During a teleclass in the Core Alignment Professional Coach Training program in which I teach, one of the students expressed frustration at the way doing SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis often left people stuck in their problems and overwhelmed by the negatives. Another student suggested using SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results) analysis instead. SWOT can too easily leave people stuck in the past, especially in the bad things that happened in the past. Our natural tendency, in my experience, is to focus on what’s wrong and expend huge amounts of energy trying to fix it. A better use of energy, again in my experience, is to identify aspirations based on what’s going right and shift the flow our energy to achieve those aspirations. It doesn’t mean that we ignore what’s wrong. We simply frame our understanding of it differently. Instead of letting it define reality for us, we see it as something that’s interfering with creating the reality we desire. Positive aspirations energize our efforts. The resulting collaboration around getting positive results helps overcome the barriers. We don’t ignore the negative. We simply don’t let it define us.
It’s easy to point out this different, and much more effective, perspective, but difficult to make it a habit. It takes mindful practice – paying attention to when we let negativity define our reality and consciously and consistently choosing to change our approach in that particular moment, in that particular conversation.
Jazz groups model SOAR all the time. If they let the weaknesses in their abilities and the threats to the flow of their music dominate their minds and hearts while performing, the results will be tentative and terrible. Instead, they focus on what they can do well and how to do it best, often discovering in the process that they are capable of doing things better than they ever imagined. Every performance is an opportunity to build on their strengths, achieve new aspirations, and create remarkable results.
Success depends on where you choose to focus your energy – not SWOTing madly at all the problems but SOARing confidently into the most highly-leveraged possibilities.
