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Top 15 professional goals and how to achieve them

November 20, 2023 - 28 min read

 

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What are professional goals?

What makes an effective professional goal?

Why are professional development goals important?

How to set professional goals that you can achieve

15 examples of professional goals

Tips for achieving your career goals

Celebrate your growth

 

Ambition helps you drive your professional growth forward — when harnessed effectively. 

You probably have several professional goals floating around your mind, like leveling up to a leadership role, sharpening your technical skills, or making a lateral move in the next five years

Letting your mind wander and imagine all the possible career trajectories can be fun and inspiring. But then comes the challenge of turning career aspirations into real-life actions. 

Transforming goals into reality isn’t a straight and narrow path. The process requires deep self-reflection, strategic planning, and a commitment to consistent — and sometimes difficult — work. The first step is understanding and setting your professional goals with precise and achievable results to prioritize your daily efforts and work purposefully. 

Narrowing broad concepts into clear actions is a difficult but necessary step to building a successful career path. A structured framework can help you communicate your needs in your next 1:1 meeting, separate career opportunities from obstacles, and nurture more engagement in your work. 

The best part? This renewed focus and dedication will likely show up in future performance reviews, creating a snowball effect of motivation and more purposeful work.

What are professional goals?

Professional goals are like your career’s GPS: they tell you where you’re headed and how to get there. These kinds of goals typically fall into short- or long-term action items. 

Your short-term goals impact your immediate future, whether that’s today, this week, or this month. These include goals such as creating a better daily routine at work or earning a certification. 

Your long-term objectives are more strategic, guided by a holistic approach to your entire career trajectory. This might include pursuing a master’s degree, starting your own business, or switching to a new job role. 

Regardless of their scale, your professional goals are your anchors. They help you stay focused amid daily to-do lists and career-rocking challenges, keeping you proactive about your path rather than going with the flow. 

What makes an effective professional goal?

Effective career goals are interesting, challenging, and personal. 

You may feel pressured throughout your career to compare yourself to others, follow the currents of industry trends, or prioritize external expectations. But it’s important to stay in touch with what truly matters to you, nurturing your intrinsic motivation and personal development

Yes, your professional goals may align with your current job role or company’s objectives. This helps you fulfill your job responsibilities and grow within your organization. But leaning too heavily into the expectations your company sets — rather than yourself — may be counterproductive to your personal objectives. If your job consistently imposes on your ability to progress toward your short-term and long-term career goals, it might be a signal to reevaluate your calling or change careers. 

How you approach setting career goals is equally important. If you set goals you don’t have the time, resources, or support to accomplish, you’re likely setting yourself up for frustration and failure that crushes your drive for self-improvement

There are several ways to evaluate potential goals, like stream-of-consciousness journaling, speaking with a mentor or career coach, or asking for feedback from your supervisors. Whatever methods you choose, the SMART framework can help break down big concepts into practical goals that motivate and connect you to a larger vision. 

Here’s a breakdown of the acronym:

  • Specific: Clearly defined goals eliminate ambiguity, helping you stay focused. A goal like “I want to get better at project management” defines the “what” but ignores the “how.” A more detailed goal like “complete a certified project management course and lead two company projects within the next six months” provides clear direction and targets. 
  • Measurable: To monitor your progress and stay on track, your professional goals must be measurable. Rather than saying, “I want to be better at sales,” you could set a specific target like “Increase quarterly sales by 15%.” A tangible marker of success is the simplest way to determine whether or not you’ve met your goal (or how far you still need to go). 
  • Attainable: Staying motivated requires you to be realistic. Otherwise, you may build failure into your goals. Consider your resources, current skill set, and potential training needs and whether your goals roadmap will add support or stress. 
  • Relevant: The best work goals are relevant to you, your team, and your current role. Your company’s vision or industry trends can help support your work, tying your goals to upward movement in your career or organization.
  • Time-bound: Without clear deadlines, putting off your goals for another day is easy. Creating timeframes can create a sense of urgency. But, according to the Harvard Business Review, effective deadlines are about context. Considering your schedule, ability to delegate, and task prioritization skills will help you set timetables that find the right mix of being flexible and keeping the momentum going.

