Behaviour Levels 1 to 6: What Actually Changes as the Grade Rises
What actually changes in the Behaviours framework as the grade rises, quoted from AO to Director General, so you pitch your example at the right level.
A Civil Service Behaviour example can be entirely true and still fail, because it is pitched at the wrong grade. An Administrative Officer who writes a careful, honest account of keeping their own casework on track has submitted something real, but if the vacancy is Higher Executive Officer, the panel is reading for evidence that the applicant owns a piece of work end to end, and a tidy personal-organisation story does not show that. The reverse happens just as often: an AO applicant reaches for language about strategy and government-wide impact because it sounds senior, and the answer reads as implausible rather than strong.
This post is the reference for what actually changes. The Behaviours framework defines each of the nine Behaviours across a set of grade bands, and the wording used at each band is public. This post traces three Behaviours through every band, quoting the framework directly, so you can see the escalation rather than take a description of it on trust.
The bands are not numbered by the framework itself. It names them by grade. This post numbers them 1 to 6, lowest to highest, purely to make the climb between them easy to follow.
What Grade Bands Does the Behaviours Framework Actually Use?
Six, and every one of the nine Behaviours is written against the same six. From lowest to highest, the Success Profiles: Civil Service behaviours guidance sets descriptors for Administrative Assistant and Administrative Officer, Executive Officer, Higher Executive Officer and Senior Executive Officer, Grade 7 and Grade 6, Deputy Director, and Director and Director General. That is how the framework sets expectations by grade across the whole of the Civil Service, from a first AO role to the top of a department.
| Band | Framework grade name |
|---|---|
| 1 | AA/AO |
| 2 | EO |
| 3 | HEO/SEO |
| 4 | Grade 7 and Grade 6 |
| 5 | Deputy Director |
| 6 | Director and Director General |
None of those six bands is labelled “Level 1” or “Level 6” on the page itself. The framework names each one by grade, not by number. The numbers in this post are added only to make the escalation easy to follow from bottom to top.
How Does Seeing the Big Picture Change From AO to Director General?
It answers a different question at every band. The framework’s wording for Seeing the Big Picture reads like this, band by band:
| Band | Seeing the Big Picture descriptor |
|---|---|
| 1. AA/AO | “understand what your responsibilities are and how these contribute to the priorities of your team” |
| 2. EO | “understand how your work and the work of your team supports wider objectives and meets the diverse needs of stakeholders” |
| 3. HEO/SEO | “understand the strategic drivers for your area of work” |
| 4. Grade 7/6 | “adopt a government wide perspective to ensure alignment of activity and policy” |
| 5. Deputy Director | “anticipate long-term impact of economic, political, environmental, social and technological developments” |
| 6. Director/DG | “establish where the department sits within and aligns across the Civil Service” |
Read down that column and the story is not that band six sounds more impressive than band one. It is that the boundary of what you are expected to understand keeps moving outward: your team’s priorities, then wider objectives, then your area’s strategic drivers, then a government-wide perspective, then long-term national developments, then where an entire department sits. An AO answer built around “seeing how my work fits into the department’s five-year strategy” is not stronger for reaching that far. It is answering a different band’s question. If you want to see what a Seeing the Big Picture answer pitched correctly for a real grade actually looks like on the page, a worked example against a real prompt sets one out line by line.
How Does Making Effective Decisions Change as the Grade Rises?
The shift here is about who makes the decision, not how dramatic the decision sounds. The framework’s descriptors for Making Effective Decisions run:
| Band | Making Effective Decisions descriptor |
|---|---|
| 1. AA/AO | “use guidance, analyse relevant information and ask colleagues for input to support decision making” |
| 2. EO | “take responsibility for making effective and fair decisions, in a timely manner” |
| 3. HEO/SEO | “understand your own level of responsibility and empower others to make decisions where appropriate” |
| 4. Grade 7/6 | “ensure decision making happens at the right level, not allowing unnecessary bureaucracy to hinder delivery” |
| 5. Deputy Director | “act decisively and make bold, unbiased decisions at a strategic level” |
| 6. Director/DG | “give unbiased evidence-led advice to Ministers and other senior officials based on extensive robust analysis” |
At band one you are asking colleagues for input before you decide. By band three you are not just making your own decisions, you are creating room for other people to make theirs. By band four you are managing where decisions sit in the system at all, stopping them getting stuck at the wrong level. By band six you are not making the final call yourself; you are giving the evidence that lets a Minister make it. An AO example built around “I made a bold, high-stakes call under pressure” is describing a story that belongs at a higher band. An HEO example built around “I followed the process correctly” undershoots what HEO actually asks for, which is empowering others, not just following guidance.
