Complete A Leadership Training Course Before The End Of The Quarter
Part of professional development is continuing to learn new skills and practices, at any stage in your career. Sometimes enrolling in courses or training programs is an invaluable way to gain the skills or knowledge you need to develop in your role and improve in specific practices.
Learning new things doesnt necessarily have to be a formal process though. Development goals can be as easy as gaining more knowledge about something.
Advance Your Educational Qualifications
All of the above tactics are intended to help you better demonstrate your value to current and prospective employers. But according to Ellen Mullarkey, vice president of business development for Messina Staffing Group, one surefire way to communicate this even more concretely is to further your education by going back to school.
Employers need team members who are bringing new concepts and ideas to the table, she adds. Mullarkey explains this is why many companies offer educational benefits like tuition assistance. If your employer has a program like this, be sure to take advantage of it. Every course you take will add value to your resume and increase your potential for growth in the industry.
If the idea of going back to school intrigues you, there are a number of different compelling masters degree programs you could take advantage of. But keep in mind that going back to school doesnt always have to mean investing the time to earn a degree. You could also consider various professional development options, including singular courses, certificate programs, workshops and seminars.
Be A More Effective Listener
Curiosity is a priceless skill for leaders. By developing the skill of asking good questions, you’ll uncover useful insights from your team members that will help you lead better, fix problems when they’re small, and learn what your team members need most to thrive.
This really comes down to two things:
- Asking great questions: Curiosity isn’t passive. You need to have great questions that allow you to explore a topic and uncover insights. Every good discussion in a 1 on 1 starts with the right set of questions.
- Listening to what they have to say: No question matters if you don’t truly listen to what they have to say. True listening means giving undivided attention and asking genuine follow-up questions to bring clarity.
The questions you ask in 1 on 1 s are especially powerful, because it is a dedicated private time where you can have more candid conversations with your team. That means it’s particularly important to teach your managers to ask their team a variety of questions during their 1 on 1s to uncover key insights, like:
- How do you feel your work/life balance is right now?
- What drives you? What motivates you to come to work each day?
- What area of the company would you like to learn more about?
- What aspects of your work would you like more or less direction from me?
- When was the time you enjoyed working here the most?
Further reading: Check out more great 1 on 1 questions here: One on One Meeting Questions Great Managers Ask Their Teams
Recommended Reading: How To Start Career In Music
Become A Better Team Member
You should always be looking to improve yourself, and your team is a great place to start. Though you may already be a great teammate, theres always room for improvement. Training can help you develop your skills and learn new ones that will make you more effective when working in teams.
Talk with your manager to find out what training opportunities are available. You may also want to research classes or workshops on team-building, collaboration, or other relevant topics.
The career development goal of becoming a better team member takes into account the importance of teamwork in the modern workplace. Achieving this goal involves making sure that one works to ensure greater efficiency as a whole. This is also important because it allows people to discover new and interesting career growth opportunities.
SEE: Understand the benefits of teamwork skills
What Are Professional Development Goals Definition & Meaning
Professional goals are any goals that allow you to excel in your career, increase/develop your current skills, and develop new workplace skills and strengths.
In many ways, these goals all ultimately contribute to your career success and satisfaction. These goals can contribute to any individuals success. The specific career goals you set, however, will depend on your unique aspirations and dreams.
Possible professional goals include boosting your communication skills, getting a college degree or certificate, gaining experience in your given field, getting a raise at work or moving up the companys hierarchy, and pursuing any other career aspirations you may have.
Recommended Reading: Starting Your Real Estate Career
Make Your Bosss Job Easier
You were hired to make your boss successful. And the first step to making that happen is to understand exactly what is expected of you and how you should deliver on those expectations. Get to know your boss and his or her preferences so they dont have to go back and correct your work.
In doing this, its important to maintain a sense of personal responsibility and stay accountable for your work. If you commit to something, make sure to follow through with it. By doing so, youre letting your boss know that they can count on you.
How to Achieve This Goal
One way that you can make your bosss job easier is to stay ahead of your work. When youre given a deadline, be sure to have your work completed at least one day in advance. This will allow your boss to have some time to go over the work on their own schedule rather than waiting until the last minute when you finally turn it in.
Some other ways to make your bosss life easier include:
Improve Time Management Skills
Some of the most brilliant and creative employees struggle with time management, but they can still develop these skills. Some specific, measurable goals that can help them improve here include timing themselves on how long different tasks take to complete and helping them visualize their schedule in new ways that help them manage time better.
