The Value of Self-Evaluation

King David declared, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

Psalm 139:14 ESV

In his letter to the Roman church, the apostle Paul wrote, “Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.” (Romans 12:3 NLT)

These two scriptures remind us of the importance of identity and self-evaluation. A distorted identity can cause us to think too highly or too lowly of ourselves when the goal should be to think honestly and correctly of ourselves.

If you think too lowly of yourself, you will often see yourself as unqualified or unworthy of leadership, and you’ll miss opportunities to do something great with the abilities and responsibility you’ve been given.

If you think too highly of yourself, you will tend to overestimate your abilities and may even take credit for the work of others to promote yourself. You’ll tend to hide your mistakes, make too much of your successes, and live in fear of being exposed as fake.

Leading and serving with an honest and accurate view of ourselves is challenging. This is why regular self-evaluations are so important.

A few months ago, we invited Pastor Bill Graybill to join our OMN Team for a day of self-evaluation using a tool called The Working Genius. This is a superb tool to evaluate a ministry team and see how well work is getting done. While with us, Pastor Bill said, “The best leaders are self-aware.” From my experience, this is a very true statement.

"The best leaders are self-aware."

Pastor Bill Graybill

We have been conducting annual conversations with each team member to help our OMN Team be more self-aware and take an honest look at themselves. These conversations are built around our team’s values of honor, honesty, candor, and accountability. To help us, we developed a simple tool to guide these conversations and identify key areas where teammates are strong and which areas they need to grow in.

Here is a link to The Working Genius. Getting the most from The Working Genius will require an online assessment, but we have found it to be well worth the cost of the investment. You can download our Annual Conversation Form here if you find it useful.

I hope this helps. Don’t hesitate to contact me if I can ever help you or your church.

Leadership Truth: Great leaders are not impressed with themselves.