How Does Communicating and Influencing Escalate Through the Grades?
Again, the change is not in how eloquent the account sounds. It is in the size of the audience and what you are responsible for building with them. The framework’s descriptors for Communicating and Influencing run:
| Band | Communicating and Influencing descriptor |
|---|---|
| 1. AA/AO | “put forward your views in a clear, constructive and considerate manner” |
| 2. EO | “communicate clearly and concisely both orally and in writing” |
| 3. HEO/SEO | “communicate in a straightforward, honest and engaging manner - choosing appropriate styles” |
| 4. Grade 7/6 | “communicate with others in a clear, honest and enthusiastic way in order to build trust” |
| 5. Deputy Director | “implement communication strategies which ensure effective communications are embedded” |
| 6. Director/DG | “demonstrate and promote communicating with honesty, integrity, impartiality and objectivity” |
At band one you are putting forward your own view. By band three you are choosing the style for the audience in front of you. By band five you are no longer just having conversations, you are implementing a strategy that makes sure the right conversations happen consistently across a team or department. By band six you are setting the standard others are measured against. A candidate who reaches for “I am a confident public speaker” at AO level is describing a skill, not the behaviour the descriptor actually names, which is putting forward views clearly and considerately.
PublicServicePathway is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government or Civil Service. Every quote in this post is taken directly from the published framework and cited inline, so check it against the wording sitting next to your own vacancy rather than taking this summary on trust.
What Is Actually Escalating: Scope, Ownership and Who Is Affected?
Read all three tables together and one pattern repeats at every band change. It is never that the story gets more dramatic. It is that three things move together: how wide the scope is, how much of the outcome is genuinely yours, and how many people are affected by what you do.
At band one, scope is your own role, ownership means following guidance well, and the people affected are mostly your immediate team. At band three, scope is your area of work, ownership includes decisions you make that other people then act on, and the people affected are colleagues and stakeholders whose needs the descriptors now name explicitly. At band six, scope is the department or the Civil Service as a whole, ownership is evidence and advice that shapes what a Minister decides, and the people affected are, in effect, the public the decision eventually reaches.
This is why an AO example about single-handedly reorganising a whole department’s approach reads as implausible: nobody at that grade genuinely has that scope, and a panel that knows the framework can tell. It is also why an HEO example that only shows tidy personal organisation reads as thin: HEO’s own descriptors ask for empowering other people’s decisions and understanding strategic drivers, not just doing your own job well. The honest fix in both directions is the same one. Do not inflate the story. Find the true moment in your own experience where the scope, ownership and effect on others genuinely matched the band you are applying at, and write that.
Do You Have to Demonstrate Every Behaviour at Every Grade?
No, and the framework says so directly. The Civil Service Careers behaviours page states that Civil Service Behaviours “are specific to the grade or level of the role” and that “recruiting managers will choose the behaviours best suited to a job role”, so a candidate “will not be asked to demonstrate all Civil Service behaviours for one role.”
Two things follow from that. First, the grade band that matters is the one named in your own advert, not the one you feel your experience deserves. An applicant who is genuinely already doing HEO-level work has a case for applying at HEO next time, not for pitching an AO application as if it were one; the assessment is against the advertised grade, and language borrowed from a higher band without the underlying scope reads as overreach rather than ambition. Second, only some of the nine Behaviours will be assessed on any one advert. Which ones, and at what band, is set by the vacancy itself, so the advert and job description are where you check, not a general list of the nine.
FAQ
Does a stronger answer for a higher grade need to be longer? No. Length is not what the descriptors are measuring. A short answer that shows the right scope and ownership for the band beats a long one that describes a bigger scope than the role actually has.
What if I feel I am already doing the work of a higher grade? Write to the grade named in your advert. If your day-to-day genuinely matches a higher band, that is a case for applying at that grade next time, not for pitching language above the role you are applying for now.
Do all nine Behaviours use the same six grade bands? Yes. Every Behaviour in the framework, from Seeing the Big Picture to Delivering at Pace, is written against the same AA/AO through Director and Director General structure, with wording specific to each one.
Where do I find out which Behaviours my vacancy actually assesses? The job advert and the job description. They name the Behaviours being assessed and the grade the role sits at, which is the wording your example needs to match.
Check Your Example Against Your Own Advert’s Grade
The tables above show the pattern. Your own advert shows the specifics. Find the grade named in the vacancy, read the descriptor wording at that band for the Behaviours it lists, and check that your example’s scope, ownership and effect on others genuinely sit at that level before you submit it.