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Management & Leadership vocabulary · Performance Management

SMART goals

Meaning in management & leadership, with examples

nounCommon term

In management & leadership, SMART goals means: Goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound; a common checklist for making goals clear enough to act on and track.

In Turkish: SMART hedefler, akıllı hedefler

How it is used

Used in performance reviews, coaching and training, where managers ask staff to make their goals SMART. The exact words behind the letters vary slightly: A can stand for attainable and R for realistic.

Example sentences

  1. 'Improve sales' is too vague; SMART goals would say 'increase sales by 10% by December'.

  2. Please write three SMART goals for next year before your appraisal.

Common collocations

  • set SMART goals
  • make goals SMART
  • SMART objectives
  • SMART criteria
  • goalSomething a person, team or company wants to achieve, usually described in broad terms and over a longer period, such as becoming the market leader.
  • objectiveA specific, measurable result that a team or organisation plans to achieve by a certain date, usually as one step towards a wider goal.
  • targetA specific number, level or result that a person or team is expected to reach within a set time, such as a sales figure or a cost limit.
  • performance reviewA regular formal meeting in which a manager and an employee discuss how well the employee has done their job, agree on a rating and set goals for the next period.
  • OKRShort for objectives and key results: a goal-setting method in which each ambitious objective is paired with a few measurable key results that show whether it was achieved.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Performance Management

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