4 Career Goals for Professional Development

Success doesn’t happen overnight. The difference between a person who’s continuously advancing professionally and one who is stuck in their career is their ability to set, work and achieve professional development goals.

What are Professional Development Goals?

Basically, they are professional goals that trace a map of your career to guide you in the right direction. The purpose of these career goals is to increase your knowledge and skills and be better prepared. Here’s a few examples of skills needed to develop professionally.

Written Communication: Written communication skills are necessary for writing emails, chatting with others through instant messaging tools, posting on social media for your business, or completing a project.

Organization: Improving your organizational skills can help you be more productive and efficient at work, saving you time and energy to put back into other projects.

Interpersonal: Interpersonal skills help us communicate and interact with one another, and when done well, these skills help us communicate more effectively and create professional relationships.

Industry Knowledge: Understanding the idiosyncrasies of your industry – and your organization’s position within it is critical to any organization’s success.

4 Professional Development Goals

Even though your goals should be tailored to your personal aims, here are 5 examples to give you an idea of career goals you can work towards.

Always try to go the extra mile instead of just doing what’s in your job description. If you take on more managerial responsibilities you’ll get noticed and this will provide you with a stepping stone into leadership positions. Ask your manager what are those areas of opportunity you need to work on and which extra responsibilities you can assume to improve them.

Improve Public Speaking

As you develop your career, you’re often going to find yourself doing from daily stand-up meetings to presentations, giving pep talks, and building relationships. Great public speaking skills allow you to engage and communicate successfully with your audience (well, in this case, your team!), and to motivate and inspire those around you.

Learn Stress Management Techniques

Stress management is something we all need to learn to benefit our wellbeing. But for professional development and for an aspiring leader, it will give you the tools to manage conflict resolution and problem solving in the most efficient way. You’ll learn how to solve situations with a clear head and help others whenever they feel overwhelmed or stuck with a project or task.

Learn Ins and Outs of Company

By taking a couple of days to work with or shadow each department over the next two quarters, you can build a wider understanding of what goes into each department’s daily practices. This means you can better understand the challenges and obstacles other team members experience on a daily basis, making you a more effective manager.

Deciding on your career goals is the first step to begin developing both personally and professionally. Write your goals down somewhere visible so you can constantly motivate yourself and hold yourself accountable. This will increase your chances of success.