What are your professional development goals? 🎯 Earn a badge by joining in!

[Angelie Stephens]

Professional development goals can be a great way to provide a north star for us to work towards. Whether you have a formal goals process as part of your job or you prefer to set goals for yourself on a more ad-hoc basis, having something to aim for can be a source of motivation for improving our careers. 

In our Work Life blog this month, we explore professional goals and offer tips on how best to set them. Check it out here for more advice on how to consider your values, use the SMART goal framework, and identify action items. Plus, get some inspiration with examples of professional goals, and some words of wisdom from Rich Hurley, Senior Program Manager for Team Anywhere at Atlassian.

One of my personal goals is to complete a project management course this year! As someone who has always enjoyed organising projects, I would love to get some more formal training under my belt. 

So, what are your professional development goals? We’d love to hear more about them, so please do share in the discussion below. 

Once you’ve commented, you’ll earn a Work Life kudos badge! ✨

[Susan Waldrip]

Hi @Angelie Stephens , best wishes for completing your project management course! I'm actually in the later stage of my career, so my greatest professional goal right now is work-life balance and enjoying what I'm doing and whom I'm working with (and I have both in spades, happy to say!). This is how I bring my best self to my work. And I'm so curious to hear what others' goals are!

[Haunani Nakabara]

To network with others outside my department and find out how we can help each other.

[Laurie Sciutti]

Earn more certifications and expand my knowledge of AI tools.  🥇🥇

[Trudy Claspill]

Hi @Angelie Stephens 

Great topic! I'm sure you'll succeed in attaining your goals!

I am just starting to think about my professional development goals for the next 12 months. Some are near term, like completing the renewal of my current Atlassian certifications.  Some are a bit longer term, such as broadening my experience with Atlassian product migrations. I would say generally my professional development goals are oriented around being the best engineer/architect that I can be, so I want to always be learning new things and broadening my experience.

[Anne Saunders]

I'm in operations at a small development firm, so my job is a little bit variable and fluid. My  professional development goals change pretty frequently, sometimes with the quarter 😅

Currently, I'm round-robin working my way through a few Atlassian courses, a HubSpot certification, and some legal writing training. I think my next major ambition is to actually develop a simple app to handle some of the things I do frequently, which will mean a big stretch and definitely some training.

[Bryan F]

Whilst I was completing my MBA, I came across some conflicting advice about SMART goals. It can be a useful framework, but does have pitfalls, and it can sometimes exclude the 'WHY' and focus more on the 'WHAT'.

I read GRIP by Rick Pastoor recently, and found his approach to goal setting similar to (understanding your values prior to goal setting), but his approach to linking purpose, values, goals, dividing it across work, family and passion projects really compelling.

One oy my goals at the moment is writing a strategic foresight report on the Future of the workplace, and exploring the workplace across four dimensions (Office, Home, #rd place and digital).

Some additional reading on goal setting and SMART:

5 Ways to Set More Achievable Goals (hbr.org) 

3 Popular Goal-Setting Techniques Managers Should Avoid (hbr.org)