What to Do When You Have No Example for a Behaviour
Staring at a Behaviour with nothing to write? Widen the search in the right order, and know exactly what to do if the box stays genuinely empty.
You are looking at the name of a Behaviour on the application form, and nothing comes. Not a rough idea you could tidy up later. Nothing. The cursor sits in the empty box while the deadline gets closer and your mind stays blank.
This happens most with three Behaviours: Leadership, Managing a Quality Service and Developing Self and Others. It is rarely because you lack the evidence. It is because the name of the Behaviour is doing the damage, pointing you toward a version of yourself, a manager, a service desk operator, a mentor, that you do not recognise as your own experience.
This post works through the search in the order that actually gets people unstuck. Check what the Behaviour asks for at your own grade, widen where you are looking, shrink the scale of what counts, then look again at what you already have from a different angle. It ends with what to do if, after all of that, the box is still genuinely empty.
What Should You Actually Do When a Behaviour Goes Blank?
Work through a short sequence before you conclude you have nothing. Most blank Behaviours are solved somewhere in the first three steps, not the last one.
- Re-read the actual descriptor for your grade, not the Behaviour’s name.
- Look outside your current job, at work experience, volunteering or a hobby.
- Look at a smaller scale. A single decision on a single day can be enough.
- Look at the same experience from a different angle. One situation can evidence more than one Behaviour.
- If it is still genuinely empty, know what to do in the room rather than inventing something.
The rest of this post takes each of those in turn.
Why Do Leadership, Managing a Quality Service and Developing Self and Others Cause This the Most?
Because their names promise something narrower than what the framework actually asks for. Leadership sounds like managing people. Managing a Quality Service sounds like running a service desk or handling complaints. Developing Self and Others sounds like formal mentoring, with development plans and scheduled one-to-ones. Read the Behaviour’s actual descriptor at your own grade, and none of those readings survive.
Take Leadership at Administrative Officer (AO) grade. The published descriptor asks you to “show enthusiasm for your work and take personal accountability for your role”, according to the official Success Profiles Behaviours framework. Nothing there about a team, and nothing about a job title with “manager” in it. At Executive Officer (EO) grade it becomes “show pride and passion for your work and positive, inclusive engagement with your team”, which is about how you show up around other people, not about directing them.
The same pattern holds for Managing a Quality Service. At AO grade it means you “gain a clear understanding of customers’ needs and expectations” and “act to prevent problems by identifying issues, reporting them and providing solutions”, per the same framework. If your job has never involved a service desk, read that again. Understanding what someone needs, and flagging a problem before it grows, is something most roles involve, whether the “customer” is a member of the public, a colleague in another team, or your own manager.
Developing Self and Others is the one people assume needs a job title with “trainer” in it. At AO grade the descriptor is “identify gaps in your skills and knowledge and make plans of how to develop these” and “listen to and act on feedback from colleagues to find areas you can develop”, according to the framework. That is about your own development, not anyone else’s. At EO grade it extends outward slightly, to “identify gaps in own and team’s skills and knowledge” and “encourage and listen to developmental feedback from colleagues”, still well short of formal line management.
This is step one whenever a Behaviour goes blank. Stop reading the name. Go and read the descriptor at the grade printed on your advert. Most of what feels missing was never actually required.
Does the Example Have to Come From Your Current Job?
No. Civil Service Careers states plainly that an example can come from “work experience, volunteering, in connection with a hobby”, not only from paid employment in your current role. This is the guidance that unlocks most genuinely blank boxes, and it is easy to miss, because the application form’s framing nudges you toward your current job as the only acceptable source.
If your job has given you nothing to point to, look at what else fills your week. A part-time role you held before this one. A committee you sit on outside work. A sports club you help run, a scout group, a residents’ association, a religious or community group. Any of these can carry a Leadership, Managing a Quality Service or Developing Self and Others example, provided it shows the descriptor at your grade rather than the size or seriousness of the organisation behind it.
Does the Example Have to Be a Big Achievement?
No, and this is where capable candidates over-filter themselves out of perfectly good material. A single decision on a single day counts, provided it evidences the descriptor. You do not need a project that ran for months, or a result with a headline number attached.
