Skip to the main content.
Talk to an expert
Talk to an expert
Featured Offer
Ambitious 50 →
6 months of Hire and Engage free for businesses under 50 people.

Hey Compono!

A coach that actually gets you.

Get 10 minutes free, then $15 a month. Cancel anytime.

Get Started ≫
Free tools for HR leaders

Learning
agility 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

Picked up [new area] from a standing start and was useful in it within weeks.

Manager to employee

Applies lessons from one situation to a different one, which is the part most people miss.

Manager to employee

Treats being wrong as information rather than as a threat, visibly.

Manager to employee

Worth giving them the unfamiliar problem rather than the one that matches their background.

Coaching

Ready for a role that is mostly things they have not done before.

Coaching

I took on [area] with no background in it and was contributing properly inside a month, mostly by asking earlier than felt comfortable.

Self-evaluation
Meets expectations

Learns new systems and processes without needing them taught twice.

Manager to employee

Seeks feedback and acts on it rather than defending against it.

Manager to employee

Comfortable saying they do not know something yet.

Manager to employee

Learns well when taught. The next step is learning without a teacher, which is most of the job at the next level.

Coaching

Worth writing down what a project taught you, not just what it delivered. That is what makes it transferable.

Coaching

I started keeping notes on what each project taught me rather than only what it produced.

Self-evaluation
Needs development

New processes need to be explained several times before they hold.

Manager to employee

Applies old approaches to new situations without checking whether they still fit.

Manager to employee

Feedback is received politely but rarely changes anything.

Manager to employee

After the next piece of feedback, write down the one thing you will do differently. Politeness is not action.

Coaching

When something is new, resist the familiar pattern for the first week. It usually fits worse than it feels like it does.

Coaching

I fall back on what has worked before, including when the situation is not the same.

Self-evaluation

I take feedback well and act on it less than I should.

Self-evaluation
Unsatisfactory

Required new skills have not been taken up despite training and support provided during the year.

Manager to employee

The same corrections have been needed repeatedly on the same work.

Manager to employee

A written learning plan with specific milestones and how we will know it has landed. Reviewed in six weeks.

Coaching

If the pace of change here is genuinely too fast to absorb, that is worth saying, because it may be true for others too.

Coaching

I have not kept up with what the role now requires. I want a plan with milestones rather than being left to catch up.

Self-evaluation
No phrases match those two filters together. Clear one of them.
What is learning agility in a performance review?

How quickly somebody becomes useful in something unfamiliar. It is the single best predictor of performance in a role that has not stopped changing.

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.

Feedback taken well
and not acted on.

Compono Develop maps capability against what a role will require next, not only what it needs now, which is where learning agility actually pays.

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 learning agility feedback?

Becoming useful in a new area within weeks, applying a lesson to a different situation, treating being wrong as information.

How do you develop learning agility?

Ask what a project taught, not only what it delivered. The lesson has to be written down before it can transfer.

Can I use these phrases word for word?

Yes, with the real new area 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

Training ROI calculator

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 →