Business principles in personal life: #2 SWOT analysis

Published in

GlobalizeIT LTD

5 min readNov 27, 2019

You are most likely to succeed in life if you use your talents to their fullest extent. Similarly, you will suffer fewer problems if you know what your weaknesses are and if you manage these weaknesses so that they don’t matter in the work you do.

So how you go about identifying these strengths and weaknesses and analyzing the opportunities and threats that flow from them? SWOT Analysis is a useful technique that helps you do this.

What is a SWOT analysis?

“SWOT” is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It has been used by businesses for many years as a strategic planning tool because it helps to give you an all-round view of the organization. Unchanged in its format, it’s still used today to help businesses focus their thoughts, analyze their progress, and strategically shape their decision-making.

But it’s more than just a business tool: a SWOT Analysis is a useful development exercise that can help you identify and evaluate your own personal goals. It’s a simple format, and easy-to-apply structure means that it can be used very easily without support.

Thinking of a career change? Preparing for a job interview? Listing everything down in a SWOT diagram will clarify your thoughts and help shape your application or resume. It will also help you identify the unique strengths that distinguish you from your competitors.

How to conduct a personal SWOT analysis?

Let’s go through the process of conducting a personal SWOT analysis. A personal SWOT analysis is very similar to one for business, except that you focus on yourself and your goals.

A personal SWOT analysis, however, may be more useful if you focus on a specific goal or problem that you want to address. This is because we all have a number of very diverse goals. The skills and attributes that may help us towards one goal may be irrelevant, or even a weakness, in another context. A threat in one context could be unimportant in another.

Firstly, you should identify the goal you want to achieve. It is important to be as specific as possible. Be clear about timing, that is, when you want to achieve your goal, and also how you will know that you have achieved it — your success criteria.

If you have not yet identified any goals, you may find it helpful to read our article about Setting Personal Goals.

Now after you identify the goal you want to achieve, it’s time to define your strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

Knowing your strengths will help you to be more confident in every aspect of your life — work or personal. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when filling this part.

What are you good at naturally or what are your talents?
What are the professional qualifications/certifications you have that makes you stand out from the rest?
What do you do better than anyone else?
Can your expertise in some areas make a difference to the organization?
Which of your achievements are you most proud of?
What do other people see as your strengths?

Weaknesses

The second step is to identify your weaknesses. Identifying weaknesses is the best way to improve them or to find partners or mentors who can help you. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when filling this part.

Do you miss something that others have? What is it?
Do you have personality traits that hold you back in your field?
What are your negative work or everyday personal habits?
Does any part of your education or training need improvement?
What will the people around you see as your weaknesses?

Opportunities

Now it’s time to think about external influences. Opportunities come in different shapes and forms. Sometimes opportunities past by you without you even noticing them. So here are few things to be on the lookout for.

How you can transform your strengths into opportunities?
How you can create opportunities by enhancing your strengths?
How you can create opportunities through management or remove your weaknesses?
What changes you can make in your personal life to give yourself a chance?
How your organization can deliver opportunities for you?
Are there any significant changes/advancements in your industry that you can take advantage of?
Are there any training courses you think would make you stronger at your job?

Threats

When doing a personal SWOT analysis you need to think of yourself as a company or a product and assess yourself against others. This way it makes it easy for you to identify threats. So here’s how to identify threats.

Could any of your weaknesses lead to threats?
Does changing technology threatening your position?
What obstacles do you currently face at work?
Are any of your colleagues competing with you for projects or roles?
Is your job (or the demand for the things you do) changing?
Are any of your peers holding you back? Is there someone on the team who is making your job harder?

Examples (Business and Personal)

What would a personal SWOT assessment look like? For example, you set yourself the goal to study abroad for your Master's degree in the field of Sales (to say in the USA). Let’s conduct the SWOT analysis so we will know how to make it.

Strengths

Strong language/writing skills
Communication skills
Good with public speaking
Bachelor degree in the same field
I have been on Work and Travel in the USA two times

Weaknesses

Suffer from procrastination
Poor at dealing with conflicts
No work experience in the field I am going to study, just university experience
I do not have contacts from the university I want to study

Opportunities

I have contacts which can help me with finding a place to live.
I have been offered teaching experience there.

Threats

Life is expensive! I need to make money to make a living.
I do not get accepted for the Master's degree there.

Conclusion

As you see, like any personal development process, a SWOT analysis is not something that you want to do every day. But if you are finding a particular problem is very intractable, or that you are really struggling to know where to start with a goal, it may be a useful way of ordering your thinking and giving you a different perspective on the problem.

Once you start using your results, track your progress. Set up measurements and milestones, and keep working toward them. Step by step, you will get where you want to be, so get started now.