Paper Example: My SWOT Analysis & Personal Development Plan

Introduction

A SWOT analysis is an important tool used in identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in any given profession. It helps companies and individual identify the area where they need to improve to improve themselves. In this paper, I will conduct a SWOT analysis for myself, and then develop a personal development plan where I will identify the various actions which I can implement to improve my weaknesses.

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Strengths

To begin with, my greatest strengths is great communication skills. This can be attributed to the fact that I am always in constant interaction with my patients. For me to understand them and their problem, I have to create a good rapport with them and make them feel comfortable. Often, this helps me in identifying the most important needs of my patients and consequently offering them the best services.

Additionally, great communication skills help me in taking directives from my superiors and executing them as expected. This ensures that the workplace is not in chaos and that things are being done smoothly.

My second and most dominant skill is showing compassion and empathy to my patients and co-workers when they most need it. Often, due to illnesses or work pressures, my patients and co-workers may find themselves in a difficult situation. Such situations are what drives me to be there for them and offer a helping hand. Occasionally, some of my patients may display strong emotions such as depression, anxiety, resentment, and or even fear.

Weaknesses

On the other hand, I happen to have several weaknesses that can be rectified with time. One of my most common weakness is focusing on one particular activity so much that I end up losing track of time and neglecting other duties. I take this to be one of my strongest weakness because, in as much as I am putting all my effort in one activity, others tend to get compromised.

Secondly, I am not highly flexible and thus may have a problem in adjusting to rapid changes. I often tend to prefer having a solid timetable where all my schedules and activities for the day are laid out, including the time and location where the activities shall take place. This weakness has made it hard for me to attend to unforeseen issues which keep popping out, especially in my line of work.

Having identified my strengths and weaknesses, it is important that I develop a personal development plan. Personal development planning is the process of developing an action plan based on values, weaknesses, reflection, and goal setting to develop oneself. It may be education, career, or relationship based and is based on improving one's self.

Personal development planning

The first stage in developing a personal development plan is conducting a personal analysis where you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Having already conducted the personal analysis, I will set goals for myself. The main goal is to become more flexible in the future to accommodate important and unforeseen issues, while the second goal is to learn how to become more time cautious such that any other activities I have are not compromised while working. The next step is to identify personal objectives; here, I hope to correct my weaknesses as soon as I can to improve my overall work and personal efficiency. After that, I may begin personal training, where I test how well I may be able to spend only allocated time on a particular activity. Additionally, I seek a professional trainer who is capable of helping me overcome my weaknesses.

According to the text above, the weaknesses mentioned could hinder me from becoming a great leader. However, if properly worked upon, the weaknesses could be turned into strengths which could enhance my leadership skills. According to the various leadership theories developed up to date, I fell that the contingency theory best suits my situation. It explains that there is not a particular way of leadership and that every leadership style is often based on the current situation. Owing to this, and having developed a personal development plan, I believe that once my weaknesses have been resolved, I will be able to offer much more as a leader.

The transactional theory could also strongly apply to my case (Bass, & Bass, 2009). The theory is based on relations between the leader and his/her followers together with their ability to create mutual trust between them and their followers. The main aim of transformational theory is that the leader can present an inspirational nature as well as charismatic personalities. Usually, in this type of theory, it is important that rules are somewhat flexible and generally guided by the norms of the group (Stogdill, 1974).

In effect, several threats may be linked to my profession as a nurse if I do not improve on my weaknesses. Firstly, I may end up losing clients who may show up as an emergency, due to my inability to be flexible to such situations. This could cost me a lot of money as well as a good reputation. Secondly, if not taken care of, my patient's conditions could get worse if I focused too much on one activity and neglected another. Such weaknesses could also affect any opportunity I may have as a leader by branding me as an incompetent nurse.

References

Bass, B. M., & Bass, R. (2009). The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications. Simon and Schuster.

Stogdill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of leadership: A survey of theory and research. Free Press.