How to Set Professional Goals to Enhance Your Career Path

By Dawn Bournand Updated Feb 12, 2018

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Introduction
Setting Goals
A Solid Career Path
Achieving Professional Goals

There have been multiple studies that prove when you create a goal and then set an active plan to achieve it, you will be much more likely to make it happen. Though that sounds like a very simple and unquestionable fact, it is amazing how few people actually do it. Do you have goals set around your career path and where you want to be in the next 3, 5 and 10 years? If not, there is no better time than the present.

Setting Goals

The first step to setting goals is simply to get crystal clear on what exactly it is that you want. If you turn the engine on in your car and set out for a destination, if you do not know what that destination is, chances are pretty strong that you will simply drive around aimlessly achieving nothing. Therefore, when you are setting goals, you want to make sure your efforts will actually take you in the direction of where you ultimately want to end up. So for example if you are setting professional goals, you want to make sure that each action will lead to professional advancement. Logical? Yes. Applied often? Probably much less than you would like to admit. Why not take a few minutes right now to get clear on where it is that you actually want to go?

A Solid Career Path

So now that you have gotten clear on what it is you want, the next step is to decide which goals will actively move you forward on your career path. A simple trick called “backwards planning” can help you to set a few strategically solid professional goals. To do this, you must start with the end in mind. So for example, let’s imagine that in 3 years time you would like to be the VP of your division. Begin by imagining yourself already in that position. Now let’s imagine someone is interviewing you in that position three years from now and they ask you ‘What steps did you have to take on your career path to get to your VP position?’ As you respond, you will realize that you can begin to map out exactly what it would take for you to achieve this prominent title: A bit of continued education, a few efforts of volunteering your time for special company projects, finding new ways to help share company news internally and externally and utilizing your network to boost your business, are all examples of effective professional goals. With these ideas in mind, write down 3-5 goals that would accelerate your progress on your career path.

Achieving Professional Goals

Now that you have taken the first step of identifying what it is you want and the second step of creating goals to achieve that outcome, it is now time to take some action. After all there is no need to create a professional goal if you take no action to achieve it. So let’s take the goal example of continued education. A great start would be to do some research and see what continued education programs would best help you to advance to the level you would like to see yourself at next? Would it be an executive education weekend class, a week-long specialized program or perhaps a new degree such as an Executive MBA would do the trick. Within each goal try to find 5 – 10 solid action steps you can take to help achieve your professional goal. When you finish this exercise you will find that you have a strategically thought out plan of action for getting to exactly where you want to be on your career path. It really is as easy as steps 1, 2, 3 so why not create a few professional goals today to get you moving upwards and onwards? There is no time like the present.

Written by

Dawn Bournand

Dawn Z Bournand is associate director of the Executive MBA department at QS and handles editorial content for the department which includes serving as editor-in-chief of the QS TopExecutive Guide. Along with two of her QS colleagues, she recently wrote the book, QS TopExecutive Passport - Your essential document for entry into the world of Executive MBAs. One of her favorite parts of the job is serving as an MBA/EMBA expert on webinars and panels, at conferences and in the media.