Why are professional development goals important?

Before jumping into templates and tips to set realistic goals, let’s explore why career development goals are essential to growing your career

Life isn’t stagnant, and neither is your career. No matter where you work or what your current job role is, continuous learning, skill-building, and self-improvement are the cornerstones of a successful professional life. Otherwise, you might get stuck in a dead-end job or a role that doesn’t evolve with your needs.

And it’s not just your personal fulfillment that reaps the benefits. Here are a few more ways professional goals improve your life: 


  • Your progress might inspire your coworkers, creating a positive environment and stronger team dynamics. 
  • Your managers and supervisors could notice your drive, encouraging a promotion within your organization.
  • Hiring managers and potential collaborators will notice your consistency and ambition, potentially opening you up to career opportunities.

How to set professional goals you can achieve

Your professional goals are as unique as you are. But, although your priorities will differ from those of a colleague or team member, you should still mold your goals with a few best practices — like learning how to develop SMART goals. 

Breaking down aspirations this way can help you use your skill set to your advantage and plan for potential bumps in the road, insulating your resilience and flexibility. Here are four more tips for setting attainable goals:

1. Examine past successes: Consider the processes, tools, and skills that helped you reach important career milestones. Why were those goals important to you? How did you handle these challenges? What has changed in your life, organization, or market since?

2. Dig deep with self-reflection: Inner Work® can help you identify your personal values and needs. Don’t just imagine what you’ll do, but picture the thinking processes that’ll support your journey. Consider what you want more and less of (like more collaborative experiences and less solitary work). What aspects of your professional life do you genuinely enjoy, and why?

3. Write down your goals: Throughout this process, write down your thoughts and feelings. Next, it’s time to transform that information into specific goals, factoring in your current know-how, professional vision, and resources.

4. Structure and evaluate: Apply the SMART methodology to the goals you’ve jotted down. This straightforward, step-by-step process helps you adjust big objectives into small milestones. And amending your goals to meet all the SMART criteria will ensure that you’re being realistic and setting yourself up for success. 

two woman discussing personal goals on couch


15 examples of professional goals

While your career aspirations don’t resemble anyone else’s, you can draw inspiration from common professional goals. Mix up your own goals to cover short-term, mid-, and long-term objectives that touch on different areas of your professional development, like finding the time management software that works for you, refining a technical skill, or teaching yourself  a new skill.

1. Communicate with influence and impact

Whether you’re a freelancer working from home or a member of a big team that regularly makes decisions together, effective communication skills are necessary to push your work forward. No one works in a vacuum — being able to advocate your vision and convince others to follow your lead is the difference between professional success and stagnation. 

Communicating with influence and impact can be either a short-term or long-term goal, depending on your aspirations. If you want to be taken more seriously, this might mean practicing spoken and written communication that conveys confidence. And if a leadership role is what you have your eye on, learning public speaking and presentation skills can help get you there.

2. Develop executive presence

You don’t have to aspire to become a manager or C-suite leader to develop an executive presence. Leadership encapsulates several valuable professional soft skills, such as self-confidence, emotional intelligence, and decisiveness. While it will push you out of your comfort zone, developing an executive presence will show managers and colleagues they can turn to you for support.

3. Effectively manage through conflict

We’re all human, capable of disagreeing or making mistakes in and out of work. And while you can’t eliminate all conflicts in the workplace, you can learn to approach them productively. High-functioning teams know how to work through conflict, moving past differences of opinion and unique communication styles. 

Developing new skills like empathy, flexibility, and active listening can help you transform conflict into learning opportunities instead of stress points. It’ll help you keep your eye on the final objectives instead of getting stuck on the challenges that’ll naturally arise, improving teamwork and morale.

