How to find Communicating and Influencing examples in your own history
You almost certainly have Communicating and Influencing evidence already; the problem is recognising it. Work, volunteering, education and caring all produce it. This five-step method helps you find it and shape it for a statement.
What counts as evidence for this behaviour
Any occasion where you shaped a message for an audience and something changed as a result counts. It does not need to be a presentation or a negotiation. Explaining a delay to angry passengers, writing the rota note everyone finally understood, talking a supplier into a better slot: all of it is evidence.
The test is simple. Was there a specific audience? Did you make deliberate choices about words, channel or timing? Did anyone respond, and did anything measurably change? Four yeses and you have a statement.
Work through your history in five steps
List your audiences
Write down every group you have ever had to win over or inform: customers, patients, parents, suppliers, volunteers, managers, committee members. Each group is a potential story.
Mark the friction
Next to each audience, note the moments that were not smooth: a complaint, a refusal, confusion, a hostile question. Friction is where this behaviour becomes visible.
Recall what you changed
For each moment, ask what you deliberately adjusted: simpler words, a different channel, a meeting instead of an email, evidence instead of opinion. That adjustment is your Action.
Find the number
Attach at least one figure to each candidate story: complaints handled, attendance raised, errors reduced, time saved. Numbers turn anecdotes into results.
Match to the grade
Compare your best two or three stories against the level descriptor for the grade. Choose the one whose scale matches the verbs: explain and adapt at junior grades, persuade and negotiate higher up.
For example, a care worker who persuaded a reluctant resident's family to accept a new routine has HEO-level influencing evidence, even though nothing about it felt like a negotiation.
Look beyond paid work
Assessors score the behaviour, not the setting, and the framework accepts evidence from anywhere. Four sources are consistently underused.
- Volunteering: running a club's communications, recruiting helpers, briefing volunteer teams.
- Education: group projects where you presented, mediated or wrote the final report.
- Caring: explaining options to professionals, coordinating family, advocating for someone.
- Community roles: residents' groups, faith groups, sports committees, parent associations.
Tip
Pick the setting with the clearest stakes and the cleanest result, not the one that sounds most impressive. A club committee story with real numbers beats a vague corporate anecdote.
Turn the memory into STAR
Once you have chosen, write it in STAR order: Situation in two sentences, Task in one, the bulk on your Actions in the order they happened, and a Result with a number. Write long first, then cut to the word limit; first drafts of 350 words usually contain a strong 250. Assessors can only score what survives the edit, so cut background first and protect the actions.
Keep two or three spare stories. Applications often ask for the same behaviour at interview, and you will want a fresh example rather than repeating your statement word for word.
Read your draft aloud before you submit. If a sentence sounds like something nobody would ever say, rewrite it the way you would actually speak; plain, natural English is what the descriptor means by clarity.
Check your example before you commit
- The audience is specific, not 'people' in general
- You made a deliberate choice about words, channel or timing
- There was friction or disagreement you can describe
- Your own actions are written with 'I'
- The result contains at least one number
- The scale matches the grade's level descriptor
Frequently asked questions
Use volunteering, education, caring or community roles; assessors score the behaviour, not the setting. Running a club's social media, presenting a group project, or advocating for a relative with professionals all count. What matters is a specific audience, deliberate choices and a result you can point to.
Not at junior grades. At AO and EO a well-told ordinary example, a difficult customer handled, a briefing note rewritten so people understood it, is exactly what the descriptor asks for. Only at HEO and above do you need persuasion with real stakes, and at senior grades organisational scale.
Three is a sensible working number for this behaviour: your strongest for the written statement, plus two spares for interview, where repeating your statement verbatim sounds rehearsed. They can sit at different scales, one customer-facing, one written, one persuasive, so you can match the question asked.
Next step
Get the free STAR template — the same structure used in every example on this site.
Download the template pack