Combining a commonly used business tool—SWOT—with knowledge gained from positive psychology studies on signature strengths can help individuals effectively plan for personal growth and development.
Businesses use SWOT for long term planning and setting strategy. Individuals can also benefit from a SWOT analysis, combining traditional SWOT analysis with recent information on strengths from positive psychology research studies.
What is SWOT?
SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The concept of a SWOT analysis in the traditional business sense is to identify an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, building on strengths to overcome weaknesses and threats while taking advantage of opportunities.
This planning and analysis effort results in strategies and tactics to move the business forward. An individual can utilize the SWOT tool in a similar way to build a personal growth and development plan.
The Fallacy of Focus on Personal Weaknesses
Individuals and corporations have often planned for the future by focusing on negative characteristics. Corporations' performance management, salary administration, and career advancement systems traditionally tend to place heavy weight on employee weaknesses, based on the idea that individual performance can best be enhanced by improving areas of personal weakness. Psychology studies now indicate that this approach is counter-productive.
For many years, psychologists focused research on the negative side of mental health, searching for the causes and solutions to mental illness. In recent years, a new area of study — termed positive psychology — has focused research on the factors that contribute to human well-being by studying the characteristics and behaviors of successful, relatively happy people. This research has identified the importance of signature strengths and the role strengths can play in personal growth.
What are Signature Strengths?
Positive psychology research studies have identified the important contribution of one's core or signature strengths to success in life and personal happiness. This research indicates that individuals as well as organizations are best served by focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. The core strengths an individual possesses are those special and unique abilities that underlay a person's areas of expertise and excellence.
Psychologists term these signature strengths and have devised free and easily available self-assessments enabling a person to identify their own signature strengths.
Personal Growth with Signature Strengths
Individuals can utilize the SWOT analysis tool as the basis for a personal growth plan and a road map for personal development. Whereas a traditional negative focus might suggest building personal growth planning on weaknesses and threats, current research study findings would indicate one should begin with a clear understanding of core or signature strengths.
Completing the VIA signature strength questionnaire identifies a person's top five or six strengths. These are termed signature strengths. As research studies link use of one's signature strengths to high performance, creativity, and personal happiness, signature strengths can be used as the basis or foundation for further personal growth planning.
Personal Weaknesses
What about personal weaknesses? The traditional approach has been to work to improve weaknesses. Current thinking is that time and energy spent on improving a weakness is less productive than utilizing that time with one's strengths.
It is important, though, to understand one's weaknesses. Again, the VIA Questionnaire comes into play here. With the top five or six strengths identified as signature strengths, the bottom five or six can be viewed as personal weaknesses.
Rather than working to improve weaknesses, if at all possible one should attempt to find ways to minimize the use of personal weaknesses.
Dealing with Threats and Opportunities
Again building on personal strengths, one might consider the threats and opportunities landscape from a strength standpoint. Threats to personal growth might be any aspect of one's life that inhibits personal growth and development.
In considering alternatives for removing or minimizing threats, focus on options that utilize signature strengths, as these are the most effective tools one possesses. Similarly, personal growth opportunities can be considered relative to how best one might build on strengths to take advantage of these opportunities.
The SWOT Tool for Personal Growth
Individuals can utilize the SWOT tool to build a personal growth and development plan based on strengths. By first identifying personal strengths, one can then plan to utilize strengths in overcoming personal weaknesses and threats to growth while taking advantage of opportunities.
Sources:
Average to A+, CAPP Press, Conventry, England, 2008.
"Changing What's Wrong to What's Strong," Positive Psychology Daily News online, April 26, 2010.
Jerry Lopper - IPPA member, business and engineering degrees. Jerry's passion for personal development shows in 5 books, hundreds of articles & ...
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