4. Provide effective feedback to others

Negative experiences tend to stick in people’s minds. This is called a negativity bias, a cognitive bias that causes you to focus more heavily on negative stimuli than positive ones. This is part of why exchanging feedback is so emotionally charged, even when it’s constructive — it’s easy to focus on mistakes and forget high points. 

Giving good feedback is a careful balance of pointing out what went wrong with a positive spin. It’s timely, specific, and doesn’t hark solely on the negative, including examples of what went right and how to improve in the future. Above all, it’s sensitive and supportive, making the other person feel empowered to try again (and again).

5. Confidently navigate uncertainty

It’s natural to seek out the comfort of stability, but learning to embrace change as a natural part of life (in and outside of your profession) can help you be more resilient and positive when faced with unexpected challenges. 

Setting a goal to build a regular journaling, meditation, or mindfulness habit can help you develop a deeper relationship with your inner self. Try asking yourself what you have control of, what you can influence, and what’s outside your sphere of influence. Focusing your energy on these questions in everyday circumstances can make it easier to turn to your chosen method in moments of uncertainty or stress.

6. Adopt better time management skills

If there’s one professional skill everyone can benefit from learning, it’s time management. Strong time management skills help you and the people who work with you. They allow you to take control of your calendar, focus on priorities, and build the work-life balance that makes sense to you. Time management also helps your team, assuring them that you don’t require micromanagement to follow through on your commitments. 

Everyone responds to different methods of time management. Try experimenting with popular approaches, like time blocking, productivity apps, or the Pomodoro Technique, to find yours. Whatever technique you choose, new time management skills will help you prioritize, delegate, and communicate your limits to better collaborate with others.

7. Develop inclusive leadership and teams

Effective teams openly embrace diversity, making everyone feel comfortable and welcome to share their ideas and points of view. Through this knowledge sharing, teams are enriched with new perspectives and new ways of working. 

Fostering inclusivity and belonging within your team and the larger organization may sound like a hard goal to break down into concrete objectives. But you can practice inclusive leadership skills every day, making a conscious effort to encourage team members to speak up, practice emotional intelligence, and always collaborate from a place of respect. 

8. Complete a professional certificate or degree

Embracing continuous learning represents more than personal growth. It’s a testament to your dedication, adaptability, and professional curiosity, standout soft skills that give you a competitive edge in the job market. 

Suppose you’re not eyeing a specific online course or program. In that case, you can do a skill analysis to identify your skills gap, seek guidance from your manager, or attend industry events to look for future opportunities. 

Depending on your resources and final objectives, this could be a short-term or long-term goal. Think carefully about whether you can improve your skills and broaden your perspective through an opportunity like a remote course, certification program, or master’s degree.

9. Expand your professional network

Your career growth is as much about what you know as who you know. A strong network of professional colleagues allows you to self-promote your know-how and expertise, which can broaden your horizons. 

Putting yourself out there doesn’t have to mean hitting all the local professional mixers. If you identify as an introvert, you can widen your network by building a personal brand on LinkedIn and other professional social media. If you prefer more in-person exchanges, networking events, conferences, and workshops are great ways to meet and learn from others in your industry. 

Whatever you’re most comfortable with, build a networking plan with specific mandates, like posting three times a week on LinkedIn or scheduling a monthly informational interview.

10. Volunteer to learn new technology

Keeping up with the times is never a bad idea, especially when it comes to new technology and applications. 

Digitization, automation, and AI are constantly evolving, and learning how tech could impact your job role and industry is a great way to upskill and differentiate your strengths as an employee. Apply the knowledge you learn to support your team, improve your organization’s productivity, or prepare for new career opportunities.

11. Build stronger working relationships

Workplace friendships provide more than watercooler (or Slack) conversation. They can make you feel a deeper sense of belonging and overall happiness at work, translating to deeper engagement with your team and better productivity. 

