Leadership Grade 7 Example Statement (500 Words)

SI took over a regional delivery service of 120 staff across six sites, three months after a highly critical inspection report. Morale was battered, two site leads had resigned, sickness absence was rising, and the partner organisations we served had openly lost confidence in us. The service was still delivering, but only just, and the people holding it together were exhausted. Several told me they had stopped recommending the service as a place to work.

TMy task was to stabilise the service, rebuild a confident leadership team that could sustain the change, and set a credible direction for improvement that staff and partners could genuinely believe in, all within 12 months of my arrival.

AI spent my first month on a listening tour of all six sites, meeting every team in small groups and asking two questions: what is broken, and what are you proud of. I published what I heard, unedited themes and all, so people could see I had actually listened rather than arrived with a fixed plan. From those themes I built a one-page improvement plan with five priorities, and I made sure every priority had been asked for by staff themselves, so the direction belonged to them. I recruited two new site leads through open competition, choosing people with a track record of supporting teams, and I gave all six site leads real authority over their budgets and rotas, with a weekly leadership call where we solved problems together rather than just reporting upwards. I visited a different site every week, worked alongside front-line staff each time, and followed up personally on everything they raised. I invested in the basics people had asked for: proper induction, updated equipment, and a fair on-call rota, because trust grows when promises turn into visible action. Two long-standing grievances were poisoning one site, so I heard both cases carefully and settled them fairly and openly. I also coached the site leads individually, since several had never been developed as leaders, and I encouraged them to shadow strong leaders elsewhere in the organisation. Every month I sent partners a short, honest progress note, including the things that were still not good enough, because I wanted honesty to rebuild their confidence. I met the two most sceptical partners face to face each quarter and invited them to hold me to account. I kept the five priorities visible in every site office, and we reviewed them openly each quarter, admitting where we were behind. When we hit our first milestones, I made sure the credit went to named teams, in person and in writing, not to me.

RTwelve months on, the follow-up inspection moved the service up a full rating. Sickness absence fell by 25%, staff engagement rose 14 points, all five priorities were delivered, and complaints from service users dropped by a third. Two sites were asked to share their practice regionally, and three internal candidates applied when the next site-lead vacancy arose, which told me people wanted to lead there again.