Steps in Preparing Personal SWOT Analysis
What to do when listing Strengths and Weaknesses
A personal SWOT Analysis is needed to understand
where one stands with respect to one’s career and life path. A personal SWOT
Analysis is usually the first step towards recognizing one’s position in
attempting to deal with life’s challenges and career prospects. First, one
should never overestimate or underestimate one’s strengths. Therefore, a
personal SWOT Analysis must be objective and to the point as far as
delineating, one’s strengths are concerned. The reason we mentioned not to
underestimate or overestimate one’s strengths is that while many tend to
overestimate their strengths, there are some who underestimate them as well.
Therefore, the identification of one’s strengths must be done by listing all the
attributes one thinks are the key assets and then penning them down to
understand where one’s key personality traits would lead them. For instance,
many people have superior communication skills, people management skills, and
an ability to crack aptitude tests as strengths. On the other hand, there are
many for whom these very skills are lacking and hence, listing the components
of the SWOT would help them in gaining a true picture of where one stands.
Be Honest with yourself
Listing the strengths along with the
weaknesses gives one an opportunity to identify areas of improvement as well as
to note those areas where one need not spend much time on. We have to
remember that time is precious for many of us and hence, understanding where
one stands would help us to ration it better to concentrate on the weaknesses.
For instance, if problem solving is your weakness, then you must spend more
time honing your skills in that regard. Apart from that, if communication
skills are your weakness, you must enroll in spoken English or a communication
course that would help you polish your skills. Once the strengths and
weaknesses are listed, you must identify the opportunities that can come your
way and build yourself accordingly to tap into those opportunities. You must remember
that you need to build a door for opportunity to knock on it as well as
remember the fact that success in life depends to a large extent on how well
one anticipates the future by observing the trends of the present and then
preparing accordingly for the same. As the saying goes, chance favors the
prepared mind and hence, accurate identification of opportunities is one
critical aspect that would make or mar your chances in career and in life.
Do not fall prey to Blind Spots and Mental Blocks
The last element of the personal SWOT Analysis is
the assessment of threats. One should not go into battle without scanning the
environment for potential threats. Hence, one must be cautious about the
direction one wants to take and list down the threats that would contribute to
failure. For instance, if you foresee that in the near future, your
finances are likely to be tight, you must plan accordingly so that you do not
go deep into debt. Often, the biggest threat to many individuals is managing
the cash flow situation as well as understanding the blind spots that prevent
people from assessing a situation for what it is. The blind spots we are
referring to are the mental blocks all of us when assessing our personal SWOT
elements and these prevent us from an honest assessment of where we stand and
what our weaknesses are. One can list down any number of strengths and any
number of opportunities. However, the tough part is to accurately and reliably
identify the threats and weaknesses as otherwise we would be blind to them
because of self-love. The key aspect here is that one must not be caught up in
one’s own shadow thinking that one is invincible. Hence, proper identification
of weaknesses and threats goes a long way in ensuring that one is not caught by
surprise.
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