Communicating and Influencing SEO Example — 250-Word Statement
At SEO, assessors look for influencing beyond your own team: peers, senior managers, external groups. Your example should show a deliberate approach, mapping stakeholders, choosing channels, handling organised scepticism, and achieving adoption or change you can measure, not a single persuasive meeting.
Example statement
SAs services coordinator for a charity supporting isolated older people, I was responsible for 85 volunteers. A new safeguarding policy required every volunteer to complete refreshed training within two months.
TI designed and delivered the training sessions, and I had to win round experienced volunteers who saw refresher training as box-ticking.
AI started by phoning six long-serving volunteers, including the two most vocal sceptics, and asked what would make the session worth their evening; their answers, real situations and no jargon, shaped the design. I built the session around five scenarios from our own incident log rather than generic slides, and cut the policy to a one-page summary, full version on request. Knowing volunteers give up evenings, I ran the session four times at different hours with a video option, and personally invited everyone rather than sending a mass email. I presented as a fellow practitioner and shared an early mistake of my own, which opened honest discussion. When one volunteer challenged the new reporting rule as bureaucracy, I explained the incident that had prompted it, and asked the group how they would have handled it; the discussion made the case better than I could have. After each session I emailed a summary, answered questions individually, and chased non-attenders by phone, offering one-to-ones for the three who struggled online.
RAll 85 volunteers completed the training within seven weeks, 100 percent compliance, and session feedback averaged 4.8 out of 5. Safeguarding reports rose as volunteers now recognised what to flag.
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
- Shows SEO-level design: you consult the sceptics first and let their answers shape the session, rather than pushing a finished product.
- Handles public pushback by giving the group ownership of the discussion, a hallmark of influencing at this level.
- Combines channels (sessions, video, summaries, phone chasing) and proves impact with 100 percent compliance and feedback scores.
What SEO level requires
| Grade | What assessors expect |
|---|---|
| HEO | At HEO level, Communicating and Influencing means communicating with impact across teams and external contacts, building an evidence-based case, and handling challenge constructively to win people over. |
| SEO ← this page | At SEO level, Communicating and Influencing means winning support across teams and stakeholders without line authority, shaping messages for senior audiences, and turning sceptics into supporters. |
| Grade 7 | At Grade 7, Communicating and Influencing means shaping understanding at organisational level: briefing senior leaders and ministers, negotiating with external partners, and setting the terms of difficult conversations. |
Common mistakes at this level
- Telling one-to-one persuasion stories when the grade expects you to influence groups, teams or senior stakeholders.
- Relying on your manager's authority or a formal instruction to get the outcome, which removes the influencing entirely.
- Listing communication activities (meetings held, emails sent) without the strategy connecting them or the result they produced.
Frequently asked questions
At SEO you influence across boundaries without direct authority: getting other teams to adopt a system, briefing senior managers, or bringing a resistant stakeholder group round. Assessors want a deliberate campaign, understanding stakeholders, sequencing messages, handling organised pushback, with a measurable outcome like adoption rates or policy change.
Yes, if it is more than delivery. Designing a session to shift attitudes, consulting sceptics beforehand, handling public challenge in the room, and achieving full compliance or behaviour change shows SEO-level influence. Simply describing a well-run session with good feedback stays closer to HEO, so show the strategy behind it.
Show the mechanics: how you mapped who mattered, what each person cared about, which evidence or allies you used, and how you reduced the risk of agreeing, through trials, champions or phased roll-outs. Assessors at SEO specifically credit influencing sideways and upwards, so say plainly that you had no line authority and what you used instead.
Next step
Get the free SEO statement template pack — the same STAR structure used in this example.
Download the template pack