Performing SWOT Analysis

Performing SWOT Analysis

For any work you do, your personality contributes a lot to the success of the work.

Self- analysis, analysing the environment in which we work, and the real knowledge about the work are the major factors that contribute to the success of your work.

 SWOT analysis is an effective method for identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and to examine the opportunities and threats you have.  

In addition, SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats involved in a project or in a business venture.

 Generally, SWOT analysis is conducted for teams or groups by the team or project leader.

 The major benefits of performing SWOT analysis for an individual are:

1)It identifies the career growth of an individual.  It identifies the personal effectiveness and productivity of an individual.



2)It enables recognizing the potential of an individual which has not been identified so far.

 3)It nullifies the weaknesses of an individual and evolves a suitable action plan as a part of remedial measure.

4) It identifies the various training needs for an individual from his/her weaknesses identified during the SWOT analysis.

Thus, you can now identify that when performed for a team or group, SWOT analysis serves as a balance sheet indicating the health of the team/group. Thus, you can build your strengths and address your weaknesses by evolving appropriate action plans, leveraging your opportunities, and eliminating threats.

Personal Quality Initiative (PQI)

Personal Quality Initiative (PQI)

 After identifying your strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats that you face from the outside world, you will be wondering as to how you will tackle all these problems. Since you have identified your problem areas, it is very easy to weed out the problems. There are certain mechanisms that come handy to solve your problems. The mechanisms have more to do with your behaviour or habit, and are useful tools of self- development.

One such tool is the Personal Quality Initiative (PQI). You always want to inculcate some new habits or improve upon some of the tasks that you perform regularly. In PQI, you will identify various parameters to improve your habits.
 A parameter is defined as the framing of few good practices that you would like to acquire and some ineffective practices that you would like to cast off in your personal and professional life. You can use the PQI tool to identify meaningful parameters and to give you a simple mechanism, where problems/improvement areas are the input and well-defined parameters are the outputs. There are many techniques and approaches that can be utilized to improve personal quality.
Adhere to the following steps that should be followed as an approach to self- improvement:

1. Identify the shortcomings: Identify the defects or shortcomings that you want to improve in yourself. List the improvement areas in the following spheres of your life:
 Self: You may want to improve your behaviour and habits. For instance, you tend to get angry over extremely trivial matters. Consequently, you react in the heat of the moment and regret the reaction later.
 Family: You may not have harmonious relations with your spouse, siblings, cousins, or relatives, and you wish to improve the same.
  Health: You may have a disease or an ailment that you want to eradicate.
 Social: You may not have cordial relations with your friends or neighbours, and you wish to improve the same.

 2. Set up measurement: Select any one of the preceding areas on which you wish to work. Then, use a check sheet to quantify the problem and define it as clearly as possible. Suppose you select the problem - “I tend to get angry over trivial matters”. Now, quantify it in terms of the number of days in a week or month that you got angry.

3. Identify the possible causes: List the probable causes of the problem. You can use the  fishbone diagram that will enable you to classify the causes or likely reasons for the problem.

4. Identify the root cause: Merely providing a fix to the problem can be very dangerous because this may lead to permanent damage. Therefore, you should determine the root cause or the main reason behind the problem.

5. List the possible solutions: List the ways by which you can correct the problem. Create a detailed list. Even if you think the solution is impractical, write it down. Do not eliminate any possible solution at this stage. Some generic solutions to some problems include:
  Do breathing exercises to calm the mind and control your anger.
 Do not expect people to behave the way you want them to.

6. Overcome the problem: Choose one of the corrective actions that you can take to solve the problem. You should understand that people behave according to their nature. Therefore, you should accept others as they are and do not expect them to behave according to your whims.

 7. Prepare a backup plan: Prepare a backup plan that can be used if the master plan fails to be effective.

8. Evaluate and follow up: Use the check sheet to check the status after you start implementing a solution to a problem. Verify if the number of instances of becoming angry reduces or not. If the number has reduced, you can congratulate yourself. Also, you should continue to tread the same path and before long you will be able to get rid of your anger once and for all.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People  

Besides using the various techniques, such as SWOT analysis and PQI, ( I will describe it the next post) use the seven habits of highly effective people to improve your personality type. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1989, is a self-help book written by Stephen R.
 

