How Personal Development at Work Helps You Grow and Succeed
Personal development in the workplace is essential for any professional seeking career growth and progression. As you master new skills and develop professionally in line with your personal development goals, you boost confidence and enjoy more lucrative career opportunities.
If you are ready to take your career to a new level, keep reading this article. Below, you will find our tips on how to set work personal development goals, what in-demand skills to master in the first place, and how to make your professional growth an ongoing process. Take control of your personal growth journey starting today!
Benefits of Personal Development in the Workplace
Self-development at work has many advantages for your career progression and your personality. Here are just some of them:
Assess your skills and knowledge realistically
Personal growth starts with accessing where you are at the moment, i.e. keeping track of your skills and behaviors. By controlling them, you'll understand your areas for growth, both professionally and personally.
To get started, you can talk to your supervisor and coworkers for feedback. If everyone hints that you need to work on your communication skills or human skills, include it in your personal development plan.
Boost motivation
Becoming totally aware of your strengths, weaknesses and level of skills can increase your motivation levels in the long run. As you understand your positive and negative attitudes and how they affect others, you learn to act differently and more productively.
If you are persistent enough, you and the other team members will see the result. And observing the results of your own personal growth will give you a boost of confidence and motivation for even bigger achievements. If you experience loss of motivation at the moment, read what may cause it and how to regain motivation with motivation strategies for work.
Advance your skill set
Personal growth at work goes hand in hand with developing new skills. Once you decide what areas you need to work on, you can work on particular skills (such as language or leadership skills) to achieve your goals. As you develop those skills and leadership qualities, you will create an image as a dynamic professional with a growth mindset, and may even land a promotion.
Master setting personal development goals
Setting personal growth goals is a skill itself, and it is essential for a successful career. When you start working on developing your personality, it will require you to create a plan and set smart goals. These goals will be based on the assessment of your current professional level, your role within the organization and your personal objectives and preferences. The skill of setting smart personal goals will help you overcome challenges and advance faster in any workplace.
Develop positive attitude
The job that doesn't contribute to our growth and doesn't allow us to learn and develop ourselves eventually starts to depress us and destroy our motivation. Even though some employers say that you should care of your personal development outside of work, it's indisputable that work is the perfect site to develop all attributes of your personality. When your work allows you to do so, it helps you feel more inspired and motivated, which results in your success at work.
Discover your life purpose
As you commit to personal development at work, you will start to understand yourself better. You will discover what drives you most, what new challenges and activities inspire you, and what you enjoy doing most. Setting personal development goals is a good starting point to discovering your passion and finding your true calling (if you haven't found it yet).
Personal Growth and Self-Development at Work
Whereas personal growth and professional development at work go hand in hand, they have different focuses.
Personal growth refers to one's overall well-being and development as a personality. It means understanding your inner values, what motivates and inspires you, and how you measure success. The importance of personal growth in the workplace is, as you develop more as personality, you communicate with others better, gain clear focus in all areas in life, build emotional resilience, and it is easier for you to achieve career goals in modern workplace.
Professional self-improvement, in its turn, means developing relevant skills and competencies to contribute to organizational success. It involves taking courses and workshop to build specific skills you can apply at work, such as public speaking skills, programming language, or selling techniques.
Now that you are clear about the difference between the two terms, let's have a closer look at how to grow personally and professionally at work.
How to Create a Personal Development Plan at Work
For those making personal development a priority, career growth starts with creating a personal development plan (PDP) at work. Here's how to create a plan that works for your success.
Start with self-assessment
Your personal and professional development in the workplace starts with evaluating where you stand. Before you set personal development goals, take the time to identify your strengths and areas for growth. Thus, you'll gain deeper understanding of your professional capabilities and set smarter professional goals.
Here's how to assess yourself in a work environment:
- Take a personality assessment to better understand your work style and areas for growth. Use our free work style quiz to get a quick result.
- Take a skill inventory. Thus, you'll understand what skills to develop in the first place to boost self-confidence and achieve overall success.
- Get feedback. Ask for feedback from your supervisor and coworkers. Thus, you'll get objective opinion about your skills and attitude, plus they can recommend great growth opportunities.
- Personal SWOT analysis career planning. The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a great tool for self-evaluation and understanding your areas for growth.
Set SMART goals
After evaluating yourself and identifying areas for development, it's time to create your personal development plan. To make it work, set SMART goals:
- Specific - clearly outline the skill or competency you want to develop (improve workplace relationships, leadership qualities, master a tech tool, etc.)
- Measurable - decide how you will measure success and set criteria for achieving your goal.
- Achievable - keep your goal realistic - don't plan to become a senior marketer in a year if you only have four months of marketing experience.
- Relevant - make sure that all goals you set align with your bigger professional goal and support it.
- Time-bound - set deadlines for achieving your goal. It will keep you accountable and create motivation.
Here are some examples of SMART goals:
- Complete a HubSpot marketing certification course in the next 2 months.
- Take a communication skills workshop in November to enhance workplace relations and negotiate with clients better.
- Complete a Master's degree next year to be eligible for promotion to a Team Leaders.
