Civil Service behaviour: Seeing the Big Picture (with STAR example)

Updated · By the Tick the Spec team

Seeing the Big Picture is about understanding how your work fits with and supports the objectives of your organisation and the wider public. Success Profiles describes it as understanding the strategic drivers for your area of work, aligning activities to the organisation's priorities, and making sure work is in the national interest. A good statement shows a time when you looked beyond your immediate task, understood a wider objective or stakeholder need, and changed what you did as a result, with a clear benefit.

A note on changes (November 2026)

In July 2026 the Civil Service announced it will scrap Success Profiles in favour of a model that emphasises skills and expertise. At the time of writing we could not find a published replacement on GOV.UK, and many adverts still ask for behaviours. Follow the advert you are applying for.

What assessors look for, by grade

  • AA/AO: understanding how your role contributes to your team's goals and to the public.
  • EO: understanding how your team's work supports wider objectives and meets stakeholders' needs; keeping up to date with issues affecting your area; focusing on overall goals, not just tasks.
  • HEO/SEO: understanding the strategic drivers for your area; aligning activities to organisational priorities; staying alert to emerging trends; sharing your experience to build team knowledge.
  • G7 and above: shaping strategy, anticipating long-term trends, and working across government.

Step by step

  1. Choose an example where knowing the wider context changed your approach.
  2. Name the wider objective or driver: a policy aim, a customer need, a departmental priority, a trend.
  3. Show how you found out about it: reading, talking to stakeholders, data.
  4. Show what you did differently because of it.
  5. Show how you shared the understanding with others.
  6. Give a result that connects back to the wider goal.

Worked example (fictional, HEO level)

Invented for illustration. The person and organisation are fictional.

Situation: I manage a small team handling licence applications for a government agency. Our department had published a priority to reduce burdens on small businesses.

Task: I was reviewing our application guidance as part of routine updates.

Action: Rather than only correcting the existing guidance, I read the department's business plan and the published summary of feedback from business groups, and looked at our own data on rejected applications. I found that most rejections came from small firms missing the same two documents. I realised a clearer process would support the department's priority as well as reduce our rework. I met our policy colleagues to check my understanding and the legal requirements, then redesigned the guidance with a checklist and plain-English explanations. I tested it with three small business owners through our customer panel. I shared what I had learned about the priority with my team so they could spot similar issues in their own areas.

Result: In the six months after the new guidance, rejections for missing documents fell substantially and processing times improved. Our policy team used the findings in a report to ministers on reducing burdens.

About 240 words. It shows HEO indicators: understanding strategic drivers, aligning activity to priorities, sharing knowledge with the team.

How behaviour statements are scored

Many departments score each behaviour on a 1 to 7 scale, and a Defra Digital blog post describes needing at least 4 on each assessment to move on; the candidate pack will say if different rules apply. When there are many applications, some campaigns sift first on a "lead" behaviour, usually the first one listed, so make that statement especially strong. Statements are usually read without your name, and text over the word limit may be ignored, so check the limit on the advert.

Other examples that can work

  • changing a team process to support a published organisational priority
  • spotting a trend in data or feedback and raising it
  • explaining to your team how their work links to wider goals
  • adapting your work after a policy or legal change
  • considering the impact of your work on another team or the public

Pick the one where your own actions are clearest and the result is real.

Common mistakes

  • Writing about the big picture in general ("I always consider the wider context") without an example.
  • Naming a strategy without showing how it changed your actions.
  • Political commentary. Stay neutral; the Civil Service Code requires impartiality.
  • No link back from your result to the wider objective.
  • Choosing a strategic example above your grade where your own role was small. Be accurate about your part.

Tick the Spec asks what wider aim your work served and what you actually did, then helps you fit that real example to the indicators and the word limit.

Read next: STAR method examples for supporting statements (250 words) · Civil Service grades explained: AA to Grade 7 (what each expects) · Success Profiles scrapped: what it means for Civil Service jobs

Sources

All guides