, then asked her to re-score me. When she said I still sounded scripted, I recorded myself and adjusted my tone until it felt natural. We kept a shared log of our progress and compared it every Friday, celebrating the small wins to keep us both going.
RAfter six weeks my complaint escalations dropped from 11 to 4 a month and Asha's average call time fell by 90 seconds; our team leader asked us to run the swap as a standing offer for all 14 advisers.
Use this as a model, not a script. This is an original example written for this site. Adapt the structure to your own experience — copying it word for word risks plagiarism and will not reflect your evidence.
Why this scores well
- The writer spots complementary skills and creates a structured swap — initiative and mutual development that fits the EO descriptor exactly.
- Both directions of development are evidenced with method: broken-down tasks, shortcut cards, recorded-call feedback and re-scoring.
- Two measured results (escalations 11 to 4, call time down 90 seconds) plus team adoption of the scheme show impact beyond the pair.
What EO level requires
| Grade | What assessors expect |
|---|---|
| AO | At AO, Developing Self and Others means knowing your strengths and gaps, asking for feedback and acting on it, taking up training willingly, and helping colleagues with everyday tasks when you can. |
| EO ← this page | At EO, Developing Self and Others means actively building your own skills, sharing knowledge across the team, giving colleagues helpful feedback and coaching them through tasks when needed. |
| HEO | At HEO, Developing Self and Others means deliberately making time to develop others — coaching, mentoring and arranging learning — while showing you act on feedback about your own performance. |
Common mistakes at this level
- Giving feedback to a colleague in the story but hiding how they responded
- Using a qualification from years ago with nothing recent applied since
- Closing with team improvement you cannot quantify in any way
Frequently asked questions
Peer coaching is enough. EO descriptors focus on building your own skills and supporting colleagues' learning informally. A structured swap — you coach them on one skill, they coach you on another — shows initiative, structure and mutual development, which matches the level well.
Frame it as useful information: who gave it, what specifically they said, and what you changed. One sentence on the feedback, two on the change, then the measured improvement. Never argue with the feedback in the statement — showing you used it is the whole point.
Specificity and sharing. A 4 shows you developed and can state the result. A 5 names the exact need, shows deliberate method — practice, feedback loops, adjustments — and shows the team benefiting, with at least one solid number in the Result.
Next step
Get the free EO statement template pack — the same STAR structure used in this example.
Download the template pack