LET’S SEE WHERE DO YOU STAND?

Among all the relatives that I know, I have an intolerable younger brother who has a very bad habit of boasting all the time.

Being it the purchase of a new hand towel or a Rolex watch, he will HAVE to talk about it till the excitement of the new purchase is flushed out of his system completely.

Fortunately, his habits haven’t been able to get him a suitable life partner, yet.

Being inquisitive as I am, during a family gathering I tried to explain the techniques of a SWOT

analysis to him.

SWOT Stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This technique was first used in 1960 by business tycoons Edmund Learned, Roland Christensen, Kenneth Andrews, and William Guth. They used it as a business tool to forecast the future of their business.

On a more personal level, it is a simple but useful framework which works as a tool that can help someone to assess himself/herself and chalk out a path towards a better life. In short, it’s a personality development tool that will help them to become better versions of themselves over time.

Evaluating one’s strengths and weaknesses is not an easy task to do. However, SWOT is a useful tool which will help you to assist, identify, and evaluate your targets.

If you are serious about evaluating yourself, please set aside some time to answer the following questions. Since these questions are about yourself, you may want to answer them after revisiting them when you’ve let your brain think about them for enough amount of time. The answers to these questions are not easy to get, they may come to you that day, the following day, or sometime later in the future.

Since these are evaluation questions, they need to be offered after a great deal of thought. You may have to dedicate a considerable amount of time and peak into your inner self to reach an answer. Please ensure that you are absolutely honest in answering all these questions.

Strengths:

1. What are your positive points? What are your natural talents? What are you good at?

2. What is unique about you compared to others?

3. What is your speciality? Which values do you have that others don’t?

4. What skills have you developed recently?

5. Do you have great industrial contacts or leads?

Weaknesses:

1. What activities do you normally avoid due to lack of confidence?

2. What drawbacks in you are observed by other people, including your close ones?

3. Are you lacking in your professional qualifications? Does that need improvement?

4. What are your bad or negative work habits? Are you short-tempered? Are you a good listener?

5. How do you handle your stress? Can you work under pressure?

Opportunities:

1. Do you think that new technology or service can benefit you? Can you take advantage of that?

2. Do you have solid strategic contacts to help you or volunteer good advice?

3. Can you take an advanced training course to enhance your skills?

4. If available, can you accept a new responsibility or undertake a new project?

5. Is your industry growing? Are you confident to reap fruits from it?

Threats:

1. Are you scared of changing technology?

2. Is there any external hurdle which you feel is obstructing your progress?

3. Are any of your weaknesses posing a threat to you?

4. Are your peers or teammates more competitive than you? Are you aware of what they are doing presently?

5. Is your industry contracting or changing considerably?

Please remember that in SWOT Analysis, S & W i.e. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal factors. They belong to an individual. We have to take ownership of our Strengths and Weaknesses. We are solely responsible for these two important aspects.

Opportunities and Threats are external factors. Though we cannot control them directly, we have to ensure that we have to manage them in our favour.

Secondly, Strengths and Opportunities play a positive role in SWOT Analysis whereas Weaknesses and Threats are negative by nature.

This is illustrated in the following figure:

(Image source: Google)

A personal SWOT Analysis is usually performed when a person is going to attend an interview or if someone is planning to make a change in their career choice.

When there are opportunities present, the strength of a person is the deciding factor of whether or not they will excel in the job role that they are in. It is this strength that will prove the worth of a person and how they are different from others.

Knowing one’s weakness is a chance for them to better themselves. Identifying the gaps and plugging them in to create an improved version of oneself is a lifelong process that should be continuously followed.

As the saying goes, “An opportunity knocks only once”, a person should be alert at all times. He/she should always be looking for and open to taking up new opportunities. They should happily embrace change as well.

If a person is skilful, they should not have to worry about threats. Those can be tackled skillfully. They can also be converted into opportunities.

In conclusion, through a SWOT analysis, a person gets in-depth understanding of who they are, what their strengths, weaknesses, and other attributes include, and how they can change themselves slowly into becoming better in the future. SWOT helps to make a person understand the type of human being that they are, and where they are in terms of ranking to others in personal and professional settings. The goal is to be a better version of oneself and plug in the holes, not create more as my naive relative does.

(Image source: nahbnow.com)