Look again at the AO descriptor for Managing a Quality Service: “act to prevent problems by identifying issues, reporting them and providing solutions”. That could be one email you sent when you noticed a mistake in a shared spreadsheet before it reached a client. It could be the afternoon you flagged that a supplier’s invoice did not match the agreed price. Small, ordinary, over within the hour. It still evidences the descriptor.
The instinct to reach for the biggest thing that ever happened to you at work is understandable, but it usually pulls you toward Delivering at Pace or Working Together instead of whichever Behaviour you were actually trying to evidence. Match the scale of the story to the words in the descriptor, not to how impressive it sounds read aloud.
Could the Same Experience Answer More Than One Behaviour?
Often, yes, depending on which part of it you put at the front. One rich situation, a difficult handover, a mistake you caught, a colleague you helped through something, usually contains more than one Behaviour inside it. What changes is which action you foreground and which you leave as background detail.
Take a single example. You noticed a colleague was behind on a piece of work and stepped in to help them catch up. Told one way, foregrounding the plan you made and the initiative you took, that is Leadership. Told another way, foregrounding what you taught them and how you checked they had actually understood it, that is Developing Self and Others. Same afternoon, same colleague, same outcome. The Behaviour lives in which part of the story you choose to put in front.
Before assuming you have nothing for a Behaviour, go back over the examples you have already written for other Behaviours on the same form. There is a reasonable chance one of them contains a second story sitting inside it that you have not pulled out yet.
What If the Box Is Still Genuinely Empty?
Then do not invent one. That is the single move that makes things worse, not better. The Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles define merit as “the appointment of the best available person judged against the published criteria for the role”, and state that “each candidate must be assessed against the same advertised criteria”. A fabricated example is not being judged against anything real, and in a recruitment process built entirely around merit, that is a serious integrity problem, not just a tactical risk.
It is also a practical risk, because a fabricated example rarely survives contact with a panel. You will be asked what you did, why you chose that action, what the outcome was, and how you would handle it differently now. A genuine answer holds up under that, because the detail was actually lived. An invented one tends to contradict itself the moment the questions get specific, and once a panel doubts one answer, it reads back into every other answer you gave that day.
PublicServicePathway is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government or Civil Service. The reading above follows the published Recruitment Principles; it is not a ruling on any individual application or score.
If you have thought this through properly and there is truly nothing that fits, you have two honest options left. Give the closest genuine thing you have, and say plainly where it falls short of the descriptor, rather than presenting it as a full match. Or, where the Behaviour is one you have simply not had the chance to demonstrate yet, say what you would do faced with the situation the question describes, and back it with something real you have watched done well, by a colleague, a manager, someone whose handling of it you actually observed. Neither is as strong as a genuine, well-matched example. Both are honest, and honest holds up in a way invention never does.
FAQ
Does the example have to come from paid work? No. The official guidance is explicit that an example can come from work experience, volunteering or something connected to a hobby, not only from a job you have been paid to do.
What if my only genuine example feels quite small? Use it anyway, provided it clearly shows the descriptor at your grade. A single decision on an ordinary day is enough evidence if it matches the wording in the framework. Size is not what is being assessed.
Is it acceptable to adjust the details of a real situation to make it fit better? No. Adjusting the facts of a genuine situation carries the same integrity problem as inventing one from nothing, because the panel is assessing what actually happened, not a tidied-up version of it.
What should I say if I have genuinely never faced this Behaviour? Say so, and answer with what you would do, backed by something real you have seen done well. That is a weaker answer than a lived example, but it is honest, and it will hold up under follow-up questions in a way a fabricated story will not.
Widen the Search Before You Assume You Have Nothing
Most blank Behaviours are not actually empty. They are pointed at the wrong grade, the wrong job, or too large a story. Work through the descriptor, the wider sources and the smaller scale before you conclude otherwise, and only treat the last resort as genuinely last.
Once you have found real material, even something small, for every Behaviour on your advert, the work shifts from searching to rehearsal. Read the example back, then practise answering out loud, because a story that sounds fine on paper can fall apart the first time you have to say it under a bit of pressure. If the interview goes well, what happens after you apply is worth reading next.