30 Work Development Goals for Your Team

There are few things more demoralizing than working on a team that has little interest in your success. Employees with leaders who don’t offer regular feedback or care about their work are bound to be less productive and may even leave for a new team or company at the first opportunity. On the contrary, employees with leaders who give great feedback, are highly motivated and set goals with their colleagues are bound to be more efficient and successful.

Let’s discuss why your team should set work development goals, explore some best practices for setting work development goals with your team, and take a look at 30 goals you can set with your team today! 

• Why should your team set work development goals?
• Best practices for setting work development goals 
•  30 work development goals for your team

Why should your team set work development goals?

Work development goals are goals set to help employees hone their abilities, learn new skills, and gain more experience. 

Your team should set work development goals for a few reasons. First, employees who have goals to work towards feel motivated to stay productive. Additionally, work development goals can encourage your employees to reach their highest potential, skyrocket your employees’ career advancement, and improve overall team morale. Setting goals as a team can also help employees foster deep and positive relationships with peers. 

Best practices for setting work development goals  

There are a few ways teams can set effective work development goals. Start by hosting a collaborative team meeting to decide on some group objectives. Then, create a plan for how you’ll achieve the goals together. Easily track your progress using Fellow’s objectives tracker. Meet as a group as often as needed to review your goals and make adjustments to the plan. 

Track objectives as part of your meeting workflow

Stay on top of your team’s goals by clearly recording, defining, and tracking the progress of your OKRs in Fellow’s Objectives tool. The best part? You can quickly review those objectives during your team meetings!

Try Fellow for free

 30 work development goals for your team

• Take more training courses: Foster a love of learning within your team by setting a goal for everyone to enroll in new training courses. For example, if your company has recently implemented a new project management tool, schedule time into everyone’s calendars to complete an online course that will teach them about the basic features of the tool.
• Improve the feedback loop: A feedback loop is a way of improving communication in the workplace that involves offering regular reciprocal feedback. Set a goal for your team to better its feedback loop to improve communication and trust. Use Fellow’s feedback feature, you can share real-time feedback on meetings, projects, and performance to build a feedback culture where everyone feels encouraged to share their thoughts.

• Develop communication skills: Have your team spend time developing their written, oral, visual, and nonverbal communication skills by encouraging them to learn how to actively listen and notice nonverbal cues, for instance.
• Learn to use new digital tools: Set time aside for your team to grow its digital skill set. Set a development goal for your team members to learn new digital tools that will help them succeed in their roles and be competitive in their fields.
• Learn how to be self-aware: Self-awareness is one’s ability to focus on themselves and how their thoughts, actions, and emotions affect their responses to a variety of situations. Ask that your teammates analyze their own emotions regularly, keep an open mind, know their emotional triggers, and consider how their actions affect the team.
• Improve stress management: Set a goal to help improve your employees’ well-being by emphasizing the importance of mental health, taking measures to prevent burnout, fostering a psychologically safe environment, and providing opportunities for health education at work.
• Develop emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to communicate effectively and overcome workplace challenges. Set goals that prompt employees to observe how they feel, pay attention to how they behave and celebrate positive aspects of life at work.
• Attend more networking events: Networking events are a great opportunity for your employees to learn from other professionals in your industry. Set a goal for how many networking events you wish for your team to attend each month, quarter, or year.
• Say yes to new opportunities: When employees have been in their roles for a long time, they may find it challenging to say yes to new work. However, encouraging them to do so will make them more adaptable and can bring immense value to the entire team.
• Foster creativity: Ask that your employees foster their creativity skills by having them think outside the box, providing a stimulating atmosphere at work, and encouraging them to act on good ideas, no matter how unusual.
• Lead by example: Lead by example by showing your employees that you too are an excellent goal-setter. Publicize what goals you have for yourself and have your team hold you accountable to your plan.
• Improve cross-functional collaboration: Set a goal to improve your cross-functional work habits as a team. When possible, leverage technology to improve your workflow and better collaborate with other departments within your company.
• Create a portfolio: Encourage your employees to keep track of the great work they’re doing and to maintain systems of organization to speed up processes.
• Find a mentor: Set a goal for each member of your team to find a mentor who will support their work, provide regular feedback, and help them reach their personal goals.
• Improve collaboration: If you want your team to be more collaborative, communicate your expectations, establish clear communication channels, and host team brainstorming sessions often.
• Try time management techniques: Have your team improve their time management skills by trying new techniques such as time blocking and the Pomodoro Technique.
• Improve work-life balance: Discuss as a team how to improve work conditions within your company and minimize work-related stress. Be receptive to feedback from your employees and consider developing a plan if needed.
• Take on new leadership roles: There will always be new leadership opportunities, so set a goal to foster leadership within your team. Identify your rock stars and superstars and give individuals in each group the resources they need to reach their fullest potential.
• Consume more content from thought leaders in your industry: Encourage your employees to read news articles, watch informative videos, and follow thought leaders on social media who have valuable insights to offer. Consuming content from thought leaders will motivate you to work hard to achieve great results, too!
• Learn to actively listen: Active listening means understanding what a person is saying, responding to and reflecting on what you’re being told, and retaining that information for later use. Have your team members practice their active listening skills by encouraging them to stay engaged during everyday conversations, ask many questions, maintain open body language, and use nonverbal cues.
• Improve public speaking skills: Public speaking is daunting for some employees, but it doesn’t have to be! Have your team improve your public speaking skills by scheduling times to practice, teaching them how to cope with nerves, and planning opportunities for them to put their public speaking skills to use.
• Be empathic: Empathy at work means showing sincere interest in the needs, hopes, and dreams of others. The next time your colleague comes to you with an issue or personal win, show compassion and demonstrate a willingness to help.
• Apply for a promotion: Encourage colleagues to not wait for the “perfect” opportunity to apply for a new job. If they’re ready to take on new projects, there is no better time than the present for them to apply for a promotion. If there isn’t an opportunity yet, encourage your superstar employees to work on their resumes and interview skills.
• Be proactive: Being proactive means initiating action in anticipation of future situations. Proactivity is the superior way to make decisions, so have your team improve this skill by setting concrete, realistic goals, taking initiative, and being solution-oriented.
• Learn how to deal with crises: Crisis management is an underrated but important skill. Have your team learn to deal with unexpected business issues by creating a list of possible scenarios, identifying business risks, and developing a plan for each.
• Stay updated with the latest trends: Keeping up to date with what’s popular helps teams compare their efforts to the efforts of others and connect with people at the moment. For example, keeping up to date with the latest social media trends can help marketing leaders and employees better communicate with external audiences.
• Identify and improve your weaknesses: You probably spend a great deal of time focusing on your strengths, so why not dedicate some time to improving your weaknesses? Have your employees identify hard and soft skills they would like to improve and develop objectives and key results to help them better themselves, one step at a time.
• Prioritize self-care: Taking care of yourself as a leader can be challenging, but as the saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup! Identify new ways that you can take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health so you can bring your best self to your role. Encourage your teammates to do the same.
• Develop a growth mindset: Having a growth mindset means believing that you can improve any skill with time and effort! Each time your team faces a setback, encourage your team members to adopt a mindset that they can change and ask that they’re open to learning and growing.
• Job shadow someone: If members of your team are interested in new roles, encourage them to shadow employees on other teams or departments or seek out mentorship from professionals they admire. 

Parting advice 

Now that you know what work development goals are, understand why you should set them, and have more than two dozen examples, you’re ready to put your goal-setting knowledge to great use! Before you know it, everyone on your team will have excellent goal-setting habits and will be achieving milestones.