Covey. Stephen Covey is an internationally respected teacher, chairman, and founder of Covey Leadership Center. Adhere to the following seven habits of highly effective people to improve your personality:

 1)Be proactive: Covey emphasizes that you can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you respond to different situations. When you are reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Being proactive, you take the responsibility for every aspect of your life. Then, you take actions to solve various problems.

2)Begin with the end in mind: Covey emphasizes on setting long-term goals. He recommends creating a vision of one’s own life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop a vision. In addition, Covey has mentioned about organizational vision statements. According to him, the organizational vision statements can be more effective, if developed and supported by all members of an organization.

3)Put first things first: Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work aimed at short term goals, at the cost of tasks that appear not to be urgent, but are, in fact, very important.

4)Think win/win: Covey describes that win/win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. It means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. Win/win is a belief in the “Third Alternative”. It’s not your way or my way, it’s a better way. In relationships and businesses, effectiveness is largely achieved through the cooperative efforts of two or more people. Win/win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person’s success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others. Win/win sees life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena.

5)Seek first to understand, then to be understood: Covey describes that communication is the most important skill in life. You spend most of your life communicating. Consider that you have spent years learning how to read and write and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training or education have you had that enables you to listen so that you really and deeply understand another human being from that individuals’ own frame of reference? In addition, Covey mentions that giving out advice without understanding a person and their situation might result in rejection of that advice.

 6)Synergize: Covey describes that synergy is the essence of principle-centered leadership. It catalyses, unifies, and unleashes the greatest power within people. It describes the way of working in teams, applies effective problem solving, applies collaborative decision making, values differences, builds on divergent strengths, leverages creative collaboration, and embraces and leverages innovation.

7)Sharpen the saw: Covey describes that this habit makes all the other habits possible. It is preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have, that is, “You”. It focuses on balanced self-satisfaction. It is the renewal of the four dimension of your nature, physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional. Without this discipline, the body becomes weak, the mind becomes mechanical, the emotions become raw, the spirit becomes insensitive, and the person becomes selfish.
   

These seven habits are the habits of effectiveness. Because they are based on principles, they bring the maximum long-term beneficial results possible. They become the basis of a person’s character, creating an empowering center of correct maps from which an individual can effectively solve problems, maximize opportunities, and continually learn and integrate other principles in an upward spiral of growth. The seven habits of highly effective people provide a holistic, integrated approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Taken together, these seven habits cultivate personal character, which is the foundation of effectiveness. 

Personality Traits

Introducing Personality  

One of the most important factors determining your happiness and success in life is your personality. Your personality is a combination of characteristics that makes you what you are. Understanding the qualities of personality is one of the important factors in life. To have a successful career in life, to lead a healthy and disease free life, and to guide your children wisely to choose an appropriate career are some of the instances where personality plays an important role. Therefore, in order to have a successful life and career, you need to understand your personality, various personality types, and personality traits. This information will help you develop your personality and build a sound career for yourself.
 Personalities are complex in nature because the same person may react differently in different situations. Though researchers have classified different personality traits, it is not easy to identify anybody with a particular personality trait. Human beings are born with certain genetically inherent personality traits. He/she inherits these characteristics from his/her forefathers, both paternal as well as maternal. While some of these characteristics are dominant, others are dormant. However, this makes classification of personalities difficult.
 A person can be a combination of characteristics, thereby making it difficult to categorize him/her in any particular personality type. Despite the difficulties, researchers have analysed and categorized personality traits. After numerous studies, they have classified personalities according to their dominant characteristics.


