What are the key professional goals for a project manager?

Completing your project may be number one priority, but a close second is your development as a de-facto project manager.

Even if you haven’t received professional project management training, once you find yourself filling the shoes of a PM for your team and your company, you’ll see that setting and acting on your professional goals helps you advance in your career.

So today, we’re going to show you great examples of goals for work, or to be more precise: examples of professional goals for project management.

Let’s take a look!

What Are Professional Goals (and Why Do You Need to Set Them)?

Let’s be real: if you weren’t ambitious, you wouldn’t have gotten this far. Chances are, you care about your career and your professional development.

Workplace goals can help you achieve even more.

A professional goal is a statement that defines the goals you will seek out in your career or in your current position.

Similarly, a workplace goal is a professional goal, as defined by your current workplace and role.

For example, as a professional, your goal could be to improve your communication with teams. Consequently, that goal in terms of a specific workplace would transform to: “I will improve the communication with my project team by establishing advanced reporting practices and continuous feedback sessions.”

The more specific and defined your professional and workplace goals are, the sooner will you achieve them, and show your top management that you’re an important asset.

Workplace goals are a roadmap to success.

When you know what you want to achieve, it’s much easier to go ahead and achieve it.

For example, if you really want to improve your teamwork, you’ll know exactly what you need to do by setting a specific goal that defines tactics and timeframes.

Workplace goals help you and your top management.

When you set a professional or a workplace goal, it’ll help you achieve what you want to achieve in your career.

At the same time, if you have to set professional goals for HR purposes, you’ll also show your top management that you’re a professional worth investing in, and that you are keeping both your interests and the company’s interests at heart.

It’s a win-win.

Setting the Right Workplace Goals

No two goals are alike. When it comes to professional goals, you want them to be more than just a statement. You want them to be your strategy.

You should follow the SMART goal-setting method. Every goal should be:

Depending on your unique situation, your goals can be short-term and long term. We’ll cover both types.

And now, it’s time to take a look at great examples of goals for work that will help you in your career!

Examples of Professional Goals for Project Management

Let’s take a look at short-term goals first.

They’ll be highly relevant to your current position, and advancing in it. They show that you want to maximize your efficiency in the shoes you currently fill.

1. Improve Project Productivity and Performance

When you’re a project manager, finishing projects in time is the be-all and end-all.

This goal is particularly important if your team has been struggling to complete projects in team.

When setting this work goal, you should pay particular attention to:

• The causes behind poor performance
• Areas for improvement

For example, you could realize that your main obstacle is the way you set the scope during project negotiation phase.

Then, you can incorporate that into your goal statement by explaining that you will improve scope-setting methods in project initiation phase.

2. Improve Team Communication and Collaboration

There is always room for improvement in team communication and collaboration, which makes this professional goal a great one to strive for.

Again, when you set your goal to be effective team collaboration, you want to know how exactly you’ll improve upon it. You should understand the underlying causes, and your own motivation for improvement.

This goal might just boil down to getting better project team collaboration software.

3. Expand Your Project Management Knowledge

This is a powerful professional goal for first-time or casual project managers.

If your top management decided that you should be a team lead for projects handled at your company, they want to see you taking the role seriously.

Of course, improving your PM skills will also help you handle projects better and improve your performance.

Sometimes acting on this goal is as simple as taking a free online course, or reading up on Project Management blogs.

Now that we’ve covered some of the most important short-term goals, it’s time to focus on more verbose long-term goals to help you with your current performance and your career goals at large.

4. Execute High-Impact Projects

This professional goal is especially important if you often work on internal projects (projects where the end client is your company/your company’s customers).

You can strive to execute high-impact projects by first understanding your company’s strategic position and opportunities.

The goal here is to identify projects that will bring the maximum amount of benefits to your company, and increase their cost-effectiveness.

You won’t be achieving your long-term goals only, but the long-term goals of your company, as well.

5. Gain a Strategic Understanding of the Company’s Goals and Implement Relevant Initiatives

If you’re a project manager, it can often seem like you’re working in a bubble.

However, every project you execute contributes to a larger purpose for your company and for yourself.

When you set this goal, you’ll need to research other departments and the company to expand your knowledge and help the company achieve its strategic objectives.

For example, your company may want to streamline their understanding of your projects’ contribution to their overall goals.

You can help them by integrating project tracking solutions with the ERP (enterprise resource planning) tools.

6. Increase Transparency and Secure Stakeholder Buy-In at a Scale

If you want to get approval from all stakeholders (top management, team members, and end clients), you’ll need to brush up on your communication skills.

Additionally, you’ll need powerful technological solutions that increase visibility, and a standardized process that streamlines receiving approval and communicating with stakeholders.

Ultimately, when everyone’s on the same page, you’ll have achieved your professional goal.

7. Maximize Your Contributions within Your Role

This goal helps you do the most you can in the role you currently have.

For example, your company may be handling project management only in the sense of completing projects.

However, you can contribute and expand the impact of your role by:

• Training and retaining team members
• Devising new technological and collaborative solutions to ensure long-term peak performance
• Working with top management on devising new goals for your team
• Performing competitor research
• Revising old performance reports to create new performance improvement strategies

You can be as ambitious as you’d like here. Top management loves this goal, as it shows that you’re taking your role seriously.

And in addition to being on the fast track to promotion, you’ll also expand your professional knowledge.

No matter where you ultimately want to be in your career, you’ll always take your know-how with you.

Originally published at https://www.projectcentral.com.