A guide to setting professional goals that will drive success

Unlock your potential: A guide to setting professional goals

You need professional goals to develop your career faster, learn new skills, and earn more money. While this is pretty standard advice, not many professionals act on it — even when there is hard evidence to back it up.

Dr. Gail Matthews of the Dominican University of California conducted a study looking at how committing to written career goals affects goal achievement and overall success in one’s professional life. The study featured over 267 professionals from various networks, businesses, and organizations throughout the US and overseas.

The participants who wrote down achievable goals and followed up on their action plans had a success rate of more than 70%. The success rate for the participants who didn’t write down any goals fell to 35%.

The study also found that you’re 76% more likely to achieve your personal goals if you include an action plan and some form of accountability (such as regularly reporting to a friend or coworker on the status of your goals).

Most employees already have to set quarterly or annual goals and sit through regular goal-setting sessions, so why not strive to make the most of them?

Setting smart goals can help you streamline your progress down your chosen career path, so learning to set attainable goals is an extremely valuable skill.

That’s why I put together this guide, which will teach you how to set professional goals to help you take your career to the next level.

Why are professional goals important?

There are many reasons to set professional development goals, including some that need to be more clearly apparent. For instance, forming professional goals can be a lifesaver when preparing for a job interview.

Why is that?

Setting professional goals will help you place all your work experience into perspective. Establishing a long-term career goal will help you build a narrative that all your past accomplishments were building toward your future goal. If that’s a tad unclear, here’s an example to consider.

You look at all your past experiences at your organization, including your time running social media campaigns, working with various team members, and handling project management.

You then decide your long-term goal is to transition into a leadership role at your company. To back that up, you cite your experience with all the above as stepping stones toward landing a leadership position.

That’s a great way to enhance your value proposition and present a confident vision for your career development—both fantastic for answering interview questions without hesitation.

Framing random accomplishments and not having a direction for the interview will reflect far better on your professional skills than framing random accomplishments.

Achieving career milestones with short-term goals and long-term goals

Professional goals can be short-term and long-term, and you should use a combination of both to achieve key milestones in your career. Otherwise, you could get stuck in your current role for too long, which can cause burnout.

Without writing out specific goals, career advancement can seem too daunting or unattainable. Procrastination also has a habit of setting in whenever actionable career goals are absent.

Your next career step may involve learning a complex new skill, such as a programming language. In that case, your best option is to combine short-term goals with an ultimate long-term goal.

Your long-term goal is to master a new programming language like C++ or SQL. That will take a while, which is why it’s your future goal. Along the way, you knock out various short-term goals that inch you closer to your ultimate goal.

An example of a short-term goal would be to learn the command-line basics. This simple task, which you could realistically complete in a few days, will kickstart your journey toward mastering the language.

You should also write a timeframe for each task to hold yourself accountable. Implementing this technique of small goals toward a larger one is a great way to take on challenging goals and remedy procrastination.

Understanding the SMART goals method

You may be wondering how you can come up with your own professional goals. After all, goals don’t write themselves, and it can be challenging to develop some. That’s especially true if you need help deciding which direction to take with your career.

There’s no right or wrong way to develop goals, but a framework is always helpful in sparking ideas—this is where the SMART goals method comes into play.

What’s that?

SMART is an acronym where each letter represents a step that helps you set career goals. Here’s what each letter means:

S for specific

It’s crucial to set very specific goals instead of staying vague. The more specific a goal is, the more actionable it becomes.

To see why this is, let’s consider an example. Here’s a vague goal:

• To grow my brand and sell more online courses.

While it does state a goal, it only provides a little information beyond that. How do you plan on selling more online courses and growing your brand? How long are you giving yourself to do it? This goal leaves too much on the table because it isn’t specific enough.

Here’s an improved version of the same goal:

• To increase the total number of followers on social media by 10% in six months and launch an SEO/content marketing campaign to see a 5% increase in online course signups during the same timeframe.

