Business SWOT Personal SWOT

Personal SWOT Analysis

Discover new opportunities.
Manage and eliminate threats.

SWOT Analysis is a powerful technique for identifying Strengths and Weaknesses, and for examining the Opportunities and Threats you face.

Used in a personal context, it helps you develop your career in a way that takes best advantage of your talents, abilities and opportunities.

What makes SWOT particularly powerful is that with a little thought, it can help you uncover opportunities that you are well placed to take advantage of. And by understanding your weaknesses, you can manage and eliminate threats that would otherwise catch you unawares.

How to use the tool:

To carry out a SWOT Analysis, print out our free worksheet, and write down answers to the following questions:

Strengths:

• What advantages (for example, skills, education or connections) do you have that others don't have?
• What do you do better than anyone else?
• What personal resources do you have access to?
• What do other people (and your boss in particular) see as your strengths?

Consider this from your own perspective, and from the point of view of the people around you. And don't be modest, be as objective as you can. If you are having any difficulty with this, try writing down a list of your characteristics. Some of these will hopefully be strengths!

In looking at your strengths, think about them in relation to the people around you - for example, if you're a great mathematician and the people around you are great at math, then this is not likely to be a strength in your current role, it is likely to be a necessity.

Weaknesses:

• What could you improve?
• What should you avoid?
• What things are the people around you likely to see as weaknesses?

Again, consider this from a personal and external basis: Do other people perceive weaknesses that you do not see? Do co-workers consistently out-perform you in key areas? It is best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as soon as possible.

Opportunities:

• Where are the good opportunities facing you?
• What are the interesting trends you are aware of?

Useful opportunities can come from such things as:

• Changes in technology, markets and your company on both a broad and narrow scale;
• Changes in government policy related to your field;
• Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, etc.; or
• Local Events

A useful approach to looking at opportunities is also to look at your strengths and ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities.

Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could open up opportunities by eliminating them.

Threats:

• What obstacles do you face?
• What are the people around you doing?
• Is your job (or the demand for the things you do) changing?
• Is changing technology threatening your position?
• Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten you?

Carrying out this analysis will often be illuminating - both in terms of pointing out what needs to be done, and in putting problems into perspective.

Key points:

A SWOT matrix is a framework for analyzing your strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats you face. This helps you to focus on your strengths, minimize weaknesses, and take the greatest possible advantage of opportunities available.

This is just one of Mind Tools’ strategy tools (strategy is the art of taking best advantage of future opportunities.)

Where to go from here:

• If you are using SWOT Analysis to think about your own life and career, then click here to look at our Design Your Life program. This helps you think through the things that are important to you, and set the compelling personal goals that motivate you towards success.
  
  
• If you liked this technique and want to learn more skills like this, consider joining our community, the Career Excellence Club, which teaches more than 270 career and personal development skills. Click here to take the free tour of the club.

 

In our next technique we look at a useful technique for testing your strategy: Cash Flow Forecasting. To read this, click "Next article" below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath.

Where to go from here:		Community		Newsletter
		Download and Print		Next Article

New Articles (Not included in the Mind Tools E-book.)
* Shows articles available in full only to Career Excellence Club Premium members

Porter's Diamond - Shaping strategy to reflect national strengths and weaknesses*
Using the TOWS Matrix - Developing strategic options
Scenario Analysis - Exploring different futures*
The Boston Matrix - Focusing effort to get the greatest returns
The Ansoff Matrix - Understanding the different risks of different options
Porter's Generic Strategies- Choosing your route to competitive advantage
Bowman's Strategy Clock - Making sense of eight competitive positions*
Core Competence Analysis - Get ahead. Stay ahead.
Congruence Model - Aligning the drivers of high performance*
Critical Success Factors (CSFs)- Identifying the things that really matter for success
Benchmarking - Comparing your performance with the best*
Leverage - Achieve much more with the same effort

A full list of Mind Tools articles is available here.

return to top

Learn to manage the stress in your life with our sister site, stress.mindtools.com.

Mind Tools Store: Mind Tools Ebook, Make Time for Success
 Stress Management Masterclass, How to Lead, Design Your Life
 Relaxation MP3s

© Mind Tools Ltd, 1995-2008, All Rights Reserved

For requests to reprint or reproduce material from this site, please contact our Permissions Center.

Store · Search · Newsletter · Downloads · Advertisers · Affiliates

MindTools.com is one of the Internet's most-visited career skills resources.
Click here to see analysis.