Map your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, then act on them.
Length: 1:38
Voice: Ralph Varcoe
Listen
An account is needed to use a tool or add a track to your library.
The words to read
A Personal SWOT turns the business grid inward. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. What is strong? What is not? What is out there to take, and what is coming at you?
One rule makes this useful rather than generic. Ground every item in something you have actually seen or heard in the last few weeks. Not 'a good communicator'. Something someone said, something that went well, something that went badly. A SWOT filled with self-image is a wasted 20 minutes.
SWOT came out of Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, usually credited to Albert Humphrey. The two-by-two grid everyone recognises was added later, by Heinz Weihrich in 1982, and he added something else people forget: the crossings.
That is the step at the end here. Cross a strength with an opportunity, and you get something to go after this month. Cross a weakness with a threat, and you get the thing to shore up before it catches you out. Four boxes on their own are a description. The crossings turn those into actions.
Do it before an appraisal or a pitch or a job move, or any time you're arguing with yourself about whether you're ready.
Honesty beats flattery. The weaknesses box is where the work is, and no one else is reading it, so it is down to you.