Defining Personality What do you mean by personality? Is it only the external appearance of a person or something more? What defines a personality?
A famous psychologist, Raymond Cattell, expresses personality as something that enables us to predict a person’s behavior in a given situation. Accordingly, an individual’s personality includes physical features, intelligence, and emotional and social qualities. The sum total of these decides the behaviour of a person to a particular stimulus under a given set of circumstances. The term, personality, can be looked at in two ways.
The first view stands for the effect the person has on those with whom he interacts and how others perceive the person.
 

The other views look at personality in terms of attributes possessed by a person that can be described objectively. Accordingly, a personality can be described as honest, serious, or humorous.  Therefore, the term personality has many definitions and there is room for differences in scope as well as understanding of the definition. The various definitions take into account the inner characteristics of an individual, such as level of motivation, perceptions, feelings, reactions, attitudes, values, and prejudices, which form the basis of a person’s behaviour. In other words, rather than simply assessing an individual’s external behaviour and comparing it with other members in his/her group, personality reflects the real person and what sets him/her apart from other individuals.

Types of Personality

 After extensive research, behavioural scientists have identified a variety of personalities. An individual’s personality obviously is not constant under different circumstances. Researchers broadly classify personality types based on general behaviour patterns, under the following popular heads:

Perfectionists:
Perfectionists look for perfection in whatever they do. They are disciplined, principled, and idealistic. They work hard to live up to their own high targets and expect others to follow. They are highly responsible and dedicated to their work and make excellent employees. However, they are easily disappointed because they set high goals for themselves and on failing to meet these goals they become tense, anxious, and dejected.

Helpers: Helpers are concerned about others and sensitive to others’ needs. They are easy to get along and share your problems with. They are sensitive to others’ feelings, fun loving, and usually have a good sense of humour. However, they may have a low self-esteem and tend to overdo things for others.

Achievers: Achievers love nothing better than achieving their goal. Therefore, they are generally energetic, self-assured, and goal-oriented. They appreciate honest but non-judgmental feedback. They like a peaceful and harmonious environment. They are also optimistic, friendly, and provide well for their family. However, they cannot tolerate inefficiency and may lose their temper when they come across inefficient individuals.

Romantics: Romantics are warm and sensitive people and love to be complimented. They are creative, intuitive, and have a good sense of humour. They like to maintain friendly relations with everyone and do not like to think ill of others. They trust others easily and are disillusioned if that trust is broken. Romantics tend to feel emptiness and despair when they are misunderstood, which hurts and frustrates them.

 Observers: Observers are usually introverts, curious, and analytical. They like to be left alone and consequently dislike any intrusion on their privacy. One of their greatest qualities is that they remain calm even during a crisis. With their insight, keen observation, and analytical skills they are often able to predict correct outcomes even in complex situations. They may get overly disturbed when such anticipated outcomes do not result.

Questioners: Questioners are responsible, trustworthy, and loyal. They value their family and friends a great deal. Depending on the situation, they can be either shy and supportive or outspoken and assertive. Questioners often face difficulties when asked to cope with differing pressures. In addition to having a fear of failure, they are usually quite self-critical if they do not live up to their own expectations.

 Adventurers: Adventurers like to live an interesting and thrilling life. They are fun-loving people who are often gregarious. They love to party and entertain. They are optimistic and are not easily troubled. They love to take risks and to tackle problems head-on.

  Asserters: Asserters are direct, straightforward, and confident people, who are known for their assertive behaviour. They prefer to be independent and self- reliant. They also like to take up challenges directly. Asserters are courageous, generally honest, and protective of those around them. However, they lack tact.

Peacemakers: Peacemakers are cordial and peace-loving people. They dislike confrontations and like to live in a harmonious environment. When given sufficient time to complete their work and allowed to work at their own pace, they prove to be efficient. Since they are very caring and concerned about others, they can be very good mediators and facilitators. However, they can be hyper sensitive to criticism.

Personality Traits

The word trait refers to an individual’s consistent pattern of behaviour that distinguishes him/her from others. Though every individual has a mixture of attributes, the dominant attribute as defined in degree and over a period of time refers to his/her particular personality trait. Introversion, intelligence, anxiety, aggressiveness, prejudice, musical aptitude, aptitude, sensitivity, seriousness, and friendliness are all examples of personality traits. The traits that people possess and the degree to which they possess them are part of their personality.

