4 Steps to Accomplish your Professional Development Goals

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

How many of your ‘goals’ have morphed into wishes? They are like dandelions that evolve from a sturdy yellow flower into fluffy white wishes that are easily blown away and forgotten.

Wishes may have their place, but when it comes to professional development, a plan is essential to goal achievement.

What is Professional Development?

To me, it’s the process of identifying goals and learning new skills to help you grow and succeed at work. It can be tied to things like qualifications, degrees, new skills or achievements in education or business.

Ideas for Professional Development Goals

Creating professional development goals for yourself or your team can be difficult, but the reward is happier and more engaged employees who have increased skills. Examples of professional development goals might be to finish a master’s degree or get a promotion with your current employer. The following goal ideas involve increasing skill sets.

• Develop emotional intelligence (EI) – shown to be consistently important in leadership roles, EI is frequently an aspect of development that can impact career growth
• Listen actively – gain the ability to truly listen and be present in conversations and avoid being distracted by other thoughts or topics
• Practice stress management techniques – obtain the tools to manage conflict resolution and problem solving in the most efficient way
• Learn new things – regardless of age or stage, continuous development means filling your bucket of knowledge and challenging yourself to expand your horizons
• Improve your public speaking skills – leverage opportunities to engage and communicate successfully with varied audiences and formats; a skill most professionals need

4 Steps to Make Professional Development Goals Happen

To make sure your goal doesn’t blow away in the wind like those dandelion seeds, I suggest taking the following four steps:

1. Start with the end in mind – What is it you want to accomplish? Why does it matter?
2. Craft a plan – How will you achieve this goal? What resources will it take?
3. Conduct periodic progress checks – How will you measure progress and results against goals?
4. Review regularly – Is your vision still accurate? Do the goals still make sense?
   
   

When it comes time to writing goals, the tried-and-true approach of using SMART goals is still in play and effective as ever. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Crafting a plan to set professional development goals doesn’t tend to come easy to most people, but like most things, you get out of it what you put into it. Invest the time to determine the right goals, plan and measurements to guide the desired development. That way you don’t have to depend on wishes to move your career (or those who you lead) forward.