Get feedback
Feedback for personal development at work is essential, as it's not always possible to objectively evaluate your skills and personality, and identify areas for growth on your own.
You can ask for feedback from everyone you interact with professionally - your supervisor, coworkers, clients, and your coach/mentor. By integrating their feedback into your personal development goals, you will achieve career progression much faster.
Here are a few tips to ask for feedback smart:
- Ask for specific examples. Don't settle with "you're great to work with" or "you don't communicate with upset clients well". Ask for specific situations and details so you can ask on that feedback and determine what skills to develop to improve the situation.
- Reach out to a few people. Talk to as many people as you can to get an objective picture of your skills and attitude in different workplace situations.
- Be ready to accept criticism. Understand that constructive criticism is essential for your professional growth. Whether it's from business leaders or your coworker, accept criticism wisely.
Track your progress
Goal setting for employees goes hand in hand with measuring and tracking progress. HR leaders agree that tracking progress weekly or monthly is essential. It helps ensure you're on a track with your goals and correct the plan if something changes.
If you encounter any challenges in completing your PDP plan, consider talking to your supervisor or mentor. You may set too many goals and feel overwhelmed, or encounter a new lucrative opportunity that requires different skills than you planned. The great thing about personal development goals is that you can alter them if your end goal changes.
Top 10 Skills That Drive Career Growth and Development
Career development goes hand in hand with skills improvement. As you develop more job-related skills, you can request a higher salary, be considered for a promotion, and even change careers.
If you're not sure where to start, here's our pick of the most popular skills for employee personality development. They're sought-after across many industries and can distinguish you from your colleagues.
Time management
Ability to organize tasks, prioritize them, schedule into to-do list and complete on time (or just with insufficient delays) – all these skills can be grouped under time management skills term. Managing tasks and priorities are critical for developing, successful personality.
- Eat the frog – time management experts suggest that you start your working day with the most critical or unpleasant task instead of delaying it. This will contribute to your willpower and relieve you from stress for the rest of the day.
- Start planning by scheduling important tasks – put critical tasks into your to-do list first and then add secondary, minor tasks that can be delayed without damage.
- Tight schedule isn't your friend – it's impossible to plan every factor that can possibly arise. That's why it's important to allocate blank spaces into your schedule, so you will have extra time to complete the task.
Unitasking
As opposed to multitasking, unitasking is the process of focusing on one activity at a time. And this is considered to be a healthier approach to work than multitasking. In fact, the habit of multitasking lowers your IQ, boosts stress levels and causes mistakes at work.
Unitasking enables you to focus entirely on the same task for a long time, boosting your concentration and ensuring high quality of work you produce. Moreover, it helps you enter a flow state in which you can work faster and more productively than usual. Mastering work in a flow state will be a huge step for your personal development.
Stress management
An accomplished career requires physical and mental stamina. Nevertheless, things don't always go smooth at work, and we all are subjected to workplace stress. Short-time stress isn't dangerous and can even facilitate your development at work. However, if accumulated, stress can pose a major risk for your mental, physical and emotional help. Here are a few techniques for your perusal:
- Meditate – meditation makes multiple positive effects on our body and mind, and stress reduction is just one of them. It lets you to relax your body and get away from annoying thoughts, thus helping you get away from stressful obstacles at work.
- Take your time for hobbies – if there's some activity that you truly enjoy, don't put it aside to focus on work. Personal development implies that you focus on doing things that bring you satisfaction and joy.
- Talk it out – talk to your friends, colleagues, family or even therapist – it can reduce your stress levels. Surprisingly, when we speak about our problems aloud, we can unexpectedly come across the solution.
Conflict resolution
Workplace conflicts aren't rare. Conflict is defined as difference in opinion, approaches to work or disagreements of any kind, and may lead to hurt feelings and drop of productivity in the department or company. In any case, if conflict isn't resolved and handled properly, it will destroy the relationships within the team and lead to a plenty of other unpleasant consequences.
Moreover, mastering this skill will develop a plenty of valuable personal qualities in you, such as the ability to make unbiased decisions, be more patient towards other people's opinions and views and come up with win-win solutions.
- Active listening – as the conflict arbitrator, you'll need to ask open-ended questions and listen carefully to the answers to understand the nature of conflicts and every point of view objectively.
- Empathy – this skill is about having a look at the situation from different perspective. This will enable you to realize how each party feels about this conflict and encourage them to do the same, helping to evaluate the conflict and its influence in full.
- Creative problem solving – if the conflict exists, this is the sign that a situation couldn't be resolved using traditional methods. Creativity is the must to offer the solution that will leave both parties satisfied; if creativity isn't your biggest strength, learn how to get your creative juices flowing.
Confidence
There's a strong correlation between your confidence levels and success. Why? Confident individuals at work are perceived as more competent, more easy-going and they are assigned complex projects more often than their coworkers who are shy about their knowledge and skills. That's why gaining confidence should become one of top priorities for your personal development. Since self-esteem is what you think about yourself, it can – and should – be trained, and the others will see you as a more confident personality.
Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence determines how well you communicate with others, your perseverance and self-control. It makes you pleasant to work with in a team and get along well with others. This quality is essential for professionals working with people, such as registered nurses, customer service reps, and teachers/tutors.
Leadership
Leadership development is an asset for your career, even if you don't supervise a team yet. Leadership helps you guide others, set strategic goals, motivate and inspire, and influence outcomes of the project. Whether your goal is to be a department head, lead game-changing projects within the organization, or make a bigger impact, mastering leadership skills is your step to a brighter future.
Digital literacy
Being familiar with industry software, apps, and remote collaboration tools is essential for modern workplace. Knowledge of MS Word and email clients is no longer a competitive advantage, as you are expected to know much more. Today, modern professionals across many industries should know these digital tools:
- Remote collaboration tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Asana)
- Google advanced search features to find reliable information quickly
- Project management tools (Notion, Jira, Asana)
- Google Workspace for online collaboration
- Understanding of digital security practices to protect yourself from scam and phishing.
Strong written communication
Written communication such as business letters, e-mails, contracts, etc. is not going anywhere and valued in majority of office roles. Mastering clear, concise and accurate writing will help you express your thoughts better and faster and ensure effective communication with teams and stakeholders.
- E-mail writing: good e-mail writing can be learned, so put mastering this skill into your personal development plan. Grammar, structure, word choice and even signature – everything matters when it comes to writing effective emails.
- E-mail title: When composing an e-mail, it's important to think of a short yet informative subject line. It's the subject line that often determines whether the letter will be read or not.
- Business letter writing: during your professional career you'll have to deal with business letters a lot. The ability to author excellent letters will contribute a lot to your professional image.
Interviewing
An average worker changes job approximately once in 3 years, so passing interviews with brilliance will help your career a lot. The more seasoned you are at impressing interviewers and selling yourself as the top candidate for the role, the faster you'll be getting jobs you like. This is what you should pay specific attention to:
- Master the basic rules of interviewing – make sure that such trifles as not knowing details of the company or showing up late won't break it. Learn the key tips for passing interview successfully to get started.
- Practice different interview types – online interview, group interview, phone interview… Getting accustomed to each type of interview through personal interview preparation and practice will make your personality flexible in any circumstances, and you'll go a long way.
- End on a good note – how you end the interview determines whether you'll be remembered or not. The catchy questions for the end of interview will help you stand out from the pool of candidates.
If you feel stuck and unsure about what skills to develop in the first place, consider finding a coach. Quality coaching will speed up the process of your development and help you to stay on track when the things get complicated. You can consult with your manager or supervisor, or find an outside coach if the company doesn't offer much growth opportunities.
The Psychology Behind Personal Development at Work
According to Maslow, a personal development occurs through the process of self-actualization. He suggested that human needs form a pyramid where each need is based on the previous ones. Only when the needs of a lower level are satisfied, you become capable of developing higher ones. At the top of this pyramid he placed self-actualization – the process of individual's becoming the best he is capable of becoming.
The basic human needs such as food, drink, temperature regulation, sex and sleep are placed at the bottom of this pyramid. Safety, both physical and economical, forms the next level. Third, there goes a need of love and belongingness to some group and society and higher up to self-actualization. This is why personal development is important - it is closely tied to self-actualization and becomes the best version of yourself.
The matter is if your personal development at work isn't effective enough, maybe, some of your lower-level needs are dissatisfied. It's tough to pay all of your attention to developing yourself when you are bothered by poor relationships with family members or cannot trust others. In this case, you'll need to go back to those needs and resolve any pending issues to fully focus on your personal growth.
Conclusion
Your personal development is totally up to you, and it's you who set goals and choose to follow them. Nevertheless, work is the perfect place to hone your soft and hard skills. When you align your inner personal development goals with the organization's objectives, you get the chance to develop both professionally and personally and take your responsibilities more meaningfully.
Practical Tools to Boost Your Development Journey
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Have you managed to realize your personal development through work? Was this a positive experience?
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some overlooked personal development strategies at work?
Some underrated strategies include practicing daily self-reflection, using a personal SWOT analysis, and seeking feedback from mentors or peers. These methods help identify growth areas and foster continuous improvement.
How can leadership development contribute to personal growth?
Leadership development enhances emotional intelligence, decision-making, and confidence-key components of personal growth. It also encourages resilience and adaptability in complex workplace environments.
Is personal development relevant for entry-level employees?
Yes, focusing on personal development early in your career builds foundational skills like time management, communication, and problem-solving that can accelerate long-term career success.
What is the link between emotional intelligence and workplace success?
Emotional intelligence helps professionals manage stress, navigate interpersonal dynamics, and build productive relationships. These skills are essential for leadership, collaboration, and career advancement.
Can a personal SWOT analysis help with career planning?
Yes, a personal SWOT analysis helps identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, enabling you to set realistic goals and align your development efforts with your career aspirations.
How does self-actualization relate to personal development at work?
Self-actualization is the process of realizing your full potential. In the workplace, it translates into seeking meaningful work, growing through challenges, and aligning your role with personal values and goals.