Career Goals Template: 17 Personal Development Goals Examples

Whether you’re an employee working on your personal development goals, or a leader looking to transform your people into high performers, a career goals template is the perfect place to start. Goal-setting is challenging at the best of times, and having research-based professional goals examples that align with OKR best practices can really help employees shape and refine their goals.

The content and structure of our goals have a huge impact on our chances of success - for example, we know that 91% of goals in high-performing companies are linked to company priorities (1). Between metrics and timelines, goal difficulty and goal alignment, there’s a lot to consider, so we don’t advise creating personal development goals from scratch, unless you’re really experienced.

A career goals template helps employees write better personal developmental goals, faster, but it’s important to remember that goal-focused one-to-one meetings between employee and manager play a key role too. You can learn more about these here.

And if you’re looking for more information on using the OKR (objective and key results) framework, you’ll find it here.

Now let’s dive into the sample goals!

What are Personal Developmental Goals?‍

Personal developmental goals are goals that relate to an employee’s career advancement. The word personal is used to indicate that the goal is unique to the employee, and not a shared goal with team members, rather than indicating that a goal relates to the employee’s personal life.

Personal development goals are used to identify and track career objectives like improving communication skills, completing a training program or gaining experience.

Why Should Employees Set Personal Development Goals?

Setting personal developmental goals is essential for tracking and progressing professional growth - it’s something all employees should do when they’re looking to advance their career.

But personal development goals aren’t just for employees looking to sprint towards a leadership position. On the contrary, employees at all levels of the organisation, and with all kinds of career aspirations should participate in setting developmental goals.

Whether employees are looking to develop skills that will help them excel in their current role, make a non-linear move to a different department or industry, or advance to a new position on their career path, personal developmental goals can help them get there.

How Often Should Employees Set Personal Development Goals?

The cadence around setting career goals depends on whether employees are most interested in short, medium or long-term goals, or a mix of all three. But, as a general rule, personal developmental goals should be set at least once a year and reviewed quarterly to make any necessary tweaks.

Many teams like to create career development goals in alignment with their company’s performance review schedule. Performance reviews offer an opportunity to focus on longer-term goals, but this isn’t always the case. If you’re looking for long-term goal examples for performance reviews, you'll find them in our downloadable career goals template.

What are Professional Development Goals Examples?

Professional development goals examples are goal-setting tools that help employees, managers and leaders improve the quality of their goals, and, in turn, improve individual and team performance.

They're sample goals that illustrate what employee career development goals should look like, and provide inspiration on the content of these goals.

Why Should Employees Use a Career Goals Template?

Working from a career goals template is beneficial for lots of reasons:

1. 1

   It shows employees what a “good” goal should look like.

2. 2

   It provides inspiration for objectives that are ambitious, yet achievable.

3. 3

   It provides a formula that employees can follow for the first draft of their goals.

4. 4

   It’s less intimidating than starting with a blank page.

Career Goals Template: 17 Personal Development Goals Examples

Objective: Improve my feedback skills

Key Results:

1. 1

   Request feedback from a teammate 2 times per month

2. 2

   Deliver quick praise 2 times per week

3. 3

   Apply the Radical Candor model to constructive feedback

4. 4

   Hold 1 casual check-in per month with direct reports

‍

Objective: Accelerate my AI Chatbot learning

Key Results:

1. 1

   Spend 1 hour per week developing prompts for marketing projects

2. 2

   Subscribe to 2 newsletters that share AI chatbot prompts

3. 3

   Complete 1 article using an AI chatbot

‍

Objective: Build a strong professional network

Key Results:

1. 1

   Attend 2 local startup founder meet-ups

2. 2

   Send 50 LinkedIn invitations to founders whose work you admire

3. 3

   Meet 2 LinkedIn connections for a face-to-face coffee

4. 4

   Join 2 online communities for startup founders

5. 5

   Publish 1 Twitter thread per week on founder-related topics

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Objective: Become proficient in Excel

Key Results:

