# SMART Objectives Sample: Nine You Can Adapt, and the Template Behind Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals/smart-objectives-sample/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals/smart-objectives-sample.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving setting goals at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Nine SMART objectives samples you can adapt, plus the fill-in template, what makes a behavioral goal measurable, and how to agree it with your manager. ## Key facts - Title: SMART Objectives Sample: Nine You Can Adapt, and the Template Behind Them - Category: Setting Goals - Primary skill: Setting Goals - Related skills: Working with Your Manager, Time Management - Primary keyword: smart objectives sample - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals/smart-objectives-sample/ ## What this page covers - Nine SMART objectives samples you can adapt, plus the fill-in template, what makes a behavioral goal measurable, and how to agree it with your manager. - Practical guidance for smart objectives sample - How this topic connects to Setting Goals ## Detailed explanation A SMART objective is one sentence that names a specific action, attaches something countable, sets a date, keeps the scope inside what you can realistically deliver, and connects to what your team or your own development actually needs. A usable SMART objectives sample reads like this: *Send a [written project update](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/how-to-write-email-to-manager-regarding-updates/) to my manager and the two key stakeholders every Friday for the next three months.* That is the whole format. Most people looking for a sample are not confused by the acronym — they have a form open, a deadline on it, and a goal in mind that refuses to turn into a number. That second problem is the one worth solving, and it has a reliable fix. ## What the letters ask for, and where samples go wrong Most of the format collapses into one fill-in sentence. Smartsheet publishes it two ways — *By [time], I/we will [specific action], measured by [criteria]*, and *[who] will [action] [object] by [time] for the purpose of [result]* — and the Iowa Department of Education uses a longer variant that also names the resources you will use. Any of them works, because the slots make it impossible to stay vague about the date or the measure. Two things are worth knowing before you copy anything. First, sources disagree about R. Indeed and Asana read it as relevant to your own values and longer-term direction; HR platforms such as Omni HR read it as relevant to the company's objectives. Both are defensible and produce different objectives from the same start, so work out which your form is asking for. Second, the letters are drafting questions, not a layout. Template documents from Santa Clara University and TemplateLab set out one prompt block per letter, which is useful while you think — but the finished objective is a single clean sentence, and one submitted with the scaffolding still attached reads badly on an appraisal form. It also helps to know that "objective" is often the narrower word. The Minnesota Department of Health draws the line plainly: a goal is the broad aim, and objectives are the specific commitments that spell out how it gets reached. The standard rewrite shows the move — *improve performance* becomes *increase sales by 10% within the next quarter*. The hardest one to write is the development objective, because first you have to decide [which gap is real](/knowledge/setting-goals/strengths-and-weaknesses/). An objective aimed at something you already handle well is a wasted quarter, so it is worth getting [a read on your skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you commit one to paper — the weakness you would name off the top of your head is not always the one costing you most. ## A SMART objectives sample bank: nine you can adapt ### 1. The visibility objective *Send a written project update to my manager and the two key stakeholders every Friday for the next three months, so progress is visible without anyone having to chase it.* This one recurs almost word for word across sample banks including status.net and Workhuman, and it earns its place: it takes "be more visible," which nobody can score, and converts it into twelve updates that either happened or did not. The measurement is the count, not anyone's impression of you — which also means it survives a bad quarter. If the project stalls, you still sent the updates. ### 2. The speaking-up objective *Deliver two presentations to the team by the end of the quarter: one project update in September, one topic briefing in November.* Published versions frame this as building presentation confidence, but notice what is actually measured — two dated events. You cannot commit to feeling more confident by November, and no manager could verify it if you did. You can commit to standing up twice. Naming both slots in advance stops the objective sliding into the last week of the quarter. ### 3. The course or certification objective *Pass the PMP exam before the end of the year.* Or, in the University of California's fuller version: *I will complete 3 reporting technical courses by June 30, in order to improve my knowledge, skills and abilities in creating, analyzing and summarizing data.* These are the easiest objectives on any list to write, because the provider supplies the metric: the exam has a pass mark, the course a completion date. The University of California version is worth copying for one detail — the "in order to" clause carries the R, which most course objectives quietly leave out. ### 4. The proficiency objective, and how to repair it *In 6 months, I will complete a course and be proficient in Excel.* Trakstar publishes this one, and it is most useful as a warning. "Proficient" has no test attached, so at review time nobody can say whether you got there. The repair is to name the artifact that proves it: *by June 30, build the monthly cost report unaided, using pivot tables.* That is verifiable by inspection. Any objective containing "improve," "better," or "proficient" needs the same treatment. ### 5. The prioritization objective *Use a written task list and an [important-versus-urgent split](/knowledge/time-management/eisenhower-time-management/) every working day for eight weeks, reviewing each Friday which tasks I dropped.* Published versions attach targets such as a 20% rise in daily task completion. Treat those carefully: on sites like Engagedly and xTiles they are illustrative content inside sample goals, not measured results from any study — and you could not prove them at review time anyway. For a personal work habit, the honest measure is whether you kept the practice. ### 6. The cross-functional objective *Launch one project with the design team by the end of Q3, with a monthly alignment meeting booked from the start.