If you have read the guide on why police promotion board presentations fail, you know the problem. Officers build to their recommendation rather than leading with it. They present at the level they are working at rather than the level they are applying for. Structure is not something to sort out after the content is ready. Structure is the first decision.
STANCE is the framework that fixes that. Six steps, each doing a specific job, built on the same principles that underpin structured communication in every high-stakes professional environment.
Any Sergeant, Inspector or Chief Inspector candidate should be able to talk about this with authority. The framework applies across every presentation scenario a board will throw at you.
What STANCE Stands For
S — Situation. State the problem. Not the full context, not the history, not the background reading. The specific, named problem your presentation addresses. Two sentences at most. Panels do not need the journey. They need to know what the journey is about.
T — Take a position. Your recommendation, stated in the second step. Not built to. Not arrived at. Stated. This is the direct application of the Minto Pyramid Principle: lead with your conclusion and let everything that follows be in support of it. Most officers present at length before telling the panel what they think. STANCE inverts that. If you cannot state a clear recommendation here you have not finished thinking yet.
A — Assessment. Your evidence. This is the analysis that supports the position you have already taken, not analysis that leads to it. Named sources, specific data, force context, inspection findings. The discipline is that you are building a case for something you have already declared, not conducting an open-ended review. This tells the panel you are a leader presenting a decision, not an analyst presenting a summary.
N — Navigate the options. The alternatives you considered and discarded, and why. This step does two things. It shows the panel you did not arrive at your recommendation without thinking it through. And it anticipates the questions they will ask, because experienced panels will probe exactly why you chose this option over the others. Do not present the weakest alternatives and dismiss them easily. Find the strongest counter-argument. Engage with it honestly. Then explain why your recommendation still holds.
C — Cost and risk. What this takes. Resourcing, dependencies, risks and mitigations. At sergeant level this is your team and the time it needs. At inspector level this is your command and the functions it draws on. At chief inspector level this is force-level resource and the wider environment. Panels are not just assessing whether your recommendation is right. They are assessing whether you understand what it costs to deliver it. An answer with no cost or risk section sounds like an officer who has not led anything at scale.
E — End with impact. One sentence. The outcome you are committing to and how you will know it is working. Not a summary of what you have just said. A close that tells the panel what success looks like and that you own it. The primacy-recency effect applies here as strongly as it does at the opening. The last thing the panel hears is the thing they carry into scoring. Make it count.
STANCE in Practice: A Worked Example
Scenario: sickness absence across the command unit has risen eighteen percent over twelve months. You have been asked to present your approach as a new Chief Inspector.
WITHOUT STANCE
“Sickness has been an issue across the force for some time. There are various factors including workload, leadership and personal circumstances. I would look at the data, speak to sergeants, consider what support is available and put together a plan to address the most significant causes.”
WITH STANCE
“The situation is an eighteen percent rise in sickness absence across the command unit over twelve months, concentrated in two response teams. My recommendation is a structured twelve-week supervisor-led wellbeing intervention, starting with those two teams, rather than a force-wide programme or a referral-only model. The evidence supports this: HMICFRS’s State of Policing 2024-25 identifies workforce fatigue as a systemic issue, and the National Police Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2024-2026 specifically points to supervisor-led early intervention as the most effective approach. The alternative I considered was a structured referral to occupational health. I discarded it because the data shows officers in high-absence teams are the least likely to self-refer, and a referral model without supervisory contact first consistently underperforms. The cost is supervisor time: four hours per week across the intervention period, plus coordination from a sergeant I will designate as the lead. The risk is that supervisors feel this is additional burden rather than core leadership work. I will manage that through how I brief it. The impact I am committing to is a measurable reduction in short-term absence by week sixteen, and I will review at week eight with the sergeants running it.”
Same scenario. The first version tells the panel you would look at things. The second tells them what you have already decided, why, what it costs and what you are accountable for. That is the difference STANCE makes.
Rank Calibration Within STANCE
The framework applies at every rank. What changes is the scope of each step.
At sergeant level, your Situation is a team-level problem. Your Assessment draws on what you know about your officers, your shift pattern, your local context. Your Cost and Risk is your team’s capacity. Your End with impact is a team-level outcome. The panel is listening for a supervisor who can lead their immediate team through something clearly and accountably.
At inspector level, your Situation is a command unit problem. Your Assessment draws on force priorities, the wider operational picture, what HMICFRS has identified. Your Cost and Risk spans your command. Your End with impact is a command-level outcome you own through your sergeants. The panel is listening for a leader who operates across a function, not just within a team.
At chief inspector level, your Situation is a force-level or portfolio problem. Your Assessment connects to the strategic environment: national policing priorities, the White Paper, the inspection picture, public confidence. Your Cost and Risk spans functions and partners. Your End with impact is a strategic outcome the force can point to. The panel is listening for a leader who sees the organisation and communicates at the level of it.
The most common error is calibrating the framework at the rank below. A chief inspector candidate presenting a command unit solution to a force-level problem. An inspector presenting a team outcome to a command question. STANCE does not fix that by itself. But it creates the discipline to ask, at every step: is this answer pitched at the level I am applying for, or the level I am leaving?
Where STANCE Fits Alongside STARR and PEEL
State6 uses three frameworks, each built for a different question type.
STARR is for behavioural questions. Tell me about a time. Give me an example. Your answer draws on past experience and needs to show individual action, outcome and reflection.
PEEL is for forward facing questions. How would you. What would you do if. Your answer takes a position, grounds it in evidence, engages with the tension and commits to action.
STANCE is for presentations. A structured scenario requiring a recommendation, a structured case and an accountable close. The difference between PEEL and STANCE is scope and formality. PEEL is a spoken answer to a single question. STANCE is a structured presentation with a beginning, a body and a close.
If you are not sure which applies, listen to how the question is framed. A presentation task will typically be briefed in advance or set out in writing. You will have time to structure it. That is when STANCE applies.
For a complete overview of how presentations fit within the broader promotion process — alongside the NPPF, CVF and how panels score at each rank — see the complete guide to UK police promotion boards.