Today, we will look at a gaps analysis framework that focuses on your personal views on one hand and those of other people around you.
Under your personal views, you have two major elements:
a) Where you are now
b) Where you want to be in your career
You should evaluate your current position to fully understand and know your personal capabilities, behaviours and performance relating to your current job or other activities.
You can do this by conducting a self-assessment or by simply looking at your track record.
Alternatively, you can source professional assessment services if you want to do this really well. It is worth the investment as people who excel in life are those who really know themselves well.
You must also know and understand where you want to take your career or business to. Your destination should also include a list of your greatest personal values, desires, career aspirations and personal interests.
This can be done when you are conducting your personal development planning exercise or career development discussions with your mentor, coach or colleagues. You can also carry out this analysis when you are conducting your personal goal-setting exercise.
Once you have the two sides of your personal views, you should then identify the gaps between where you are today and where you want to be in X years’ or months’ time.
This will then result in an action plan, with clear dates and milestones for completing all the critical activities that will help you to close the gaps between where you are today and where you want to be at a specific time in the future.
The other side of the gaps analysis is consideration of the views of people around you. You need to fully understand how others view you so that you can identify any gaps between your own understanding of yourself and that of others.
Again there are two elements to other people’s views of you:
a) their perceptions and
b) what the organisation expects of you (standards)
You can understand other people’s perceptions of you by directly sourcing feedback or where possible, you can conduct the comprehensive 360-degree feedback exercise. You can also gain valuable input from customer feedback and performance reviews.
As for what your organisation expects from you, you can source the information from your official roles and responsibilities, organisational goals and strategies, core competencies required for your job, competitive challenges and market demands or indeed by observing your respected role models.
Once you have a full picture of others’ views – people’s perceptions and organisational standards – then you need to benchmark your personal views against the former to identify the gaps so that you can fill them.
Usually, this will be achieved by you taking action to align with other people’s views or indeed, where you have a good case, you would have to develop a plan for changing other people’s views.
Do not be afraid to change other people’s views where your position is the correct one, but be careful not to make this norm and do not be overly defensive as such an attitude can deter your continuous personal development.