Recommended Reading: Career Technical Institute Washington Dc
Career Development Goals And How To Pursue Them
An essential part of career advancement is setting goals for your professional development. These goals can be anything, from working to achieve higher sales to getting promoted to a managerial position to becoming a director of a large corporation.
One path with a likelihood of achieving those goals is setting actionable goals you can work on daily.
Furthermore, long-term pursuing professional goals can help you achieve your personal goals, such as getting your own car, opening a new business, or purchasing a home.
Suppose youâre in Geelong, Victoria , Australia, and need assistance with any of these goals. In that case, this site provides finance and mortgage brokering services in that region.
Having identified your career development goals, you have various ways to work on achieving them. These goals can include obtaining a degree or certification, improving the way you communicate, and attending workshops relevant to your career choice.
New Perspective And Self
Professional coaches are unbiased third parties outside of your organization with whom you can discuss sensitive issues. A coach is likely to offer perception into opportunities for your development that you might not have thought of. Additionally, they can help you by drawing from their understanding of what has worked for others because they have experience working with a variety of clients.
Additionally, a coachs objectivity enables them to be sincere with you. They may highlight areas for improvement or instances in which you may have acted or spoken inappropriately. This candor can assist you in discovering new aspects of yourself and ways to enhance them.
Recommended Reading: Best Career Paths For The Future
Final Thoughts On Personal Development Goals
Your brain and thinking methods both have an impact on every aspect of your life. The personal development goals discussed in this article are all dependent on your ability to retrain your brain to think in new ways.
Your brain is flexible and can quickly adapt to reaching your new goals when you use the right approach and become more goal-oriented. Take a moment to think about your personal development goals and which of the aforementioned are the most important to you.
If you have had some other goals on your mind, how can you incorporate some of these personal development goals into your own to leverage your success? Reaching one goal can easily open a door to work on another of its kind or help you recognize another area of improvement you may be able to work on in your life.
Join A Professional Organization
Another way to build your network and learn about more industry-specific skills and topics, is to join a professional organization. Many organizations hold monthly events, conferences, and offer job search services including a job board to help you with your career goals.
Read more:7 Ways to Schmooze Your Network
Recommended Reading: Technical Project Manager Career Path
Improve Upon Your Weaknesses
Make your biggest weakness into your biggest strengths by being aware of areas in which you can improve and focusing directly on them.
Being able to recognize your weaknesses shows self-awareness and strength in your character. But what do you tell potential employers when they ask about your weaknesses? Do you tell them the solid steps youre taking to improve upon them?
You wont improve without accepting that your skillset isnt perfect and then creating a strategic plan for improvement. If you can take concrete steps to turn your weaknesses around, not only will you be a role model for other professionals, you will also be engaging in self-improvement.
This is not to say that your biggest weakness has to turn into your biggest strength, but being aware of the areas in your work where you have room for improvement and trying to bridge that gap is a constructive personal development goal.
How to Achieve This Goal
Secondly, it is important to get guidance from someone you trust. In doing so, you may be able to learn about some weaknesses that you have but may not have noticed.
And for some things? You really just need to get good enough. Its alright if youre never an expert at every task involved in your companybut some tasks are important enough to gain minimal competence, just so you can understand the comprehensive work of your company.
Improve Team Collaboration And Communication Skills
Team collaboration should be a mandatory employee goal.
Why?
As our number of communication tools has increased, our actual communication skills seems to have gotten worse.
Bummer.
But, this means that improving team collaboration and communication could be one of your professional development goals!
Stunner!
In your search, you may find that your team needs a whole new tool or better team communication habits in general.
This may mean creating new guidelines for your team to follow or guidelines on what to avoid .
And while youre at it, why not try out ClickUps collaborative features?
From real-time editing in to ClickUp is the only team communication tool youll ever need to get everyone on the same page.
But that isnt all.
Each ClickUp task comes with its own comment section where your team can discuss task-specific ideas and share relevant documents.
You can even use the Chat view to easily keep track of all your messages and for quick watercooler-like discussions with your team to keep everyone engaged!
Don’t Miss: How To Switch Career To Artificial Intelligence
What Are Professional Development Goals 10 Examples And How To Set Them
Professional development goals can help you achieve your short- and long-term objectives in your career.
Professional development goals are objectives you can set for yourself to help further your career. These might include taking steps to learn relevant skills, expand your professional network, or find more satisfaction at work.
Step : Conduct A Self
We spend a large portion of our lives at work. You want to find a job that makes you excited to get up and go to work in the morning. Not only will finding a job you love help improve your quality of life, but you’ll also be more motivated to excel at it.
Take a moment to think about your current position, values, passions, past experiences, and skills. Identify your strengths and see how you can use these along with your passion in your career.
