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Free tools for HR leaders

Resilience
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

Held the team steady through [difficult period] without pretending it was fine.

Manager to employee

Recovers from setbacks quickly and takes something from them rather than only moving on.

Manager to employee

Knows the difference between pushing through and needing to stop, and says so either way.

Manager to employee

Worth having them talk about how they handled [period]. Most people assume resilience is something you either have or do not.

Coaching

Ready for genuinely high-pressure work, with the caveat that this should be a choice rather than a default.

Coaching

I got through [period] by being explicit about what I would drop, rather than trying to hold everything and failing quietly.

Self-evaluation
Meets expectations

Handles setbacks without them derailing the work.

Manager to employee

Keeps perspective when priorities shift or plans fall through.

Manager to employee

Asks for support before reaching capacity rather than after.

Manager to employee

Steady under normal pressure. Worth being clearer earlier about where the limit is, because it is currently invisible to everybody else.

Coaching

Recovery is good. The next step is noticing the pattern in what knocks you sideways, which is usually a smaller list than it feels.

Coaching

I asked for help earlier this year than I would have last year, which stopped two things becoming problems.

Self-evaluation
Needs development

Setbacks tend to affect subsequent work for longer than the setback warranted.

Manager to employee

Capacity problems surface at the point of failure rather than in advance.

Manager to employee

Criticism of the work is carried as criticism of the person.

Manager to employee

Name the limit before you hit it. Nobody around you can see your capacity, so silence reads as room.

Coaching

When work is criticised, write down the specific change being asked for. It separates the feedback from the feeling.

Coaching

I hold on until something breaks rather than saying earlier that I am at capacity.

Self-evaluation

I take criticism of the work personally, and it costs me more days than the fix does.

Self-evaluation
Unsatisfactory

Repeated periods of reduced output have followed setbacks, and support offered in [month] has not changed the pattern.

Manager to employee

Capacity issues have gone unraised until they affected the team.

Manager to employee

Before performance, I want to check what support is available and whether the load is reasonable. That comes first.

Coaching

If something outside work is affecting this, tell me. There are options here and none of them start with a performance process.

Coaching

This year has been harder than I have let on and my work has suffered. I want to talk about the load before we talk about output.

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

Rate recovery and whether capacity was raised in time. Never rate somebody on how much they absorbed silently, or you will teach the whole team to hide it.

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, tooling 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.

Silence reads
as room.

Compono Engage reads how a team is actually holding up, which is what separates an individual resilience finding from a workload problem affecting everybody.

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 resilience feedback?

Recovering from a setback and taking something from it, being explicit about what will be dropped, asking for support before reaching capacity.

Is it fair to rate resilience at all?

Only alongside a genuine check on workload and support. Otherwise you are rating somebody on how well they tolerate a problem you created.

Can I use these phrases word for word?

With care in the lower bands, and only after checking the load.

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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Bring us your review cycle

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

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