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How to Set Professional Development Goals That Matter
Find tips from goal-setting experts to benchmark and validate your online learning program.
How professional development leads to organizational success
Professional development has emerged as a leading pillar of employee retention.
When coupled with greater opportunities for internal mobility, LinkedIn data shows that these engaged employees stay with their companies on average 41% longer.
Organizations that invest in learning and development (L&D) programs that target individual professional development are more likely to realize this benefit since they are training their future leaders from within their current ranks.
1 out of 5 employees believes they can meet their career goals where they work today and have support to pursue those goals.
How employees view professional development
The good news for business leaders is that workers genuinely want to learn, and they are looking for opportunities to grow within their organizations.
According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, the top learning motivations employees reported were all related to career development:
It helps me stay up-to-date in my field
It is personalized specifically for my interests and career goals
It helps me get another job internally, be promoted, or get closer to reaching my career goals
Creating a system for professional development
Having a standard system for goal setting, progress monitoring, and success recognition will help your organization better cultivate internal talent while providing your workforce with the challenges and opportunities they crave.
Laying the foundation
Before you can carve out a path, you need to know where you’re going. This goal-setting is foundational to any professional development plan.
Most people have been through the process of goal setting at some point in their lives, but far too often those goals are not assessed and revisited against changes in one’s personal and professional life — and that’s a problem.
Goal setting should be an ongoing process that encompasses the full range of motives an individual may have for growing their career – including personal goals. Make sure your professional development plan includes regular goal reviews.
“Here's what I believe in my bones about goals when at their very best: They unlock ambition – ambition for yourself, ambition for the work that you do.”
How to plan for success
One of the biggest challenges people face with achieving their goals is having a list that is too long. This lack of focus and clarity can leave your learner feeling overwhelmed and set them up for failure.
The key to staying on track with achieving goals is prioritizing those goals. When you sit down with your employees to review their list of goals, ask them:
Which of these goals can be accomplished the soonest with the least amount of effort?
Which of these goals has a longer lead time but greater reward?
Which of these goals might be an opportunity for team learning?
Try creating a plan that includes some goals with six-month timelines, so those easier wins give your worker a sense of accomplishment and the motivation to keep working on the larger goals.
“It may sound counterintuitive, but having fewer goals can actually help you accomplish more.”
Why measuring progress is important
Measuring progress toward achieving professional development goals should function as both a tool of assessment and motivation.
The metrics used to measure progress are subject to the professional development goals set by your workers. That’s why it is important to set individual progress benchmarks at the beginning of the professional development plan process.
Make regular check-ins part of the plan, too. These meetings provide an opportunity to celebrate wins, fine-tune learning plans, and reassess what your L&D team can do better to support your workforce.
The role of recognition in achieving success
A great way to help your workers meet their professional development goals is through a success recognition program.
In her course Build a Personal Learning Plan and Stick With It, employee experience expert Shanita Williams shares, “The progress principle… suggests that there are many things that boost motivation, but the most important is making progress.” Achieving those benchmarks laid out in the previous section are moments for recognizing success.
Your L&D team can create a plan for how to handle recognition and what celebration entails, but remember to also discuss this with your employees while working on their professional development plan. Some people thrive on public recognition, while others may prefer praise that remains one-to-one.
“Studies have shown that celebrating your small accomplishments can boost your self-confidence and play a huge role in helping you achieve your larger goals. The more you feel a sense of progress, the more likely you'll be productive.”
Professional development advice from the experts
Here are a few additional tips to help you work with your employees as you set professional development goals.
Lean into ambition
In his course, A Bold New Approach to Goal Setting, Michael Bungay Stanier addresses the relationship many people have with the word ambition. “Is it okay to be ambitious? It's a big question. It's a thorny question because ambition does come with some baggage attached to it.”
However, he urges learners to rethink their understanding of ambition and asks that they think of their goal-setting in terms of what he calls the three ambitions.
Be ambitious for the person you already are. Identify the person you already are and the skills you already have — and create goals that capitalize on those aspects of yourself.
Be ambitious for doing work that matters. Identify how the work you’re doing can impact the world around you in a positive way, and create goals around that.
- Be ambitious for unlocking the future you. Recognize your potential and set goals that help you unlock those yet-untapped parts of yourself.
Recognize the difference between goals and a to-do list
Dorie Clark cautions in her course Defining and Achieving Professional Goals that too often people mistake to-do lists with goal setting. “A to-do list is a document, written or online, that helps you track specific tasks that need to happen. That is absolutely not the same thing as your goals, and you'll make yourself miserable if you conflate them.”
The to-do list items may help you reach your goal, but goals, she explains, are “high-level, strategic priorities.”
Encourage support networks
Especially in these times when hybrid work is the norm, finding a way for your teams to connect and collaborate in their professional development can strengthen your overall workplace culture.
Shanita Williams defines four types of support in her course Build a Personal Learning Plan and Stick with It.
Informational support. People with firsthand knowledge and experience that will help you make informed decisions that keep you on track.
Esteem support. People who believe in you and can speak to your strengths and the value you bring, which will increase your confidence when you need it.
Tangible support. People who can provide you with the physical help you need to complete tasks within your learning plan.
- Emotional support. People who can listen and be good sounding boards when you run into a challenge and can also be there to support you emotionally.
Creating frameworks within your organization that enable these support networks can help your teams grow faster, together.
Your team can set ambitious professional growth goals and achieve them with help from the LinkedIn Learning platform. Find out how.
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