Working Together SEO Example — 250-Word Statement
At SEO, assessors want collaboration across organisational boundaries. Strong examples show you bringing together people with competing priorities, designing how they will work together, resolving real tension and leaving something sustainable behind. Your role should clearly be the person who made the collaboration work.
Example statement
SOur regional office had to move 60 staff from three teams into a smaller building in eight weeks. The teams had a history of rivalry, IT was stretched, and rumours about desk losses were damaging morale.
TAs the senior officer leading the move, I had to coordinate logistics and bring the three teams with me.
AI set up a working group with a representative from each team plus IT and facilities, asking each rep to gather their team's worries first. Rather than announce a floor plan, I ran three drop-in sessions where staff sketched what they needed, feeding 46 suggestions into the design. When one team leader told their staff the move was optional, I met them privately, acknowledged their concerns about travel time and agreed a trial of flexible start times they could offer in return. I sequenced the move over three weekends so only one team moved at a time, and I negotiated with IT to guarantee that each team's systems were tested before the next team arrived. I published a weekly one-page update in plain language, correcting rumours early, and chaired a daily ten-minute call during each move weekend. Where problems emerged, such as a broken lift booking, I brought facilities and the removal firm together to solve them the same day.
RAll 60 staff moved on schedule with under four hours of system downtime per team. A survey six weeks later showed 92 per cent felt consulted, and the working group handles all office changes.
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
- SEO-level scope: coordinating three rival teams, IT and facilities, with consultation that genuinely shaped the design (46 suggestions).
- Resistance is handled constructively — meeting the dissenting team leader privately and finding a reciprocal solution.
- Measured result: on-schedule move, under four hours of downtime per team, 92 per cent feeling consulted, and a standing group left behind.
What SEO level requires
| Grade | What assessors expect |
|---|---|
| HEO | At HEO level, Working Together means taking the lead in making collaboration happen: organising people across teams, valuing different perspectives and resolving disagreements so shared goals are met. |
| SEO ← this page | At SEO level, Working Together means building collaborative relationships across teams and partner organisations: creating the structures, trust and shared purpose that let groups with different interests deliver together. |
| Grade 7 | At Grade 7, Working Together means leading collaboration across organisational boundaries: building partnerships, aligning senior stakeholders with competing interests and creating collaborative cultures, often without line authority. |
Common mistakes at this level
- Describing collaboration inside one team, which is too small in scope for SEO
- Focusing on delivery mechanics and forgetting the relationship-building behind them
- Skipping the difficult stakeholder, when that was the heart of the example
Frequently asked questions
It needs organisational breadth more than size. Coordinating three teams, a multi-agency event or a partnership with an external body all work. The test is whether you had to align people with different priorities and no line authority over them, and whether you built something that lasted.
That is your example, not a problem with it. SEO assessors score the handling of conflicting interests: how you discovered what each side needed, found common ground and structured an agreement each party could accept. A collaboration where everyone already agreed proves little about your skills.
Yes, carefully and respectfully. Saying 'the two organisations had a history of mistrust' is useful context; describing who was at fault is not. Show that you understood the sensitivities, worked around them and built trust anyway. That demonstrates the maturity SEO requires.
Next step
Get the free SEO statement template pack — the same STAR structure used in this example.
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