How To Perform A SWOT Analysis

What actually is a SWOT analysis? SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A SWOT analysis is strategic planning to help a person recognise his/her strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. Self-analysis plays a very important role in our life. It helps us achieve our goals quickly and efficiently.
 

Why SWOT?
There has to be some parameter with which you will compare yourself to others. Healthy competition can always lead to great success and help you become a better version of yourself.

Let’s look at how to carry out a SWOT test on ourselves.

1. Recognise your strengths

The first step is to recognise your strengths; those things that you are good at. For a person, these strengths could be determination, honesty, leadership qualities, or being hardworking. They need not be any technical skills as they can also be soft skills. Find answers to such questions as:

What is it that you have that most people don’t have? Or what is that you do better than most people? What personal resources can you access?

Recognising your strengths allow you decide on how and when to use them to your advantage.

2. Identify your weaknesses

We all strive for perfection, no one is perfect. To be the best versions of ourselves, we need to deal with weaknesses in us. To do this, one first needs to identify those weaknesses. 

Don’t lie to yourself by claiming not to have a weakness or by ignoring it.

Weaknesses can be being overtly emotional or prone to procrastinating. You need to ask yourself salient questions like:

What are the tasks I avoid doing? What are those things I am poor at? What negative work habits do I have? And more.

When you find these weaknesses, do not do yourself a disservice by shying away from them.

3. Seek and take the opportunities

Identifying and grabbing that opportunity is a very important element in growth. This also means you must be ready to actually take advantage of the opportunities. How do you do these? Taking advantage of your strengths and improving on your weaknesses.

To find these opportunities, see if the industry that you are working in has deficiencies or needs you can fulfil. Does the market need anything that nobody is offering? Is there an opening that at the moment looks bad but can be a ladder later? Victory is when preparation meets opportunity. So, as you seek out the opportunities, prepare yourself.

Never stop learning and you will never stop achieving. The world is constantly changing, we need to change along with it.

4. Keep an eye on the threats

While there is life, there would be threats as well. Competition is everywhere. In the fast-paced world, we live in, there is no time to sit back and enjoy, because if you are not working, somebody somewhere is!

On a personal level, see if your weaknesses are someone’s strength? Do you feel that your colleague is a much better speaker than you are, or your classmate does not seem to work as hard as you do but gets the same or better results? If yes, then you need to work on these things.