Developmental View of Personality

 In the developmental view, the decisive role of childhood in shaping the basic character structure of the person is emphasized. Freud, an early theorist, observed that the personality development is governed by the need for satisfying wants through transactions with the external world. This external world also poses danger and insecurity to the individuals due to which the individual is filled with fear and anxiety.
Anxiety warns a person of impending danger and motivates him/her to do something about it. When anxiety cannot be coped with rationale methods, an individual has to fall back on defence mechanisms. When under pressure because of extreme anxiety, you are sometimes forced to resort to mental strategies called defence mechanisms to relieve the pressure. It is important to note that the mechanisms reduce mental anxiety.

 Defence mechanisms are common and represent self-deception. They prevent the individual from learning more effective and rational ways of overcoming frustrations.

Using Defense Mechanisms

 The salient features of the various defence mechanisms are:
  Denial: In the denial form, the individual rejects an intolerable reality by denying its existence. Denial is one of the most primitive of the defence mechanisms.
 

 Displacement: In the displacement form, unacceptable feelings or reactions about a person or a situation are transferred from their true target to another against which these feelings or reactions can more safely be vented.

Repression: In the repression form, dangerous or embarrassing thoughts and events are banned from memory. This prevents the arousal of anxiety. Repression is the most basic form of defence mechanism.

 Sublimation: In the sublimation form, unpleasant or hostile reactions that are provoked are not expressed but the energy generated is diverted into other outlets that are socially acceptable.

Compensation: In the compensation form, an individual who perceives certain deficiencies or shortcomings tries to make up or compensate for these in some other way.

Rationalization: In the rationalization form, feelings or actions that are unpleasant to the recipient are projected but are attempted to be justified by the initiator on the grounds that these are in the recipient’s best interests.

Projection: In the projection form, moral anxiety is converted into an objective fear. The individual attempts to generalize his/her own behaviour through the thought that others should also exhibit similar behaviour.

 Reaction Formation: In the reaction form, unacceptable feelings towards persons or situations are replaced with their exact opposites. For example, a person hostile towards another, would not only deny the presence of hostile feeling, but would in fact be demonstrably affectionate or considerate towards that person.


Importance of Personality Traits When defined broadly, personality is what makes a person. The secret of life is to know yourself and what you want in life. You need to identify your traits as it is going to lay the foundation for your career. Remaining focused on one’s target has a great bearing in defining a person’s character. When applying for a job, being focused means that you have to be clear that the job you are applying for is right for you.  It does not matter if you are a little unclear on your long-range goals. This is because it is quite possible to lose track and become unfocused if too much long term planning is done initially. Therefore, it is often unrealistic to think that you can perfectly plan out your career path.  Before attempting to interact with your prospective employers, you should have a clear understanding on the kind of job suitable for you. Therefore, while contacting prospective employers through letters, phone calls, or face-to-face interview, you need to convey to your employer that you have a clear focus on your career and that you have arrived at that focus carefully and thoughtfully. How can you acquire a focus on your career? For this you need to introspect and analyse your basic traits. This focus on your traits enables you to identify the kind of environment you may thrive in.  
   

The three questions that you might ask yourself to know your interest areas and skills are:
 What do I like?  
What are my strengths?
  What do I care about?
 While talking about your interests, you need to keep in mind the following points:  What kind of areas are you really interested in?
 What kind of activities you enjoy doing?
 What are your favourite hobbies, sports, academic subjects, and work activities?

