Developing Self and Others EO Example — 250-Word Statement
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 worked front of house at a 60-room hotel. Our room-status board was updated by phone calls, so reception sometimes sold rooms that were not ready and guests waited in the lobby.
TI enrolled on a free online spreadsheet course and set myself the task of finishing it and using it to build a live room tracker the whole team could see.
AI studied for an hour after each shift for three weeks, working through modules on shared sheets and automatic status updates. As I learned each feature, I tested it on a copy of our room list. Halfway through, I showed the duty manager my prototype. She pointed out housekeepers would never open a spreadsheet on their rounds, so I reworked it into a simple colour-coded board they could update from the corridor phone in two taps. I asked two housekeepers to trial it for a week, noted every point where they hesitated, and simplified those steps. When the course set a final project, I submitted my tracker and passed with 94%. I then ran two ten-minute sessions to teach reception and housekeeping how to use and maintain the board, and wrote a one-page guide for the staff room, then asked the team to tell me honestly what was still unclear.
RGuests kept waiting for rooms at check-in fell from around 15 a day to 3 within a month, the board is still used on every shift, and my manager asked me to train two new receptionists on it.
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 initiative in choosing and completing learning, then applying it to a live problem — the applied-application pairing assessors want at EO.
- Feedback shaped the work twice (duty manager, trialling housekeepers) and was acted on, showing the responsiveness the EO descriptor rewards.
- The writer shares the skill through training sessions and a guide, adding the develop-others element that lifts an EO statement from 4 to 5.
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
- Completing a course in the story but never showing the skill used at work
- Describing your own development only, when EO rewards sharing it with the team
- Writing 'we decided to cross-train' so your personal contribution disappears
Frequently asked questions
One where you identified a real gap — yours or the team's — and closed it deliberately: completing a course and applying it to fix a live problem, a peer coaching swap, or mastering a system then coaching colleagues on it. Show your personal actions and finish with a measured result.
Some, but your own development can still lead. A good pattern is: learn something, apply it, then share it — the sharing sentence or two shows EO-level behaviour without needing a full mentoring story. At HEO the balance flips, and developing others must drive the Action.
Absolutely. Hospitality, retail, care and call-centre work constantly produce development evidence: training new starters, learning systems quickly, swapping skills with colleagues. Assessors score the evidence, not the setting. Structure it with STAR, use 'I' for your actions, and measure the outcome with at least one number.
Next step
Get the free EO statement template pack — the same STAR structure used in this example.
Download the template pack