# Annual Appraisal Examples: What to Write in Each Section Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/annual-appraisal-examples/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/annual-appraisal-examples.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving working with your manager at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Annual appraisal examples for every section of the form - achievements, goals, teamwork, weaknesses - plus what makes an entry credible instead of generic. ## Key facts - Title: Annual Appraisal Examples: What to Write in Each Section - Category: Working with Your Manager - Primary skill: Working with Your Manager - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Influence - Primary keyword: annual appraisal examples - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/annual-appraisal-examples/ ## What this page covers - Annual appraisal examples for every section of the form - achievements, goals, teamwork, weaknesses - plus what makes an entry credible instead of generic. - Practical guidance for annual appraisal examples - How this topic connects to Working with Your Manager ## Detailed explanation The self-assessment box is open and you need something to put in it. Annual appraisal examples are sample comments you can model your own answers on — one for each section of the form: achievements, teamwork, the development area you would rather skip. The useful ones share a shape: a specific thing you did, what changed because of it, and what you plan to do next. That shape is easy to copy. Filling it is the harder part, and the difficulty is not vocabulary — which is why the phrase banks at the top of the results page rarely get you unstuck. ## What separates a usable annual appraisal example from filler The first page of results for this search is mostly volume — pages promising 100, 150, or 200-plus sample comments, because phrase count is what they compete on. You get hundreds of sentences and no way to judge which ones fit what you actually did. The one principle that survives across all of them is specificity over adjectives, usually stated as a direct contrast. In the self-appraisal guides collected by Vantage Circle and Pin, "Exceeded Q3 sales by 18% against a 12% team target" lands where "I'm a strong communicator" gets skimmed, and "I reduced onboarding time by 30%" reads as credible where "I'm an exceptional onboarder" reads as promotional. The structure most often named for a single comment is SBI — situation, behavior, impact. It works less as a formula than as three questions that unstick a blank box: what was happening, what did I specifically do, what changed as a result. Answer those three and you have an entry, whatever section it belongs to. On length, practitioner guidance converges on roughly 150 to 300 words per section and 400 to 600 in total. No source ties that to research, so treat it as a sanity check rather than a target — the boxes on your own form are the better guide. One reframe is worth carrying into all of it. The self-appraisal exists because you can report contributions your manager simply did not see, and because the document is meant to produce a more balanced conversation. It is an input, not a test. ## Annual appraisal examples, section by section Appraisal form templates are strikingly consistent. Across the samples published by SafetyCulture, Techjockey and SoftwareSuggest the same categories recur — quality of work, productivity, interpersonal skills, dependability, initiative, job knowledge, an overall rating, plus development goals. Most pair a rating scale, usually one to four or poor-to-excellent, with a written observation. That written line is the part that counts; a self-rating with nothing beside it is the most common weak answer on any form. ### 1. Key achievements and results This section sets how everything after it is read, and it is the one most often answered with adjectives. The form asks what you achieved; the answer that works names the piece of work, what you specifically did, and what changed. Where you have a number, use it. Where you do not, name the concrete change instead — the repeat questions that stopped arriving, the process someone else can now run without you. ### 2. Progress against last year's goals Most forms ask you to report against the goals agreed at the previous review, and your manager can check them whether or not you raise them. Give the honest status of each: met, partly met, missed, or overtaken by a change in priorities. A missed goal with a stated cause reads better than a missed goal you left out, because the omission is more visible than the miss. Naming what you did with that time instead turns a gap into a reasonable account of your year. ### 3. Teamwork and collaboration This is the hardest section to write early in a career, because most of the work was shared and you do not want to claim what was not yours. The pattern the guides recommend resolves it: name what the team achieved, then name your contribution — my team delivered X, and I contributed by doing Y. You get credit for the outcome without claiming sole ownership of it. Watch for the opposite failure too: describing the team's result so generously that you never appear in your own sentence. ### 4. Communication Communication is a rated competency on almost every appraisal form, and it attracts the vaguest answers on the page. "Communicates well with the team" restates the category rather than evidencing it. A usable entry names a channel, an audience, and a difference: a handover document rewritten so a second team stopped asking the same questions, a recurring update moved out of email into a short standup — written work especially, since your manager can go and look at it. ### 5. Initiative and job knowledge These two categories recur in the templates alongside dependability and productivity, and both reward things that were never in your job description. Initiative is work you picked up because nobody owned it, or a problem you raised before it landed on someone. Job knowledge is having become the person others ask about a system, a process, or a client. Both are easy to under-report, because neither shows up as a deliverable; look through the year for the times somebody came to you. ### 6. A setback and what you did about it Templates frequently include a field for incidents during the year, and even where they do not, one honest account of something going wrong does more for your credibility than another success. Describe what happened, what you did about it, and what you changed afterward, factually and without assigning blame. An entry that shows you