If you already have good work relationships, set a goal to strengthen them. You can thank a coworker for their help on a project, offer assistance on a challenging task, or strike up a conversation with deep questions

And don’t just focus on existing friendships — branch out. Try something new, like scheduling a virtual coffee chat with team members in a different department or spending the beginning of a 1:1 getting to know more about your supervisor.

two women working at a computer of their professional goals

12. Develop your peers

Peer coaching and mentorship boost confidence, build trust, and increase technical aptitude for everyone involved. And establishing a strong coaching culture helps the larger organization thrive and boosts intellectual capital. Likewise, teaching your skills helps you fine-tune your communication, prompting you to translate technical concepts or soft skills into actionable advice. 

Reach out to your manager and ask how you can share your knowledge with the team, whether that’s giving a presentation at a meeting, letting an intern shadow you, or volunteering to onboard a new employee.

13. Improve your storytelling abilities

A good story goes a long way. Adding an emotional punch to a sales pitch, team presentation, or interview response can engage your audience and rally them around your idea. While storytelling is a soft skill that comes more easily to some, you can still learn and practice common tactics like creating a narrative arc or aligning your non-verbal communication (including posture, hand gestures, and eye contact) with your words. 

Improving your storytelling is a goal you can work on each day by being more deliberate with your communication. You could intentionally prepare presentations, emails, and memos to be more engaging or practice being more present in your conversations with coworkers.

14. Be intentional with self-care

With so many things on your to-do list, it’s easy to put your personal goals and work-life balance at the bottom. But you can’t show up to work if you don’t care for your mental, emotional, and physical health. 

Self-care means creating routines that prioritize self-love and appreciation of your whole self. But how you practice self-care is entirely up to you. 

Start by identifying your biggest needs, like fixing your sleep schedule, boosting your self-worth, or making more room for more free time. Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, build a self-care checklist with daily, weekly, and monthly objectives. 

Self-care is a lifelong commitment, so don’t feel you have to tackle everything at once. Start small, and step-by-step, you’ll feel empowered to nurture a better version of yourself.

15. Develop your project management skills

It’s never a bad idea to improve your organizational skills. Staying on deadline, prioritizing workloads, and properly communicating workflows are sought-after skills because they help you and your team stay on track. And even if you’re a skilled project manager, you can always adopt a new work productivity tool to improve your technical expertise.

man smiling past camera in blue suit discussing professional goals

Tips for achieving your career goals

Choosing what to focus your efforts on is just the start — now it’s time to get to work. If you aren’t sure how to commit to your objective, here are some tips to stay focused and reach your goals:

  1. Set aside time to check in: The goalposts in your office, industry, and career are always shifting. What’s relevant today may not fit the needs of tomorrow. Set time in your calendar to regularly revisit your goals and reevaluate based on changing circumstances and work experiences. 
  2. Enlist others’ support: Think of your family, friends, and professional network as integral to your goal setting. They’re the support system that’ll encourage you, provide advice, and celebrate your wins. Let them in on your objectives, and consider choosing an accountability partner to keep you on track. 
  3. Connect with a coach: A coach's job is to support your growth and development, and goal setting is at the core of their ethos. If you don’t have specific goals in mind, that’s okay. Coaches are skilled at asking impactful questions to help you reflect and build deeper self-awareness. A coaching experience can provide clarity on what’s important to you and empower you to set realistic, flexible milestones. 
  4. Separate short-term from long-term: Break your long-term objectives into several smaller ones to make meaningful and achievable goals. This will help you draft an action plan that builds on past successes and creates positive momentum, with realistic timelines and celebrations to help you stay patient and motivated. 

Celebrate your growth

Setting effective goals puts wind in your sails, helping you move closer to your definition of a successful professional life. Chances are you’ve arrived where you are today by setting and achieving professional goals, even if you weren’t entirely aware of them. Upping your approach by creating a SMART action plan will take you to the next level. 

Reach your career goals faster

Unlock your potential with personalized coaching. Tailor your professional journey with expert guidance today.

Reach your career goals faster

Unlock your potential with personalized coaching. Tailor your professional journey with expert guidance today.

Published November 20, 2023

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships.

With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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