Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…

woman-mirrorWhen’s the last time you looked in the mirror?  I don’t mean that last minute look in the mirror for something green between our teeth after a lunch meeting.  Actually, I’m asking figuratively, about your business and your personal leadership capabilities.  In other words, have you taken stock recently of your:

  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • Opportunities
  • Threats?

Or, in acronym business vernacular, have you conducted a SWOT analysis lately?

A SWOT analysis offers you both the positives (Strengths and Opportunities) and the challenges (Weaknesses and Threats) facing your business, as well as your leadership competencies.  Like looking in the mirror, sometimes the dark circles under our eyes tell us that we need more sleep.  But, better to know before you nod off in that very important meeting a couple days later.

A SWOT analysis is simple and fast to complete.  The value of doing one for your business and one for your personal leadership capabilities is that you can identify themes between the two.  So, for instance, if one of your business strengths is “Client satisfaction” and you’ve indicated that one of your leadership strengths is “Interpersonal skills and/or emotional intelligence,” you can connect the dots and work to leverage those strengths wherever possible.

At the same time, if one of your leadership weaknesses is “Operational execution,” you may notice a connection to a weakness in your business, like “Slow to scale.”  While some of these connections are obvious, some may be welcome “ah-ha’s!”

It can be challenging to be completely objective when doing a SWOT analysis.  Like looking in the mirror, we are sometimes our worst enemy.  So, it may be useful to get a business comrade you trust to provide some objective feedback.

Like looking in the mirror, a SWOT analysis is designed to help you see yourself and your business a little more clearly.

Download the SWOT Analysis tool here and try it out!

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