can describe a bad outcome accurately is the strongest signal on the whole form that the good entries are true. ### 7. Areas for improvement The section people either leave blank or over-confess in. The wording the guides converge on has two halves — the limitation, then the intended change. One of the examples collected by HiBob and Deel runs close to: I rely heavily on email but recognize the value of quicker channels, and I will adapt my methods to fit the team better. The forward half is what makes the admission safe to write down. Pick one real gap that matters for your work rather than three small ones or a disguised strength. If you are not sure which gap is worth naming, it helps to have a read on [where your strengths sit](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) instead of picking whichever weakness sounds least damaging. ### 8. Learning and development you completed Training and development plans are a standard field in appraisal templates, and this is the section people under-report most, because most workplace learning is informal. A course with a certificate is easy to list. Learning a reporting system well enough to answer other people's questions, or working out how the approval process really runs, is not — and it counts. Write down what you can do now that you could not do twelve months ago, however you picked it up. ### 9. Goals for the coming year The forward-looking close, and the section with the most leverage, because it sets what you will be measured against next time. The sample answers here are consistently more concrete than the backward-looking ones: leading a project end to end, taking on a defined piece of scope, building a named skill. Say what you want to work on, what you want more of, and what you would need to get there — training, a different kind of project, more room to decide things yourself. ### 10. What you need from your manager Almost no phrase bank covers this, and few forms have a box for it, which is exactly why it is worth adding to whichever field comes closest. The published examples treat goals as declared; in practice they are agreed, and the agreement is where you can ask for something. Name the support that would make next year's goals realistic: a decision you would like the authority to make, a piece of work you want to be considered for, feedback more often than once a year. Nobody can act on a preference you never stated. ## The skills underneath a good appraisal entry Read back over those ten sections and notice how little of the difficulty was wording. Nearly all of it came down to having a record of the year, judging your own work accurately, and being willing to ask for something — which is why the same form takes one person an hour and leaves another dreading it for a month. **Working with Your Manager** carries most of the weight. An appraisal is not a verdict handed down to you; it is the one scheduled point in the year where you can shape how your contribution is understood, by preparing properly, keeping the focus on what comes next, and asking for what you want rather than waiting to be offered it. The year-round half matters just as much. If you make your results visible as you go, the form confirms what your manager already knows instead of surprising them. **Building Self-Awareness** is what makes the honest sections possible. Naming a strength you genuinely have — not one you are merely competent at — and a gap you can describe without hiding it or over-apologizing takes a reasonably accurate picture of yourself. It also governs the half of the review you cannot draft in advance: understanding the feedback first, adding your own view second, reflecting on it afterward, and asking for specific advice about what to do next rather than settling for a rating. **Influence** is the part often misread as self-promotion. A self-appraisal is a case you are making, and cases are won on delivered results and concrete examples, not on confident adjectives. The move that makes a junior person credible is the one that makes any argument credible: give the evidence, and name the drawbacks yourself instead of leaving them to be discovered. That is the difference between an entry a manager trusts and one they quietly discount. None of the three is a personality you either have or you do not; each is a set of habits built on how you already work. The free Job Skills Test covers twelve of them, these three included, so you can [check where each one stands](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and see which one is quietly costing you entries before you start writing. Some of this may already be familiar: the note you keep when a project goes well, or the instinct to look up last year's goals before writing about this year's. Those habits are the starting material, and the ones that are not there yet are learnable without having to become a different person at work. They also count for more as you go, since the further into a career you get, the more of your standing is settled in conversations like this one rather than in the work itself. And you are reading about how to write these entries before the deadline rather than on the night of it, which is the part most people skip. ## Find out which skills your appraisal is really testing What is left is knowing which of those skills you are already strong in, because that tells you which sections will come easily and which one you will have to work at. The **free** Job Skills Test is a short self-assessment of your work skills across all twelve, and it gives you a plain-language read on where you stand and the two or three worth your attention right now. It takes about seven minutes in one sitting, with your results on screen when you finish — nothing to maintain and nothing to come back for. Then open the form knowing what you are actually working with. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, and your results are on screen in 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? Annual appraisal examples for every section of the form - achievements, goals, teamwork, weaknesses - plus what makes an entry credible instead of generic. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Working with Your Manager. It also relates to Building Self-Awareness, Influence. ### 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/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/annual-appraisal-examples/ Preferred summary: "Annual appraisal examples for every section of the form - achievements, goals, teamwork, weaknesses - plus what makes an entry credible instead of generic." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.