Personal development is all about making a commitment to do things that will help you better yourself and grow as a person or professional.
Continuously striving to improve yourself will increase your chances of making progress and achieving success in various aspects of your life.
Whether you are a manager or you are aspiring to become one, setting actionable and leadership-oriented development goals will improve your skills and perform better in your role.
In this post, we are going to discuss some examples of personal development goals for managers that you can set for yourself or incorporate into your existing development plan.
Keep in mind that merely setting goals is not enough, you have to follow through and put in the effort to accomplish them.
Personal Development Goals For Managers
1. Work on your powers of motivation
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
As a manager, you need to be able to motivate yourself and your team members to reach their targets and maximize productivity. You can improve your motivation techniques by praising and encouraging your teammates when they do great work.
Assign them tasks that will challenge them and commend them when they start showing signs of improvement. Prompt them to reflect on what they want to get out of the job so they can self-motivate by reaching towards that goal or vision.
Treat everyone fairly, reward employees who perform well, show respect for their ideas and approaches, and encourage people to take breaks or time off when they need it.
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2. Learn to give and take constructive feedback
As a manager, the people on your team are going to look up to you for guidance. It’s your job to help them sharpen their skills, perform better in their roles, and advance to the next rung on their career ladder.
To do this, you have to be able to provide feedback that is constructive, valuable, and reassuring. You should be able to tell the employees what they have done right and where tweaks need to be made to bring their work up to the level that you expect from them.
Feedback is a two-way street so you also need to be open to listening to constructive criticism. Creating an environment that encourages your employees to share feedback with you can help you become a better manager and also help boost performance and morale around the office.
3. Improve time management skills
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
Learning how to manage time is one of the most important skills a manager can have. How can you inspire your team to properly distribute their time and deliver their projects on time if you are not able to do so yourself?
Your ability to efficiently manage your time will come in handy whenever you have an uptick in your workload or competing tasks vying for attention. It will also prevent you from crashing under the weight of pressure and stress, and free up time that you can reinvest in other tasks.
You can start by using apps to keep track of how you use your time and then review the data to see where you are using up too much time and devise strategies to speed up your workflow.
4. Take a leadership course
Being made a manager doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know about leading a team and getting people to do their best work. Make it your goal to get formal management training to see what you can improve about your leadership style.
There are lots of free resources and courses online that can help you refine your people management, project management, strategic thinking skills, and a host of other skills that can help you perform exceedingly well in your role.
Learn from other professionals with extensive management experience to find out the mistakes they made early on so you can avoid the same pitfalls, and help steer your team towards success.
5. Be a more active listener
Photo by Edmond Dantès
It can be tempting to interject with remarks or even take over the conversation when someone is speaking, but that just makes you a bad listener and conversationalist.
Learning to listen attentively, not just to hear, but to understand what is being said can cut down on miscommunication and confusion at work.
Give your undivided attention when listening and ask questions to uncover additional insights on the subject of discussion, and clarify any points you don’t understand.
This will help the other person feel heard and leave with the confidence of knowing the purpose and meaning behind the conversation.
Becoming a better listener will equip you to learn more about your team, the challenges they are facing, and how you can support them to achieve personal and collective goals.
6. Practice kindness and empathy
A little bit of kindness goes a long way. It can help boost team morale, uplift someone’s mood, bring some sunshine to their day, and create a warmer impression of you in people’s minds.
Whether it’s with your employees or some random person you hardly know, strive to always approach all your interactions with patience and kindness.
Learn to be more mindful and understanding of other people’s feelings, thoughts, or experiences, and respond appropriately to them.
Give people your full attention when needed, take an interest in their lives, acknowledge their feelings, ask how you can help, and don’t be too quick to pass judgment. These are all ways you can practice showing empathy and kindness.
7. Increase adaptability to change
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As a manager, there will be times when you need to rebuild your operations or refocus your company’s resources to accommodate changes. Only leaders who are flexible enough to quickly pivot and embrace the new state of things will succeed.
This is why nurturing your ability to adjust to change is one of the most important personal development goals you can set. You can do this by avoiding getting stuck in your ways and being open to implementing new initiatives.
Planning for other possibilities will also help you be better prepared to deal with changes if things don’t work out as expected.
