Many professionals recognise the value of a Swot analysis for their companies. Understanding a business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats gives leaders a new perspective on what the organisation does well, where its challenges lie and which avenues to pursue.
inspiration with Cynthia C Hakutangwi
However, few people realise that a personal Swot analysis can do the same for an individual in pursuit of their career or relationship goals. While most professionals look at their strengths and weaknesses, a Swot analysis takes things a step further by forcing people to think about the external factors that bear heavily on the health and direction of their careers and relationships. The personal Swot analysis is a combination of a self-assessment tool and a strategic planning activity. It is created in light of an individual’s personal mission statement and their vision of where they see themselves in the future. A personal Swot analysis can also help people become the best versions of themselves.
The power of self-assessment
Self-assessment is a key activity in striving to achieve a sense of one’s personal best. The Swot analysis exercise ignites an enhanced awareness of what one brings to the table in a balanced light of both advantages and challenges. Organisations roll out elaborate schemes to remain competitive as well as innovative. Why wouldn’t individuals want to achieve the same level of excellence for themselves? In assessing strengths, an individual can examine the advantages they have that others don’t have. They can also examine what it is they do better than anyone else. Strengths can also be defined in terms of what personal resources an individual can access. In assessing oneself, it is also important to consider what other people see as one’s strengths. An individual can also consider which of their achievements they are most proud of.
In assessing weaknesses, the individual can examine what tasks they usually avoid because they don’t feel confident doing them. They can also look at what subject(s) they tend to struggle with as well as their negative habits and what they wish they were better at doing. In my personal development consultancy practice, I have found that most people struggle to draw up a comprehensive list of their weaknesses in the same way that they excitedly do for their strengths. In light of this, I always encourage them to get an independent and objective assessment from someone else who knows them.
Recognising your dominant weaknesses
The recognition and admission of your dominant weakness can save you emotional and mental fear of failure and devastation. Brilliant, articulate and powerful people have permitted a weakness left un-addressed to eat away at their lives like a small cancer. Little weakness, if permitted, with time can become big and ruin an individual and all they have laboured for. Greed, lust, lying, pride, rudeness, rebellion, stubbornness, flippant tongue, stinginess, wrong communication skills, slander, intolerance, boasting, laziness, procrastination, disrespect for people’s time, time-wasting lifestyle, inability to keep appointments, extravagant lifestyle, prayerlessness and even gossip can grow until that weakness becomes a raging inferno. You cannot afford to ignore your weaknesses. They are like a living person within you, a living organism. It is a force, silent and deadly, that moves your life toward destruction. If ignored, it will destroy every dream, sabotage every worthy relationship, and ultimately make you a monument of disgrace.
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Your weakness will pursue, embrace and seek any friendship that permits, feeds or enjoys it. The contentious spirit in one person can infiltrate an entire community through those who allow it to exist unchecked and uncorrected. Beware of people in your life who feed negativity and division by feeding your weakness. All the comments and complaints of your family members, friends and colleagues at school and office about your character and behaviour are pointers to the weaknesses that must be overcome by you.
Your weakness has an agenda to overtake your life
Your weakness has an agenda and a plan to overtake your life. Your weakness will bond you with wrong people and influences. It will resist divine and purposeful relationships and make you uncomfortable in the presence of those who refuse to justify it. Your weakness loves to be kept in secret and can emerge without warning. What you fail to master in your early years will master you in your latter years. It is true, what you fail to conquer in your early youth will destroy you in the closing years of your life. It is never too late to turn things around. Your weakness is best dealt with in its early stages. Time weaves a steel thread that becomes an unbreakable chain. Many of the habits that we enjoy today may enslave us tomorrow. Overcoming your weakness brings great reward. What is the most dominant weakness in your life? What is it that consistently dilutes your testimony, breaks your focus, and creates depression? You may hide it for a season, but time exposes all things.
Cynthia Hakutangwi is a communications and personal development consultant, life coach, author and strategist.
She is the managing consultant of Wholeness Incorporated. Her most recent published book is titled The Wealthy Diary of African Wisdom, previously published titles include Destination Wholeness – Going Beyond Brokenness, The Whole You – Vital Keys for Balanced Living and Intelligent Conversations: A Mindset Shift Towards a Developed Africa. She is co-author of Success Within Reach. E-mail: [email protected]. Facebook: Wholeness Incorporated. Website: www.wholenessinc.com
