Personal SWOT Analysis: A Self-Assessment for Professional Growth

This assignment presents a personal SWOT analysis, a strategic planning method used to evaluate an individual's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The analysis begins by identifying the author's strengths, including innovation, creativity, and an open mind, and then explores weaknesses such as social skills and over-commitment. The author assesses external threats, like competition and educational challenges, and then identifies opportunities, many of which are self-created, such as networking. The assignment also provides examples of stressful work situations, triggers for emotional stress, and strategies for managing these emotions, including anticipating difficult behavior and maintaining a positive outlook. The author provides practical advice on handling workplace issues and maintaining a professional demeanor, including avoiding bragging about salary increases and remembering that challenges are temporary. The analysis concludes by emphasizing the importance of emotional management and a focus on long-term goals.

Personal SWOT Analysis
Strengths
My personal strengths generally involve my ability to be innovative and creative, as well
as keeping an open mind. These three parts enable me to be much more efficient and effective in
my ways compared to those of my peers as well as others in my general environment (Berry,
2012). Being open to new ideas is an extremely good way to be adaptive to new situations.
Innovation and creativity are tools that can help me in advancing within my career. My
innovation in particular allows me to stand out in my environment because it is a knowledge-
intensive quality, which exemplifies my education and abilities.
Having good, quality resources can be a very helpful key to success. My personal
resources don't run particularly high in quantity, but I believe high quality resources are more
important. My number one most important and main personal resource that I have is my
education and experience. My ability to advance and apply my education and knowledge in the
field is a key to my personal success.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses are inevitable when it dealing in a competitive environment. Weaknesses in
an organization can be defined as “the drawbacks that hinder an organization in executing
strategies in pursuit of its mission”. This definition stays true when dealing with individuals.
Whatever can hold back someone from being competitive with others can be a weakness.
Weaknesses are also any positive skills that your competitors may have but you do not which
helps them but may not necessarily harm you. My weaknesses are mainly my social skills and
my over-commitment to my ways. I am quite open-minded, however when I follow something I

believe to be best and gain momentum, I am unable to change direction and I become fixated on
my goal.
Over-commitment may not seem like an obvious weakness; however it can create
hindrances if a mistake is made. This harms me because, instead of being able to stop myself
when I realize I might be going down the wrong path, I continue on that path until I run into a
dead end.
Improving upon my weaknesses is only one way to deal with them. Sometimes
overcoming or improving upon weaknesses is impossible and the only choice is to avoid them
overall. I am not much good at being a leader, and I don't think it's something that I can improve
upon very easily; therefore avoidance of these situations would be best for me (Berry, 2012). I
think that my peers and others around me in my life view my main weakness as my leadership
skills as well. However, I believe that I still compete at an equal level with my peers.
Threats
Threats can be viewed as anything that may stand in the way of accomplishing one's
goals, including factors that negatively affect your ability to compete with others. Threats come
in many different forms and various levels of severity. Some of the most common threats that
many people share include: opposing competition, internal struggles, and external obstacles in
their field.
I face many obstacles on my path to success in my future career. The largest two threats
for me are probably competition with others seeking the same success in the same field, as well
as the obstacle of finishing up my education and doing well in the process. I don't feel that
advancing and changing technology is much of a threat to my success.

Opportunities
Opportunities are “situations that present possibilities for exceeding existing goals”.
Opportunities can present themselves in many different ways. Sometimes it can be by losing one
resource you gain an opportunity to replace that resource with an even better resource. The other
main most common type of opportunity is one that you yourself create. Trends in opportunities
may be noticeable in some situations on a macro level, including education and social interaction
with which anyone can relate. Some opportunities can also be created through the elimination of
weaknesses. My leadership weakness for example, If I were to eliminate that somehow, it would
open a whole brand new area of my career that I could explore.
On my search for success in my career path there are many opportunities that I have available to
me. Most of the opportunities are ones that I must create myself.
Other opportunities can be found in social opportunities to make connections, or generally any
chance to gain benefit from a situation.
2. There were times in work when I felt stressed out. Firstly it was with a deadline. I took the
work home and thought I would upload it via my personal computer. However, I found that it
was not working properly. I got stressed and had to rush to a friend’s place to get it done. Next
was when I took a day off, was away from office and was called for a meeting. My wife was
unwell but I had to attend the meeting. I thought of attending it via Skype but it was not possible
hence had to drive all the way to office which is over 100 kilometers to attend it. Thirdly, I was
once accused of cheating and that I was rewarding someone else for a work which was done by a

different person. I had to pull out the data from computer and show it to the management that I
was in the right side of it.
3. The two triggers for work related emotional stress can be demoralizing talks from bosses or
rude behaviour from the management. To control such emotional states one has to assume before
hand that such behaviour is expected. If one is already expecting that he would get a thrashing
for all the wrong he has done then can take it in his stride and focus on the work at hand.
4. Suppose, somebody has been given a hike, he should be content and not go bragging about the
percentage of appraisal he has got. This might affect other employees who have had to deal with
not much rise in their salaries.
5. To reduce emotional stress in work one can always work on their emotional side and take the
rudeness in their stride. One must know that there will always be better days in the distant future.

References
Berry, T. (2012). How to perform a SWOT analysis. Address: http://articles. mplans. com/how-
to-perform-a-swot-analysis/. Accessed, 2.