Developing Self and Others Grade 6 Example — 500-Word Statement

SAs deputy director of operations across three divisions — around 120 staff — I sat on our talent board and watched the same pattern repeat: frontline leader roles went to external candidates or familiar names, while strong EO and HEO performers, particularly women and disabled staff, were not applying or not succeeding.

TI proposed, designed and personally sponsored a six-month cross-division aspiring leaders programme to widen that pipeline, with explicit goals on diversity and internal fill, reporting progress to the talent board every quarter.

AI began with the data. Analysis of three years of recruitment showed internal candidates made up 60% of applicants but only 25% of appointments, with rejection feedback citing lack of leadership experience — experience they could not gain without the job. I designed the programme to break that loop: 24 participants across the three divisions, each with a senior mentor, a stretch assignment leading real work, and monthly action-learning sets. I secured £60,000 from the transformation budget by presenting the recruitment-spend case to the finance director, who agreed on condition the evaluation measured promotion outcomes, not satisfaction. I shaped the content with our learning partner around the three gaps the data exposed: leading through change, difficult conversations, and commercial judgement. I taught the difficult-conversations module myself for the first cohort, to set the standard and to keep my own coaching sharp. Selection was the first battle. I insisted on open application rather than nomination, because nomination was how familiar names kept winning, and I personally encouraged 11 people to apply who told me they were not ready. I held the line on releasing participants for one day a week, negotiating with divisional managers who argued delivery would suffer; I showed them the cover plan and asked them to judge after one quarter. I matched each participant with a mentor from a different division to break up local networks, and mentored two participants myself, both previously rejected twice, briefing all 24 mentors personally on what good sponsorship looked like. When the first action-learning set drifted into a talking shop, I refocused it on live leadership problems the participants brought. Mid-programme, I asked the cohort what was failing. They said the stretch assignments were too safe, so I worked with the directors to release genuinely exposed pieces of work, including one reporting directly to my own board. I also commissioned an independent evaluator from day one, so the board would trust the outcomes rather than my enthusiasm, and I acted on her interim findings when she flagged that two participants had effectively been left unsupervised.

ROf the 24 participants, 15 were promoted within a year — 12 of them first-time internal leaders, 10 of the 15 women — and internal appointments to frontline leader roles rose from 25% to 52%, shifting the balance of that cadre. A second cohort has run since, a fourth division has adopted the model, and external recruitment spend for these roles fell by roughly £140,000 a year.