Now, you can decide which interests need to be a part of your work life. Similarly for identifying your skills, consider the following three main areas:  Learned skills  Innate skills  Personality skills (such as hard-working, detail-oriented, or creative)
Decide which of the preceding skills you enjoy using. This is an important factor in defining a career focus, especially critical in obtaining a job. In addition to assessing your interests, strengths, values, and personality, style plays an important role in shaping your personality. All of you are aspiring for a bright career in your lives. But you often forget that there are certain inherent factors that decide the nature of your work. Most of you have qualities that are suitable for any job or career. Hence, based on your interest in selecting a career and developing the necessary personality traits, you can be sure of getting what you aspire.

Improve Your Speaking skills...!!

1

Find native English speakers. In certain areas it's the hardest thing to do, but it's the best use of your time. Talking to actual native speakers is the most effective way to improve your English skills, speaking or otherwise. So whether you have to Skype them, call them, or beg them to speak to you, do so. Your progress will be faster this way than any other.

• Even if they're just tourists, invite them to dinner! They get a meal, you get an English lesson. Advertise on Craigslist. Take a class and get buddy-buddy with your teacher. Offer a language exchange. They're hiding out there somewhere!

2

Listen to the music of English. No, not English music, the music of English -- its lilt, its prosody, the sing-songy-ness of it. The intonation. Even if you speak perfect English technically, if you speak it like a robot you're not speaking it the way it's meant to be spoken.

• Watch people. Watch how their mouths form the words. Watch how emotion is communicated. Watch where the emphasis goes on certain sentences and how that provides context. Apart from just deciphering their words, take notice of the humor, the feeling, and the formality they employ.

3

Slow down. Above all, if you want to be understood, slow down. The more clearly you speak, the better chance your listener has of understanding you. It's tempting to get nervous and want to speed up to get it all over with, but you can't do that! Clarity is key -- for some native English speakers, too!

• They will be patient with you -- don't worry! You just gotta be patient with yourself. It's much less frustrating to speak to someone who you understand even though they're speaking slowly than to speak to someone you don't understand at all. Speaking quickly isn't impressive if your tongue gets all jumbly.

4

Record yourself. Though we hear ourselves all the time, we really don't know quite what we sound like. So record yourself! What are the weak and strong points you hear in your speech? And then you can concentrate on what you need to work on.

• A great idea is to get a book on tape, record yourself reading an excerpt from it (or mimicking the narrator), and comparing yourself to the recording. That way you can do it over and over until you get it right!
• When that's a bit too much effort, just read your books aloud. You'll score points on your reading skills and your speaking skills. Half the battle is just getting comfortable with the words!

5

Take different style classes. Yes, one class is good. In fact, one class is even great. But if you can take more than one class -- of differing styles -- that's even better. A group class can be cheap, fun, and work on all your skills, but adding a one-on-one class, too? You'll get that individualized attention to your speech you've been craving. That's a double dose of improvement.

• There are specialized classes you can take, too. Accent reduction classes, business English classes, tourism classes, heck, sometimes even food classes. If you see something that interests you (let's face it, sometimes grammar doesn't cut it), go for it! You may learn more than you think.

6

Speak E

nglish at home. This is the biggest, easiest mistake to make. You go about your day, you're on the job working partly in English, you go to your English class, and then you go home and revert back to your native tongue. While you may be making slow improvements, you'll never get past that dreaded lingual plateau. Make a point to speak it at home, too. Have only English at the dinner table. Stick to English TV at home. Make it as 24/7 as possible.

• Heck, talk to yourself in English. Narrate your actions. While you're washing the dishes, say what you're doing, thinking, or feeling. It sounds a little silly (if you get caught!), but it keeps your brain thinking in English before your first language, which is huge. Once you can do that, the rest is just keeping it up.

7

Create opportunities. It's easy to look at your situation and think that you'll never be exposed to English naturally as much as you would like. Going abroad is expensive, you don't know any foreigners, etc. That's the lazy way of looking at it! English speakers are everywhere; sometimes they just have to be found and coaxed out of hiding. You have to come to them.

• Heck, call up an English hotline. Call up Nike and ask about their sneakers. Call a phone company and make small talk about phone plans. Start a blog. Set your OS to English. Play WoW. Get into English chat rooms. There are ALWAYS opportunities to be had.