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!

Contents

1. What are Personal Development Goals?

2. Why Should Employees Set Personal Development Goals?

3. How Often Should Employees Set Personal Development Goals?

4. What are Professional Development Goals Examples?

5. Why Should Employees Use a Career Goals Template?

6. Career Goals Template: 17 Personal Development Goals Examples

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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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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

• It shows employees what a “good” goal should look like 
• It provides inspiration for objectives that are ambitious, yet achievable
• It provides a formula that employees can follow for the first draft of their goals
• It’s less intimidating than starting with a blank page

Objective: Improve my feedback skills

Key Results:

Read “Feedback and Performance at Work”

Request feedback from a teammate 2 times per month

Deliver quick praise 2 times per week

Apply the Radical Candor model to constructive feedback

Hold 1 casual check-in per month with direct reports

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Objective: Accelerate my AI Chatbot learning

Key Results:

Spend 1 hour per week developing prompts for marketing projects

Subscribe to 2 newsletters that share AI chatbot prompts

Complete 1 article using an AI chatbot

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Objective: Build a strong professional network

Key Results:

Attend 2 local startup founder meet-ups

Send 50 LinkedIn invitations to founders whose work you admire

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

Join 2 online communities for startup founders

Publish 1 Twitter thread per week on founder-related topics

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Objective: Become proficient in Excel

Key Results:

Watch 16 Microsoft Excel training videos

Shadow accounting team for 2 monthly budget sessions

Create 3 Excel sheets using only keyboard shortcuts

Complete 2 data analysis projects through Excel

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Objective: Improve my time efficiency

Key Results:

Spend 30 minutes each week creating a weekly plan

Spent 15 minutes each day reviewing a daily plan

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

Trial the Pomodoro technique for 1 week

Trial the 52/17 technique for 1 week

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Objective: Improve my public speaking skills

Key Results:

Complete Google Open Classroom public speaking course

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

Guest on 1 podcast relevant to my role

Deliver a 15-minute presentation at All Hands

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Objective: Build stronger relationships with my direct reports

Key Results:

Read Radical Candor by Kim Scott and apply key principles

Give quick praise 2 times per week

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

Schedule a casual monthly check-in with all direct reports

Attend 2 work social gatherings

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Objective: Communicate more efficiently with my team mates

Key Results:

Complete Figma training

Initiate all project-based communications on Figma or Trello

Reduce Slack usage to <5 messages per day

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

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Objective: Grow understanding of Dev team workflows

Key Results:

Attend daily Dev team stand up for 1 month

Attend 3 monthly Dev team planning sessions

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

Complete a monthly 1:1 with Dev Team Lead

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Objective: Become a recognised expert in Cyber Security

Key Results:

Complete an MBA in cybersecurity management

Publish 1 article per week on LinkedIn

Publish 1 Twitter thread per week

Speak at 2 cybersecurity events

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Objective: Develop my organisational skills

Key Results:

Move all task management to Trello

Reduce missed tasks by 40%

Use Frankli Tasks to set reminders

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Objective: Refresh my mobile app development knowledge

Key Results:

Attend 1 mobile app development bootcamp

Complete 40 hours of on-the-job learning

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

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Objective: Become an active listener

Key Results:

Read 1 book on active listening

Reduce speaking time in 1:1 meetings by 10%

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

Create a calendar block before every meeting to reduce distractions

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Objective: Obtain GDPR and data protection certification

Key Results:

Complete GDPR and data protection course

Achieve 80% or higher on final test

Update qualification details in Frankli

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Objective: Improve my goal-setting skills

Key Results:

Read Setting Goals that Deliver Results

Attend 2 goal-setting workshops

Complete 4 goal-drafting session with manager

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Objective: Improve my written communication skills

Key Results:

Attend 2 internal communications workshops

Publish 2 LinkedIn posts per week

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

Switch to written status updates for 3 months

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Objective: Gain basic graphic design skills

Key Results:

Take Canva for Beginners course

Create 10 sample website graphics using Canva template

Action feedback on website graphics from design team

Assist content team in creating 1 promotional handbook

Create and deliver 1 presentation

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Sources:

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