Due to its specificity, this goal is far more actionable. You now have target numbers to hit and a timeline to follow, making it easier to develop smaller goals.

M for measurable

Next, your goals need to be measurable so that you have a tangible way to track your progress. That doesn’t mean that you need fancy analytics software, either. It can be as simple as keeping a journal to track your progress toward your goal.

Other techniques include:

• Create a to-do list and check off items as you go.
• Using apps that provide analytics related to your goals.
• Hold regular meetings with coworkers to go over your progress.

As long as you can keep track of your hard work, you’ve taken care of this step.

A for attainable

If your goal is to become fluent in Russian in a single day, you haven’t set an attainable goal. While that’s an extreme example, people always unintentionally set impossible goals. Worse, unattainable goals can negatively affect your morale, especially if you aren’t aware that the goal is impossible.

To avoid this, make sure that your goal is realistic and attainable. Your goals should always motivate and inspire you, not discourage or question your competency.

R for relevant

If you work in PR but set a goal to become a professional broadcaster, your goal isn’t relevant to your current career path. You should always ensure that your goals pertain to your current work environment and will provide value to you.

If the only goals that motivate you are in another field or industry, it might be time for a career change.

T for time-bound

Last but not least, your goals need to have a clear timeframe. If the clock isn’t constantly ticking down, you likely won’t have the motivation to act on them.

After all, why not do it tomorrow if there’s no deadline set? You’ve got all the time in the world. Except you don’t, or shouldn’t, if you want to achieve your goal.

Every goal needs a clear timeframe to keep a fire lit under you to get things done. Not only that but setting time-bound goals will help you improve your overall time-management skills.

Tips for setting professional goals

Are you still drawing a blank on which professional goals to set for your personal development?

If so, these examples of professional goals should help spark your creativity. Feel free to use them as templates to form business or professional network goals.

Understand your team’s structure

You must flawlessly understand your team’s dynamics to achieve a work goal. This will help you develop productive goals that add value to the organization.

Understanding team structure means knowing all your teams’ and departments’ functions and interrelationships.

Stepping back to see the big picture can help you identify areas for improvement, such as the need for more communication between departments.

This is a surefire way to develop actionable goals to improve communication skills and productivity.

Focus on factors you can control

There’s no point in setting goals related to factors you can’t control. For example, you can’t set a goal to have flawless weather on the day of a business event — as that’s out of your control.

Instead, set goals around what you can control, such as the quality of the business event you put on.

Come up with a contingency plan for all the factors you can’t control. For example, you could reserve an indoor venue for a business event should the weather turn sour.

Know what success looks like

An excellent way to develop professional goals is to draw inspiration from others who have succeeded. There is no shortage of professional development success stories online, which can provide examples of successful goal-setting.

Just as a musician cites influences in developing their style, you can too, for how you develop professional goals.

Don’t be afraid to ask for support

The weight of the entire organization isn’t on your shoulders, nor should it be. After all, an organization consists of lots of different people, not just one. As such, asking for support when developing professional goals is perfectly acceptable.

It’s much better to ask for help than to create a subpar goal that adds no value.

Think about it as if you’re a professional athlete. You’re the star performer but don’t have to do it alone. Just as every athlete has a team and a coach, you have mentors, bosses, and coworkers who can help you develop ideas for goals.

Concluding thoughts: Professional goals

Goal setting is essential to a successful professional life and life in general.

Being able to harness the power of setting goals will help you succeed more in your life.

Professional goals can help you advance your career, succeed in job interviews, and grow your business. With goals, becoming complacent with your routine and pushing yourself is more effortless.

Goals are valuable because they help you motivate yourself to keep moving forward.

I hope this guide helped you realize the importance of setting professional goals and how to set valuable goals.

Additional resources:
How to avoid setting unrealistic goals for your team
Setting annual goals for work that drive performance
Avoid legal issues with compliant job descriptions