Think about where you want to be in five to 10 years, and see how that lines up with the jobs youve been considering. Weigh the pros and cons of each position you consider, such as work-life balance, compensation versus fulfillment, industry culture and environment, required education, location, and opportunities for long-term growth. Then, use that list to help you determine your next steps and the overall career path you want to take.
Read Also: Destinations Career Academy K12 Reviews
Laura Iiguez Content Manager At Hirebook
Laura is a content and social media strategist with deep experience in Employee Engagement, People Management, and Culture. She works with Hirebook to bring their innovative best practices to life through content, videos, and webinars seen by thousands around the globe.
Pub: August 19 2021
Upd: July 28 2022
As humans, we like to set goals for ourselves in the search of becoming a better person or having a better life. Professionally speaking, we can have a specific position or business in our minds, and we want to work towards achieving those goals. But as most humans, you probably also feel a little lost and dont know where to start or what you need to start. Well, worry no more! Were here to help you out on this quest!
Theres a popular saying that goes One never stops learning. And that has always been true, but more so nowadays that everything moves so fast. Technology changes every day and there are constant breakthroughs in every branch of science that practically force us to keep updating our knowledge and skills. We cannot fall behind.
Success doesnt happen overnight. The difference between a person whos continuously advancing professionally and one who is stuck in their career is their ability to set, work and achieve professional development goals.
If your answers don’t make you feel excited about your future, then you might be stuck professionally.
Detox From Social Media
Put down the phone and stop the boredom scrolling through social media. Perhaps limiting the amount of time you spend online will help you focus on other goals. Researching interesting topics that can assist in your career or personal growth is recommended and encouraged. However, if you are surfing the internet and social media, you are wasting valuable time that you could use to enhance yourself. Use of a screen time monitoring app can show you just how much time you are spending on your cell phone/computer, advises Chelley-Cheyenne.
Also Check: Career Choices And Changes Answer Key
Determining And Achieving Goals
A coach can assist a client in creating attainable professional and personal objectives. The aspirations and options of their clients are frequently explored by coaches, and together, they develop a strategy for achieving the goals.
For instance, a coach may go over the traits that leaders frequently possess and potential advanced positions with a client who wants to assume more leadership responsibilities in their organization. Then they could describe how to develop leadership skills, like signing up for a public speaking course to improve their capacity for communication and direction.
Ways To Set And Achieve Professional Development Goals
Each employee can create a personal development action plan with a growth mindset in mind.
Employers can help their teams tackle new challenges by helping them set professional development goals. Each employee can create a personal development action plan with a growth mindset in mind. Here are some examples of professional goals to help employees achieve professional accomplishments that will propel the entire company forward:
Recommended Reading: What Is Your Career Goals Best Answer
Learn How To Give And Receive Effective Feedback From Team Members
Part of successfully managing a team is providing useful insight into each members performance. This not only helps people to improve but will also improve your standing as a manager because people respect someone who provides honest and actionable feedback.
This can be as a regular part of the way you work, part of a more structured performance review, but preferably both. Regardless of the method, learn how to give and receive feedback effectively.
This doesn’t always have to be constructive feedback. It’s important to also learn when to use positive feedback and what types of feedback you should avoid .
If you’re struggling with creating a culture of feedback, consider BetterUp. With personalized support, you can unlock the power of feedback within your workforce. A coach can help guide your employees through the art of feedback .
Use Goal Tracking Software
Goals work best when theyre tied to your day-to-day work. Thats why Asana connects tasks and projects to the goals they support, so you know at a glance why your day-to-day work is important. When you use goal tracking software in Asana, you can set a due date and create automated reminders to update your goal progressfor example, you could create a reminder for the end of each week that prompts you to update your progress towards a monthly goal. And within each goal, you can create sub-goals to help you break work down into manageable chunks.
Read Also: Women’s Plus Size Career Clothing
About Professional Development Goals
Professional development goals are focused on improving and increasing an individuals capabilities and competencies through access to learning and training opportunities in the workplace. Professional development can be achieved through many sources including formal training seminars, online webinars, videos, coaching, mentoring, and job sharing.
Professional development goals are intended to increase ones knowledge or skill set. These types of goals focus on plans for learning or enhancing a persons ability.
An organizations commitment to employee development helps increases personal job satisfaction and employee motivation. It also helps build and maintain morale of the staff.
Examples:
- Attend 6 seminars on Conflict Resolution by the end of the next fiscal year.
- Take 2 college courses in Business Management by the end of the next fiscal year.
- Achieve a score of 80 percent or higher on four online courses offered by Human Resources.
