Jason Bateman said something I found surprisingly deep in an interview with Entertainment Weekly entitled Jason Bateman: Official Boy of Summer 2011 (though perhaps that’s an unfair statement toward JB and EW). Nevertheless, it stuck with me. What did he say? “You don’t really appreciate things until
you are humbled by them.”
I have had the good fortune to be humbled by the career that
I was taking for granted. My previous
role ended as part of a larger workforce reduction. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't feel this was good fortune at the time. And maybe, just maybe, I made a few off color remarks! Nevertheless, I did learn a great deal from the experience. Ultimately, I understood that it was not the luck of the
draw or external factors that put me on that list, but my behaviors.
The good news is that my behaviors are the one thing I can control.
The good news for you is that a SWOT just might help you understand your behaviors better and how they can influence your career path. Many
development conversations focus on strengths and weaknesses. A really solid plan will flesh out
opportunities. Far fewer focus in on threats. The
SWOT provides a tool to help you examine all these factors.
I just recently learned the SWOT exercise in a learning and
immersion program at Jarden Corporation on work styles and relationships. Jarvis Cooper of EOC (Envision Organizational
Consulting) introduced the rather simple, but extremely valuable concept of a
SWOT for self. It has quickly become a key part of my planning process.
In your process, you have now decided where you
want to go by using the Career Path Worksheet.
Now you have to understand what can take you there, what can help
accelerate the journey, what can set you back and what can take you completely
off course.
The questions are basic and should all focus on leadership
values and competencies:
Strengths: what do you do well? how do you use these to move
forward and to a lesser extent offset weaknesses?
Weaknesses: what should you work on improving? what can you put in place to lessen their impact?
Opportunities: what do you have the potential to grow into strengths with a little time and effort?
Threats: what are the potential show stoppers? are these relevant within your organizational context?
Weaknesses: what should you work on improving? what can you put in place to lessen their impact?
Opportunities: what do you have the potential to grow into strengths with a little time and effort?
Threats: what are the potential show stoppers? are these relevant within your organizational context?
Threats can be heavily influenced by external constituencies
like your peers, a boss or the organization.
What you might see as a strength in one situation or context can create
a threat in another. The discipline lies
in asking hard questions about yourself that are designed to peel back the
layers of the onion. In so doing, you
begin to see which behaviors can evolve from weakness to worse. Perhaps more interestingly, you might
identify behaviors that you never guessed would cause a problem.
In my case, a couple of characteristics may have put me on
the short list when it came time for the workforce reduction:
Personal Learning. I
actively coached my team (nominated coach of the year twice during my tenure). However, I did not take the time to engage my
boss or my mentor in developing myself. In
particular, I did not truly understand the organization and the way I needed to
operate to be successful beyond the numbers.
Over reliance on a single advocate: or, in this case, two advocates. One left the organization, and another moved
overseas. The fluidity and success I
experienced with their help evaporated, and it did so without me realizing it. Success never comes from a single point, and
the work behind the scenes that advocates accomplish on your behalf can be
particularly unsung.
Check out the slideshare tab to see the template filled out.
In the end, I appreciate the learning. With the help of a SWOT, I am trying to
examine all sides of my experience: the
good, the not so good, the close to good and the disastrous. I have been humbled by it all and am a better
manager for it.
Jason Bateman, you are now one of my heroes. Love the quote, and horrible bosses!
How about you?