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Goal
setting performance review phrases

24 phrases across four rating bands, for managers, coaching conversations and self-evaluations. Filter, copy, print. Free, no sign-up.

Start with the rating band that matches the person, then pick the voice you are writing in. Copy a phrase, then change the specifics so it names the real project, the real quarter, the real thing that happened. A comment that could describe anyone is the thing you were trying to avoid.

How these were written, and the five steps to a review that holds up ↓
Rating:
Voice:
24 showing
Exceeds expectations

Sets goals that are specific enough to be wrong, which is what makes them useful.

Manager to employee

Renegotiated [goal] mid-year when the business changed, rather than quietly missing it.

Manager to employee

Their goals connect visibly to what the business is trying to do, without being restatements of it.

Manager to employee

Worth having them help others set theirs. Most people in the team write activities rather than outcomes.

Coaching

Ready for goals where the path is genuinely unclear rather than the target being ambitious.

Coaching

I rewrote my goals in the second half when the priorities moved, rather than reporting against ones nobody needed any more.

Self-evaluation
Meets expectations

Sets clear goals and tracks them without being prompted.

Manager to employee

Raises early when a goal is no longer the right one.

Manager to employee

Breaks larger goals into steps with visible progress.

Manager to employee

Sets solid goals. The next step is writing them as outcomes rather than activities: what will be true, not what you will do.

Coaching

Worth adding a measure to each one. A goal you cannot fail is not a goal.

Coaching

I rewrote my goals as outcomes rather than activity lists, which changed what I actually spent time on.

Self-evaluation
Needs development

Goals are written as lists of activity, so it is unclear what success would look like.

Manager to employee

Goals set at the start of the cycle are not revisited as circumstances change.

Manager to employee

Targets are set where failure is not really possible, which makes the exercise decorative.

Manager to employee

For each goal, write the sentence you want to be true in twelve months. If it is not falsifiable, it is not a goal.

Coaching

Put a mid-year check in the calendar now. Goals that are not revisited stop describing the job within a quarter.

Coaching

My goals describe activity rather than outcomes, so I can complete all of them without much changing.

Self-evaluation

I set goals in July and do not look at them again until they are due.

Self-evaluation
Unsatisfactory

Goals were not set for this cycle despite being requested in [month].

Manager to employee

Agreed goals were not tracked or reported against at any point in the year.

Manager to employee

We set three goals this week, with measures and a mid-cycle review date. Six-week check on whether they are being used.

Coaching

If the goals felt disconnected from the actual work, that is worth saying, because setting the wrong ones is worse than late ones.

Coaching

I did not set or track goals this year. I want them agreed early and reviewed at the mid-point rather than at the end.

Self-evaluation
No phrases match those two filters together. Clear one of them.
How do you write about goal setting in a performance review?

Check whether the goals were falsifiable and whether they were revisited. Goals nobody looked at after July did not do any work.

How these were written

Written, not calculated. Each phrase names a situation, an observable behaviour and its effect on the work or the people around it. Bands run from exceeds expectations to unsatisfactory across three voices: a manager writing about somebody, a manager coaching, and a person writing their own self-evaluation.

Assumptions
  • Phrases are starting points. Drop in the real situation or the comment reads as filler.
  • The four bands assume a four-point scale. On a three or five-point cycle the band is a sorting device, not a score.
  • Written for Australian workplaces and Australian English.
  • Check the constraint before rating the person. Workload, authority and what happened to the last person who tried shape most of what gets written up as an individual failing.
  • Unsatisfactory-band comments assume a dated record already exists and the issue has been raised before.
Sources

What to do about it

Good phrasing rescues a review that was already done properly. It cannot rescue one where nobody wrote anything down until the week it was due.

1

Start from your notes, not from this list

Open what you recorded during the year, pick what really happened, then find the wording. The other order produces a fluent review that says nothing.

2

Name the situation in every comment

The real project, the real quarter, the real result. Only one person could have earned it.

3

Match the band to your evidence, not the conversation you want

A generous rating on somebody you privately consider a problem is how next year's difficult conversation ends up looking like it came from nowhere.

4

Pair every development comment with a support step

Training, a pilot, a pairing, a cadence. Criticism without a path forward produces defensiveness and reads badly to anyone reviewing the file later.

5
Where a tool helps

Read your reviews as a set

If the same competency is the gap across a function, that is a capability gap in how the team was built rather than a dozen development plans.

Goals nobody revisits
stop describing the job.

Compono Develop connects goals to the capability a role actually requires, so a development goal is grounded in evidence rather than in what felt reasonable in July.

Step 5 asks what your reviews say together. That is very hard to answer from a folder of review documents and straightforward to answer from capability data.

See how it works
Compono Develop
4.7/5
rating across millions of learners

Common questions

What are examples of goal setting feedback?

Writing goals as outcomes rather than activities, renegotiating a goal mid-year when the business moved, putting a measure on each one.

What is the difference between an outcome and an activity goal?

An activity goal says what you will do. An outcome goal says what will be true afterwards. You can complete every activity and change nothing.

Can I use these phrases word for word?

Yes, with the real goals named.

These phrases are starting points, not finished comments. Change the specifics so each one is true of the actual person and the actual situation, because a comment that could describe anyone is the thing you were trying to avoid. Review comments can later be read as evidence in an employment matter, so anything you take from the unsatisfactory band should match a dated record you already hold. Last reviewed July 2026.

Next step

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