Goal Setting and Development

Performance Objective Setting with AI

How to create SMART objectives that unlock your people’s talent, align personal ambition with team priorities, and deliver stronger results for your business.

Who This Is For

People managers, team leads, or HR partners who:

Want to move beyond vague review notes and set actionable objectives that actually get done
Need help balancing what was achieved, what the team needs next, and where each employee wants to grow
Value AI as a practical thinking partner to structure goals clearly — while keeping real conversations at the centre

The Problem It Solves

Most performance objectives fail because they’re too generic (“Improve communication”) or disconnected from real context.

If you don’t link the past, the present, and the individual’s ambition, goals feel forced, irrelevant — and quickly forgotten.

Combining classic SMART goal best practice with AI support means you set clear, motivating objectives that people can deliver on — without wasting hours on repetitive drafting.

Step 1: Map Out the Three Key Inputs

Before you draft anything, pause:

As a people manager, you should build objectives that are fair, motivating, and aligned with the bigger picture.

To do this, bring together three key pieces:

1️⃣ Past Performance — What did the last review reveal? What strengths were proven? Which development points need real follow-through?

2️⃣ Team or Company Priorities — What are the most important outcomes for the next cycle? Where can this person contribute most?

3️⃣ Employee Ambition — Where does this person want to grow? What skills excite them? What do they want to do more of?

Mapping these together makes your goals relevant, fair, and connected to real work.

Step 2: Use AI to Suggest Focus Areas

Now that you have your inputs, let AI help you spot the best focus areas.

AI helps you see overlaps you might miss — so you create goals that serve the employee and your team.

✅ Prompt Example:

You are an experienced people manager.
Based on the following information, suggest 5–7 realistic focus areas that will have the biggest positive impact — combining this person’s ambition with your team or company goals.

- Previous Performance: [insert key points]
- Team or Company Priorities: [insert key points]
- Personal Ambition: [insert key points]

Step 3: Draft SMART Objectives

Once you have your strongest focus areas, use AI to help you turn them into clear, SMART objectives — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

✅ Prompt Example:

Rewrite these focus areas into SMART objectives. For each, include:
- Specific action
- How to measure success
- A realistic timeframe
- One way I, as a line manager, can support this person to achieve it

Example Before & After:

❌ Vague: “Improve communication with stakeholders.”
✅ SMART: “Send a short project update to key stakeholders every Friday for the next 3 months; collect feedback monthly and share learnings with the team. As manager, I’ll help unblock stakeholder delays and provide templates if needed.”

Alternative Frameworks

📌 This entire approach works with other goal-setting methods too.

If your organisation uses OKR (Objectives and Key Results), FAST (Frequently discussed, Ambitious, Specific, Transparent), CLEAR (Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable), or any other structured method instead of SMART, just adapt the same process:

Combine the three key inputs, use AI to surface realistic focus areas, then shape them into clear, trackable goals that fit your preferred framework

Practical Tip: Keep It Real

📌 Most employees do best with 3–5 clear objectives — more than that, and focus drops.

📌 Plan short, regular check-ins — biweekly or monthly — to make progress visible and adapt when needed.