8. Develop transdisciplinary skills
Start seeing learning as a lifelong project and be intentional about learning new things and growing as a person and as a professional. Read more, take courses, embrace new challenges, and do whatever you can to polish your existing skills.
Be open to learning brand new skills from other areas because you could pick up knowledge that can be applied to your role.
Look to other departments in your company to gain an understanding of how they work and how their activities contribute to the company’s bottom line.
9. Get better at managing stress
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Being responsible for the successes and failures of an entire team and having to push everyone to do their jobs and ensure they are doing them well can be very challenging and stressful.
If you allow this stress to fester it can cause problems with your mental, emotional, and physical health or lead to chronic burnout. That’s not an outcome you want to have to deal with.
Knowing how to deal with stress can prevent it from happening so make it a personal development goal to reinforce your stress shields. A quick internet search will help you find different stress management tactics that you can start implementing right away.
10. Become more proactive
This skill is what separates a great manager from a great one. You shouldn’t always wait around for problems to arise so you can react to them, train yourself to anticipate issues and make plans to address them before they blow up.
Being proactive will allow you to maintain control over the situation rather than being controlled by it, so you won’t be completely thrown off balance.
The trick to enhancing your proactiveness is to focus on solving problems and doing the work ahead of time.
Stay updated on emerging trends, current best practices, and new research in your field, and see how you can apply the insights to your work or organization right away.
11. Identify and work on weaknesses
Photo by Alex Green
Another personal development goal for managers you can set is to know your weaknesses and take steps to improve on them. Start by accepting that you are not perfect and that having a weakness doesn’t detract from your leadership abilities.
Be honest with yourself about your problem areas and what you think contributes to them. After doing some self-reflection, reach out to someone who knows you well and can be trusted to tell you the truth to get their own opinion.
They might help you uncover some weaknesses that you may not be aware of so you can develop an action plan to raise your competence in those areas.
12. Learn to show appreciation
Employees are a manager’s greatest asset, so make it a goal to show them that their efforts are deeply appreciated. When your team achieves a goal they have been working towards, don’t be stingy with the praise.
Publicly recognize people who do good work or who go above and beyond. Let them know you are grateful for what they do or have done.
When your workers feel appreciated, they will work harder and want to stick around your organization for a long time rather than leaving to join a different company.
13. Create work-life balance
Photo by Helena Lopes
Although work is important, it should not be what rules over your life. It’s important to create strong and realistic boundaries to separate your professional life from your personal life.
This will positively impact your well-being, increase your happiness, work satisfaction, and performance. Some steps you can take towards establishing a work-life balance include leaving work at work and home at home.
You can also try sticking to the prescribed 8-hour workdays and creating a to-do list every week/day to help you stay on top of your work and personal responsibilities.
14. Improve problem-solving skills
Rather than complaining when challenges or problems arise, you want to be the kind of person who rolls up their sleeves and gets to work on fixing the issues.
Focus on finding solutions to whatever issues you are facing instead of waiting around for someone else to resolve it.
That is the mark of a great manager. Achieving this personal development goal will not only establish you as an exemplary leader at work, but it will also place you on the path to success because you will be more committed to tackling problems instead of grumbling about them.
15. Learn to delegate more and micromanage less
Photo by Anna Shvets
You’ve probably heard the saying “if you want something done right, do it yourself,” but following it is the easiest way to make yourself go crazy with stress. The best managers know not to fill their plates with more tasks than they can handle.
You have to learn to delegate tasks to other people and trust them to successfully get the work done. Don’t try to supervise every aspect of the task as they are doing it because that undermines the skills, processes, and unique point of view that they have to offer.
Beyond easing your workload, learning to delegate without micromanaging will help foster confidence in your employees’ abilities and in their regard for you as a manager.
16. Enhance your strategic thinking
Learning how to think about things and approach problems with a strategic mindset is one of the most important personal developments you can aspire to as a manager.
Fortifying your strategic thinking skills will enable you to overcome challenges and take the best approach that will guarantee success and move you closer to your goals.
You can achieve this by always creating a strategy for any task or project before you embark on it.
Think about what you want to achieve, why it matters, the perception you want to create in people’s minds when they encounter the work, and the concrete actions you are going to take to bring the ideas to life.
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17. Develop coaching and mentorship skills
Photo by Christina Morillo
Being a manager means having people rely on you for guidance and direction. You need to get better at sharing your knowledge with the people you are managing.
