13 BE AN EXAMPLE OF EXCELLENCE T he headline has caught your attention. Now that we have your attention we want you to do BY FRANKLYN MICHAEL SUPPLEMENTARY ASSOCIATE, CARICAD BENEFITS OF SELF ASSESSMENT a very personal self-assessment exercise. We are suggesting that as a leader you do a S.W.O.C. Analysis of yourself. We would like if you are a leader/manager in the public service (our primary target) to realistically assess your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Challenges (SWOC) in your capacity as a leader. A SWOC Analysis is an evolution of SWAT Analysis in which the word THREATS is replaced by the word CHALLENGES. In practical terms, Challenges are more relevant to most public entities than Threats. We think that SWOC is more applicable to the public sector. In the private sector, businesses can disappear because of Threats. It is seldom the same in the public sector. Therefore, the continued use of SWAT is understandable in the private sector especially because the technique originated in that sector more than 60 years ago. In the event that this is the first time you will do a Self-SWOC we humbly suggest that you consider making a commitment to doing such an analysis at least once per year for as long as you hold a leadership position. Focus on you and not on your colleagues or members of your family. Additionally, you might choose to do the analysis whenever big changes take place in your professional and personal life. It is an excellent basis for personal decision-making. When you get to the stage of being comfortable with your self-assessments, consider inviting your direct reports and colleagues to give you face-toface feedback about you, using the SWOC framework also. I did that as a young leader. You can take my word. It is only scary the first time. When you take their feedback to heart and act on it (as I did) it will get easier with each succeeding year and you will become a leader of enormous influence among them. There are many evidence-based benefits of leaders doing self-assessments. The benefits include: Providing a rational and practical basis for self -development plans Driving improvements in a leader’s own performance Creating more productive teams Enabling more harmonious interpersonal relations at work and at home Causing higher levels of goal achievement — personal and organisational Leaders becoming empathetic in assessing others Leaders having greater credibility for assessing others Leaders demonstrating their belief in staff assessments THE TECHNIQUE FOR A SELF-ASSESSMENT (SWOC) Your first step is to set a date, time and location for the analysis. Decide that you will do it when you can be sure that you will not be interrupted for about an hour or so... The next step is just to go on and do it. We would like to offer you some possible ground rules: 1. Be honest to yourself about yourself. It is easy for any of us to massage our egos by making ourselves out to be better than we are with certain skills and attributes. Should you do that you might feel good but it will be of little value for self-development 2. Do not confuse your accomplishments with your intentions. When you assess yourself make sure you focus on what you actually accomplished and not what you intended to accomplish. It means you should focus on achievements in the organisation that you led the team with rather than on the plans you made with or without them Continues on next page
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