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Free tools for HR leaders

Interpersonal
skills 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

People bring them difficult situations early, which is a judgement about trust rather than availability.

Manager to employee

Defuses tension without pretending the disagreement is not there.

Manager to employee

Adjusts how they work with different people without changing what they actually say.

Manager to employee

Worth putting them into the genuinely difficult relationships rather than the ones already working.

Coaching

Ready to mediate rather than only manage their own relationships well.

Coaching

I rebuilt the working relationship with [team] after a bad start, mostly by asking what we had got wrong from their side.

Self-evaluation
Meets expectations

Works well with a wide range of people, including difficult ones.

Manager to employee

Listens before responding, and it is visible in what they say next.

Manager to employee

Raises friction directly with the person rather than around them.

Manager to employee

Handles their own relationships well. The next step is noticing when two other people are stuck and helping.

Coaching

Worth being more direct with the people they get on with. Warmth can quietly become avoidance.

Coaching

I raised a friction directly with [name] rather than working around it, and it took one conversation instead of a quarter.

Self-evaluation
Needs development

Difficult conversations are avoided until they become formal.

Manager to employee

Communication style does not adapt to the audience, which lands badly with some groups.

Manager to employee

Disagreements are taken personally more often than the situation warrants.

Manager to employee

Have the conversation while it is still small and awkward. It does not get smaller by waiting.

Coaching

When you get a reaction you did not expect, ask rather than assume. Most of these are misreadings, not conflicts.

Coaching

I avoid friction until it is too big to avoid, which makes it much harder to resolve.

Self-evaluation

I take disagreement about the work more personally than I should.

Self-evaluation
Unsatisfactory

Multiple colleagues have raised difficulty working with them, and this has been discussed before without change.

Manager to employee

Conflict with [team] has affected delivery on more than one occasion this year.

Manager to employee

This needs to be specific: which relationships, what changes, what support. Written, and reviewed in six weeks.

Coaching

I want your read on what is happening here too, because I have only heard one side of most of it.

Coaching

Working relationships have broken down this year and I have a part in that. I want to understand the other side before deciding what to change.

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

Rate whether friction gets raised and resolved. Somebody everybody likes who avoids every difficult conversation is not scoring well here.

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.

Warmth can quietly
become avoidance.

Compono Engage reads how a team actually works together, which distinguishes an individual problem from a team that was built without the coverage it needs.

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 Engage
8%+
reduction in turnover

Common questions

What are examples of interpersonal skills feedback?

Raising friction directly with the person, adjusting how you work with someone without changing what you say, defusing tension without pretending the disagreement is gone.

How is this different from communication?

Communication is whether information moved. Interpersonal skills are how people experience working with someone. They need different remedies.

Can I use these phrases word for word?

Yes, with the real relationship 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

HR Glossary

Competency framework

The bands above are competency ratings. This is what a competency framework is, and how the levels are meant to work.

Read the definition →Related tool

eNPS calculator (employee net promoter score)

Reviews name the gap one person at a time. This one sizes it across the team.

Run it next →Buying

Requirements builder

Score the platforms you are looking at against the two risks, must-haves first.

Build the scorecard →Talk to us

Bring us your review cycle

A conversation about what your reviews are telling you as a set, not a demo script.

Talk to us →