We shared with you why goals are important and will keep productivity levels up at work. But setting goals shouldn’t stop with just things to accomplish on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis.
You should be setting goals that revolve around your development in the workplace, allowing you to progress in your professional life.
Great goal setting means you can take steps towards improving any aspect of work life that’s relevant and specific to you, building on professional knowledge, skills and effective working practices.
Whilst your goals should be tailored to your personal aims and needs, we’ve put together some examples to give you an idea of some great, SMART development goals which will help push you towards success and the professional accomplishments you’re striving for.
- Complete leadership training course before next March
Part of professional development is continuing to learn new skills and practices, at any stage in your career. Sometimes enrolling in courses or training plans 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 doesn’t necessarily have to be a formal process though. Development goals can be as easy as just gaining more knowledge about something. For example…
2. Learn more about the new office communication tool before implementing it next quarter
Familiarising yourself with new technology before introducing it in the workplace means you’ll not only be confident at using it, team members will also likely engage more with a tool if they see you’ve taken the time to do the same.
3. Gain upward feedback from team members before the end of the quarter to establish further what can be improved upon
Receiving honest, constructive feedback shouldn’t just be a top-down process. Gaining your team's’ perspective is a great way to see how your behaviours and practices impact those around you, and can provide great insight when it comes to what works and what doesn’t. When things get busy, it’s easy to forget to check in with your team and gain their feedback on how things are going. Having a goal put in place means things won’t get overlooked in place of other tasks or projects.
4. Improve presentation skills by enlisting help from a capable co-worker or contact, in order to make things more engaging for the team
Improving presentation skills is always valuable. It can have an impact on so many aspects of work life: from presenting better in weekly meetings to improving skills for large company-wide or public presentations. Great presentation skills allow you to engage and communicate with, motivate, and inspire your team.
5. Gain a more in-depth perspective of how departments within the company are run by taking a couple of days to work with or shadow each department over the next two quarters
Getting an overall perspective of what goes into each department's daily practices is hugely important: it means you can better understand the challenges and obstacles your team members experience on a daily basis, making you a more effective manager.
6. Improve ability to manage the team remotely, by establishing set communication guidelines for when working out of office.
It’s good to have guidelines in place to ensure that when working remotely, everything is still running efficiently and team members still have support available when they need it.
7. Attend training session in January on how to effectively give and receive effective, motivational feedback to team members
Part of successfully managing a team is providing useful insight into team members’ performances. It will not only help people to improve, but will also improve your standing as a manager: people respect someone who provides honest, useful feedback, and the performance review process is a key part of this.
