The Leadership Year: Month One
2021 has been another challenging year for business and individuals alike, and I know many people are keen to start 2022 with a renewed energy and optimism for the year ahead.
And that’s why VIA is launching “The Leadership Year” – a series of monthly posts combining content and practical actions, which you can follow to boost your leadership abilities in manageable steps. We’ll share models, theories and real-life experiences all designed to give you a framework to follow to develop at a manageable pace, that will make 2022 a year of continuous improvement in your leadership ability.
New Year’s is typically a time of great reflection and setting goals for the year ahead, but they often fall flat. Not many people finish the year having achieved the resolutions they set out to on 1st January. So that’s why we’re starting The Leadership Year with some good groundwork and self-analysis.
SWOT is a common tool; most people will have come across it in their career. It’s a simple exercise where you map out your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It’s my belief though that it’s the victim of its own success. Simply creating a SWOT is not enough to make meaningful change, and often people see it as yet another tick box exercise for an annual review. I see SWOTs as a personal exercise and something anyone can do to track their own progress and take control of their development.
That’s why in month 1 creating a SWOT is the best foundation for The Leadership Year. We’ll start with Strengths. Some people can reel off their strengths quite naturally, whereas others have an in-built fear of coming across as big-headed and tend to under-play their strengths quite drastically. Some even suggest that women do this more than men (men are much more likely to apply for jobs they are under-qualified for). But if we are not aware of our own strengths then we cannot expect others to identify them for us either. Taking some time to stop and consider where you are at your best is a vital exercise in self-awareness. What makes you different to your peers? And once you’ve identified this can you verbalise that in these areas you are better than most others? As an absolute minimum you should be able to list 3 strengths. Most people feel a bit ‘icky’ explaining why they are good at something to others, but as a reflective exercise consider how you would justify each of the strengths you have listed even if just to yourself. It will make your sense of self even stronger.
Then there’s Weaknesses. If you struggled with Strengths, then you may find these flow in abundance! But check yourself. In the same way it is good to justify your strengths we also need to ensure we are not being too hard on ourselves with our weaknesses. Are we truly bad at timekeeping, or do we magnify a handful of incidences for example? Most companies and even educational systems encourage us to identify weaknesses and focus on improving them – that makes sense of course, but I actually advocate beginning with an acceptance of weaknesses before creating a holistic plan of improvements. We can invest a lot of time in improving weaknesses rather than playing to our strengths. I often explain this by using Usain Bolt as an example. A naturally gifted runner who was a member of an Athletics team. He refined his sprinting abilities rather than work on his weaknesses in the long jump, hurdles etc – and that is why he became the best in the world. When listing weaknesses try and balance these in number with strengths and don’t dwell too long on any negative feelings.
Opportunities often take a bit longer to identify. What could you be doing? What are you able to do that’s over and above what you’re doing now? Where could you make a real difference? These are big questions, but don’t necessarily need big answers. Opportunities can be transformational like going for a promotion, but they can equally be about forging a better relationship with a neighbouring team or learning a new skill. In my experience we often think of opportunities as something we’ll do at some point in the future, but rarely act on them immediately. To motivate ourselves to take action, imagine you have acted on the opportunity – what difference has it made? How do you feel? What are the benefits? This thought process will help us decide which opportunities we should be pursuing as we’ll feel more emotionally invested.
Then there are Threats. I always re-position these as Barrier (SWOB doesn’t have the same ring to it though!). What is stopping your progress? Sometimes these can be things that are largely out of our control, like budgets or company structures but take your time to really think about what is halting your development. Are they moveable, or do we need to move around them? Don’t dismiss internal barriers such as a lack of confidence, or even a poor relationship with someone. The process of identifying threats builds a greater clarity on where to move forward, and where to make your peace with what cannot be changed.
How long the SWOT takes you is completely up to you, but I recommend this be a quiet and slow process. Make yourself a large cup of coffee and really invest the time wisely. When you’ve finished, if you have justified your decisions along the way you may find that you’re drawn to certain aspects of the SWOT where you feel motivated to make changes immediately. This is ideal if so! But if not, take some more time to look at the whole grid holistically and think about where you most need to make some changes.
Everyone’s SWOT will be individual so it’s impossible to say how many changes you should make, but it’s important to be realistic. Set a time period to work on one or more aspect and think about actions you can take and when and where they can actually happen. To decide to learn how to use some new software for example may need you to map out training providers and time commitments in advance, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking the SWOT alone will motivate your progress - it won’t. You need to take a series of steps to improve and think about what pace is appropriate for you alongside all your other commitments too.
Most people end the process here, but SWOTs work best for me when they’re part of my own plan of development. Set a reminder in your diary (I recommend every 3-6 months) to return to your SWOT and repeat the exercise. I do this regularly through my career. It’s a good way to check in with my progress, re-set if I have lost my way and return to aspects of the SWOT, I wasn’t able to prioritise before. Leadership is a process of continuous improvement, and this re-visiting really helps that mindset.
And that’s the start of The Leadership year. To re-cap…. Complete a SWOT, look at it holistically and plan in actions and a date to re-visit. This is not a huge time investment, but if you complete the process it will build your abilities to self-analyse and take action.
Looking for more depth? I believe SWOTs work well when used as a personal reflection tool but ask trusted colleagues to share with you their thoughts on your SWOT. Can they see aspects in you that you couldn’t see yourself? Might they help ‘cheerlead’ you on your journey? We are more likely to achieve goals when we have someone we feel accountable to so if you are someone who makes plans but often fails to make them happen, this could be a good option for you!
Struggling to act on your SWOT? Work to just 1 aspect and create visual reminders on a regular basis: post-it notes on your laptop, regular diary reminders and create a log of all the steps you have taken, however small, to move forward. SWOTs are often more of a marathon than a sprint so keep moving forward and the results will materialise if you keep at it!
