Communicating and Influencing

Communicating clearly and with impact, and being able to adapt your message and influence people who don't automatically agree with you.

What this behaviour means

This is scored on adapting your communication to your audience and genuinely changing a view or decision — not on being a confident speaker. A strong example usually involves someone who disagreed or was indifferent at the start, and a specific reason your communication moved them.

What assessors are looking for

• That your audience started from a different position (disagreement, indifference, confusion) and your communication changed that
• Evidence you adapted your message for the audience, rather than delivering the same pitch regardless
• Clarity — a complex or technical point made genuinely understandable to a non-specialist
• The actual outcome of the influence, not just that you communicated

Common mistakes

• Describing a presentation or report with no evidence anyone's mind was changed
• Confusing this with simply being articulate — assessors want influence, not just clear delivery
• No sense of who the audience actually was or why they needed convincing

How to structure your STAR example

Situation

Set out who needed convincing and what their starting position was — sceptical, uninformed, actively opposed.

Task

State what you needed them to agree to, understand, or do differently.

Action

Show how you adapted the message for that specific audience — the language, the format, what you emphasised and what you left out.

Result

Give the concrete change: a decision reversed, a plan adopted, a stakeholder who came on board.