A SWOT Analysis for Personal Growth
You use the trusty SWOT in your business strategy but what about a SWOT analysis of your personal and professional life?
As the world has witnessed with COVID-19, cooperation and collaboration garner results faster and more efficiently than individual scientists, companies and countries.
The pandemic has been the impetus for individuals and companies to reflect on their future, their relationships, and their values. Some companies survived and even flourished during the pandemic, others are struggling to stay open and unfortunately, many have not made it.
A time to reflect, a time to pivot
The global shutdowns have shown us we need to find new, innovative ways to reinvent ourselves and remain flexible moving forward. The new year ahead can be exciting and scary as we continue to manage change and evolve our business into something we never knew was possible.
We have seen the impact that cooperation and collaboration has had on our world. As a business owner, ask yourself these questions:
- How can a greater focus on cooperation and collaboration impact myself, my team and my organization?
- What are our strengths and weaknesses in the company that COVID-19 has revealed?
- How can I set myself, my team, and my organization up so we can nimbly pivot when disaster strikes? What threats and opportunities am I not seeing?
Where we regularly take a SWOT analysis in our business to help guide some of our decisions, but what about a SWOT analysis of your personal life to give you insight and answer the question:
What do I want to achieve personally that can positively impact my career?
The Personal SWOT
A Personal SWOT analysis means taking a good hard look at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
When working with my business and executive clients, there comes a point in the coaching discussion where the pieces start to come together when they recognize their personal and business life is entwined. It is impossible to separate the two no matter how hard we try for the simple reason that our life is our life and we only have one life.
Makes sense and yet, all too often when people feel stuck in something that is going on in their business or career, they don’t look for a correlation between what is going on for them personally that might be impacting their business or visa versa.
Step 1: Choose categories & rate yourself
Start by choosing categories in your life that have a worthy impact on you and/or areas you want to focus on. Here is a list of categories to help you get started:
- Health and wellness
- Financial
- Love/romance
- Family
- Friends
- Spiritual
- Community
- Learning
- Charity/volunteering/philanthropy
How do you rate yourself?
Next, give each area a rating between 1–10 (1=Dismal and 10=Amazing)
For example, if you rated yourself a 5 in the health category, where is there room for improvement?
Step 2: SWOT your categories
For each of your categories, do a SWOT analysis by stating your Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats.
Strengths: Why did you give yourself the high score? List your top strengths and successes.
Weaknesses: Where do you feel you’ve fallen short? List where you want to develop.
Opportunities: What remedies do you know of that could increase your score? List the external opportunities available in all these domains such as opportunities to strengthen family ties, community involvement, spiritual growth.
Threats: What situations led to the low score? List any external threats that can impact any of these domains such as a global pandemic, government taxes, or health issues.
Step 3: Make adjustments
Now that you have done a SWOT analysis, go back and see if you want to change the rating in any of these areas. What I often find by doing the SWOT, people gain a different perspective when they realize they had Strengths and Opportunities which they did not think about previously and they recognize real or potential Weaknesses and Threats that have come to light.
Step 4: Select & Focus
The final step is to decide which area to focus on moving forward. Just choose one for now. What you will find is that one area positively impacts many other areas in your life. Any one you pick, will also positively impact your business and career. This domino effect exists because although we wear multiple hats, we are one person.
“We have two lives. The second one begins when we realize we only have one.”
- Confucius
About Brenda Hooper CEC, ACC, C.MED
Brenda Hooper is the founder of Discussions By Design Training and Coaching Services. As a certified Executive Coach, and Chartered Mediator, she helps business owners, leaders, and their teams grow their business while developing leadership, communication, and conflict management skills.
