What are Professional Goals?
Professional goals are the practical steps you need to take to grow in your chosen career. Essentially, professional goals are the key to answering the elusive interview question: “Where do you see yourself and his career in five years?”
A short-term goal is a goal that you want to achieve shortly. It can be in the next few days or a month, as long as it is less than a year.
And a long-term goal requires more time and planning. A long-term career goal is not possible this week or this year. It is a goal that you want to achieve in a couple of years.
Why Set Professional Goals for Work?
Before looking at some career development goals and examples, take a minute to think about why career and life goals are important and how they can contribute to career success.
In addition to having career development goals that motivate you and help you advance in your career, there are three other reasons you need a career goal:
1. Goals give Visions
What do you hope to learn?
What do you hope to achieve?
Would you like to be in the same place at this time next year or three years from now?
And that doesn’t just mean a job change or a promotion to a higher position. It also means developing your skills and abilities.
If your manager asks you to read a book, attend a conference, or take a class, it shouldn’t just be an excuse to do something else. It should be a way of supporting him in his work and his personal life.
For example, anyone can improve emotional intelligence and benefit from it, both in their personal and professional lives.
2. Goals Create Clarity
It’s effortless to get caught up in the rat race of urgent daily activities and lose track of what you or your team are working on.
You likely have a daily or weekly list of career goals in a sprint or project. Maybe everything is listed for you on a scrum board.
And if not, why not manage your sprints and projects in ClickUp?
With ClickUp’s Agile Scrum workflow, you can break your big goal down into smaller goals in sprints. That way, you can also see how each task contributes to your overall plan.
3. Goals are Measurable
Or at least they are reasonable goals.
When creating professional development goals, you have a way of quantifying whether or not they are practical goals.
It could be doing SMART Goals, OKR and KPI, or some other form of word search.
Your decision.
But you have to show progress and have achievable goals.
4. Goals Help you Stand Out
Successful people set goals because they know that the goal-setting process plays an essential role in making their big dreams come true.
By setting career goals, you will have more opportunities to stand out from your peers and improve your overall work experience.
How? As you achieve your goals, you will feel more successful and confident.
Top 3 Professional Goals for 2021
Here are three professional development goals to help you achieve your desired career:
1.Take a Course to Improve Your Skills
I have a terrible habit when I buy courses, but then I do not follow through with the material and complete it or not even work towards my learning goal.
Don’t do the same!
Learning objectives also give an essential boost to personal development. They allow you to be in control of your knowledge.
2. Learn a New Tool
Whenever you’re trying to organize your projects, create a new development environment, or create beautiful videos, you need to experiment a little first.
You may know how to do some of these things with old tools, but it’s always important to see what else is available.
Many of us early adopters are already doing this, but why not formalize it a bit?
That way, you could make it a goal and then communicate with the rest of your team members about what’s going on and maybe even make it a team goal.
Adding knowledge of different types of project management software to your skills will help advance your career, especially in other jobs that may use various tools.
3. Enhance Your Presentations and Public Speaking
Meetings dominate the modern workforce, and PowerPoints and lectures often overlook these meetings.
It could also improve your presentation skills.
Telling stories at work is a rare commodity, so “slip” right into it.
And you will also improve your communication skills
As part of this goal, you should research various presentation techniques (like TED lecturing) and think about your PowerPoint presentation’s layout and design, not just what you want to say.