Not only will this help them improve their skills, but it will also give you increased confidence in your skills and experience, and even help you realize the knowledge areas to brush up on.
Set goals for your team and ensure everyone perfectly understands the responsibilities and expectations of their roles.
Make yourself available to your employers; listen to their concerns, opinions, questions, or problems and try to understand where they are coming from, and provide solutions or advice where possible.
18. Build better work processes
Another personal goal you can work towards that can make you a better manager and maximize your team’s potential is to set up effective workflows.
Refining your processes will empower your team to get more work done in less time, without expending greater effort or sacrificing the quality of their outcomes.
You can make a plan to optimize processes by getting to know the strong suit of every member of your team and assigning tasks in a way that leaves everyone assured of what they are supposed to do.
Help them understand what’s expected of them and when they are expected to complete it and put measures in place to help them get results.
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19. Expand your peer network
Photo by Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent
Having a solid community of talented, ambitious, and like-minded people can be a great source of support and motivation.
Finding and connecting with other people and managers who are committed to advancing their careers and making a name for themselves in their respective industries will help you realize that you are not alone in your journey.
Try to reach out to other professionals whose careers or accomplishments resonate with you and slowly cultivate relationships with them. Attend conferences and other events to get to know other players in your field.
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20. Move past limiting beliefs
Clinging tightly to your limitations and letting them dictate what chances to take or what you can or cannot do will only hold you back.
It’s normal to be scared of failing, losing face, or getting hurt when you step out of your comfort zone or try to reach for the things you want, but try to go ahead and do them anyway.
Work on identifying the beliefs that are preventing you from going after the things you desire and take steps to conquer them by replacing them with positive and supportive thoughts. Instead of why, start asking yourself why not.
21. Work on your emotional intelligence
Photo by Alex Green
Becoming a successful leader often requires considerable emotional intelligence. If you want to be a better manager or climb higher up the professional ladder, you need to make improving your EQ one of your personal development goals.
Some people naturally have a high emotional quotient or intelligence. But the good news is, even if you are not one of them, it is something that you can acquire more of and get better at.
You just have to create a plan to bolster your capacity for emotional intelligence. Doing this will help you become more self-aware and socially aware, and improve your ability to motivate, communicate, self-regulate, and process the emotions of people around you.
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22. Make time for self-care
Paying attention to your mental, physical, and emotional health and embracing measures to help you keep them running in tip-top shape will only help you become a better manager, friend, partner, sibling, or parent. You can’t neglect to treat yourself right and take care of your own needs.
You have to be intentional about caring for yourself, the same way you are committed to your work and other responsibilities.
Make self-care a priority; meditate, eat nutritious foods, exercise regularly, find hobbies to dabble in, declutter your surroundings, embrace journaling, and take time to actively rest.
23. Focus on building professional relationships
Photo by Alexander Suhorucov
Team productivity and effective collaboration are bolstered when there is a cordial relationship in the working environment.
As a manager, you should strive to strengthen the relationship you have with your coworkers and the relationships team members have with one another.
Nourishing these relationships will allow everyone to work harmoniously and give their best to their role because they know that their performance will feed into other people’s roles.
Be open to learning from everyone, show your colleagues that you value them, be open and honest in your communication, and help others whenever you can.
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24. Sharpen your persuasion skills
One essential quality that managers must have is the ability to get people to buy into their ideas. You need to be able to sell people on your plans, motivate them to do the work, and help you make your vision a reality.
You can accomplish this by explaining your ideas in a captivating way—creating a story around it for example—and explaining what they stand to gain from their contributions to the project.
Let people offer their input on the subject to make them feel involved and gauge how they feel about the idea before work begins on it.
25. Build a growth-oriented mindset
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The way you view things in your mind will impact how you approach situations and the kind of results you get out of them.
If you are of the mindset that trying new things is inviting trouble or you believe things won’t work out, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You won’t be willing to actually put in the work required to succeed because you believe it won’t be worth it in the end.
This is why working on your attitude and adopting a positive and progressive mindset is one of the most important personal development goals you can set.
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Conclusion
Having clearly defined goals is the key to improving and motivating yourself to attain the personal and professional growth you desire.
If you want to be a great manager, you can start by using these constructive personal development goals to help you develop critical skills for effective leadership.