* Engagedly and Workhuman both pair the project with the recurring meeting, and the meeting is the load-bearing part. A collaboration objective with no fixed rhythm disappears into everyone's busiest month; a standing calendar slot drags it back into view every four weeks. Name the other team specifically rather than writing "stakeholders." ### 7. The one-conversation objective *By the end of this month, arrange and hold one conversation with a team lead in another department about how their work connects to mine.* The version on status.net attaches a lunch. What makes it a good sample is the scale: one conversation, one month. "Build my internal network" is not an objective, because there is no point at which it is finished. One named conversation is finished the moment you have had it — and it is small enough that you will actually do it. ### 8. The numeric outcome objective *Increase customer support response-time satisfaction from 82% to 90% by the end of Q4, by revising the triage workflow and the response templates.* This is the shape most published samples imitate, and it has four parts rather than three: baseline, target, deadline, method. The baseline is what people drop. Without "from 82%," there is nothing to measure 90% against, and you and your manager can end up disagreeing about the result in perfectly good faith. Use this shape when the number already exists somewhere you can point to. ### 9. The improve-something-you-own objective *Update the emerging-trends report with at least two trends that are not in the current version, by November 30.* Trakstar publishes this as an entry-level example, and it is the best model for a first job with no dashboard, no budget and no team to influence. It is bounded, it sits entirely within your control, and it is verified by opening the document. If nothing else on this list feels available to you, start here. ## The step the sample banks skip Those samples are all published as free-standing text, as though writing one were the whole job. In practice the objective goes onto a form that somebody else reads, scores, and holds you to for six or twelve months — and almost no source covers what happens next: who signs it off, what to do when your manager reads the measure differently than you do, or how to renegotiate a goal the work made impossible in month four. So treat the sentence as a draft and the conversation as the real deliverable. Raise it in a [one-on-one](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/one-on-one-discussion/) before it is filed, say out loud what you will count and when, and check that your manager would score it the same way. An objective nobody has agreed to is just a wish with a date on it. ## The skills that make an objective worth setting Read back over the nine samples and the wording is barely the issue. What separates one you copy from one you finish is whether you chose something you care about, agreed it with the person who will score it, and sized it against the time you have. **Setting Goals** decides what to aim at. Early careers work better as a run of shorter horizons — six to eighteen months — than as a fixed long plan, and the objectives worth writing are the ones that follow what the work has been teaching you about your strengths and what you value. An objective lifted from a sample bank because it looked impressive is the one quietly abandoned in week three. Yours has to come from you, even when the form belongs to someone else. **Working with Your Manager** is where a draft becomes an agreement. Treat it as a partnership rather than a submission: goals that are challenging but genuinely reachable, clarity about what you are allowed to decide on your own, and a shared understanding of how the result will be visible. The real risk was never clumsy wording — it is the two of you reading the same measure differently ten months from now. **Time Management** is what makes "achievable" mean anything. Estimating realistically with a buffer, splitting a large objective into chunks small enough to start, and separating what is important from what is merely urgent are the difference between a commitment and an intention. The same instinct that makes you ask a requester what is due, by when, and what "done" looks like is exactly what a vague objective is missing. If you would rather not guess which of the three to build your next objective around, the free test reads your standing across **all twelve of the work skills** the framework treats as buildable, not only these. Knowing [which skills to name](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) beats spending a quarter on a gap that turns out not to have been the real one. Some of this may already describe how you work — perhaps you are the one who checks what "done" means before agreeing to a task, or who writes the date down rather than trusting it to memory. The habits that are not there yet are learnable, and building them does not require becoming a different person at work; it means getting clearer about which few things are worth committing to this year. That counts for more, not less, as you take on work other people depend on, because an objective you can hold yourself to becomes something your manager can plan around. You came here for a sample and stayed to work out what makes one hold up — the part most people skip. Which leaves one question before you fill in the form. ## Write the objective about the skill that will move most You have the format, nine samples to adapt, and a clear view of what makes one stick. The only thing left is deciding what yours should be about. The **free** Job Skills Test is a short self-assessment of your own work skills: it shows where you stand across all twelve of them and points to the ones where a dated, measurable commitment would make the biggest difference to you right now. Do that first, and the objective you write will be aimed at something real. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, and it takes about 7 minutes.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Nine SMART objectives samples you can adapt, plus the fill-in template, what makes a behavioral goal measurable, and how to agree it with your manager. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Setting Goals. It also relates to Working with Your Manager, Time Management. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/time-management.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals/smart-objectives-sample/ Preferred summary: "Nine SMART objectives samples you can adapt, plus the fill-in template, what makes a behavioral goal measurable, and how to agree it with your manager." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.