1. 1

   Watch 16 Microsoft Excel training videos

2. 2

   Shadow accounting team for 2 monthly budget sessions

3. 3

   Create 3 Excel sheets using only keyboard shortcuts

4. 4

   Complete 2 data analysis projects through Excel

Objective: Improve my time efficiency

Key Results:

1. 1

   Spend 30 minutes each week creating a weekly plan

2. 2

   Spent 15 minutes each day reviewing a daily plan

3. 3

   Attend 3 coaching sessions with a team mate with great time management skills

4. 4

   Trial the Pomodoro technique for 1 week

5. 5

   Trial the 52/17 technique for 1 week

Objective: Improve my public speaking skills

Key Results:

1. 1

   Complete Google Open Classroom public speaking course

2. 2

   Attend 2 coaching sessions with a team mate with great public speaking skills

3. 3

   Guest on 1 podcast relevant to my role

4. 4

   Deliver a 15-minute presentation at All Hands

‍

Objective: Build stronger relationships with my direct reports

Key Results:

1. 1

   Read Radical Candor by Kim Scott and apply key principles

2. 2

   Give quick praise 2 times per week

3. 3

   Complete weekly 1:1 meetings with all direct reports for 1 month

4. 4

   Schedule a casual monthly check-in with all direct reports

5. 5

   Attend 2 work social gatherings

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Objective: Communicate more efficiently with my team mates

Key Results:

1. 1

   Complete Figma training

2. 2

   Initiate all project-based communications on Figma or Trello

3. 3

   Reduce Slack usage to <5 messages per day

4. 4

   Schedule all non-urgent messages for team's preferred hours

‍

Objective: Grow understanding of Dev team workflows

Key Results:

1. 1

   Attend daily Dev team stand up for 1 month

2. 2

   Attend 3 monthly Dev team planning sessions

3. 3

   Perform manual testing of 12 bug fixes and report back to Dev team

4. 4

   Complete a monthly 1:1 with Dev Team Lead

‍

Objective: Become a recognised expert in Cyber Security

Key Results:

1. 1

   Complete an MBA in cybersecurity management

2. 2

   Publish 1 article per week on LinkedIn

3. 3

   Publish 1 Twitter thread per week

4. 4

   Speak at 2 cybersecurity events

‍

Objective: Develop my organisational skills

Key Results:

1. 1

   Move all task management to Trello

2. 2

   Reduce missed tasks by 40%

3. 3

   Use Frankli Tasks to set reminders

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Objective: Refresh my mobile app development knowledge

Key Results:

1. 1

   Attend 1 mobile app development bootcamp

2. 2

   Complete 40 hours of on-the-job learning

3. 3

   Complete 3 coaching sessions with a member of the mobile dev team

‍

Objective: Become an active listener

Key Results:

1. 1

   Read 1 book on active listening

2. 2

   Reduce speaking time in 1:1 meetings by 10%

3. 3

   Create 5 new 1:1 meeting templates featuring open-ended questions

4. 4

   Create a calendar block before every meeting to reduce distractions

‍

Objective: Obtain GDPR and data protection certification

Key Results:

1. 1

   Complete GDPR and data protection course

2. 2

   Achieve 80% or higher on final test

3. 3

   Update qualification details in Frankli

‍

Objective: Improve my goal-setting skills

Key Results:

1. 1

   Read Setting Goals that Deliver Results

2. 2

   Attend 2 goal-setting workshops

3. 3

   Complete 4 goal-drafting session with manager

Objective: Improve my written communication skills

Key Results:

1. 1

   Attend 2 internal communications workshops

2. 2

   Publish 2 LinkedIn posts per week

3. 3

   Use ChatGPT prompts to reduce written communication word counts by 40%

4. 4

   Switch to written status updates for 3 months

‍

Objective: Gain basic graphic design skills

Key Results:

1. 1

   Take Canva for Beginners course

2. 2

   Create 10 sample website graphics using Canva template

3. 3

   Action feedback on website graphics from design team

4. 4

   Assist content team in creating 1 promotional handbook

5. 5

   Create and deliver 1 presentation

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Sources:

1. McKinsey and Company, How effective goal-setting motivates employees.