Good leaders consider pros, cons, motives, and correctness.

• Leaders evaluate to discern some of the misunderstanding ahead of time. Leadership is about knowing you are going to be misunderstood and attempting to address it before it even comes, though this is not always possible. In some ways we are all suppose to “count the cost” before we act (Luke 14:28).

A leader should ask more questions than anyone else.

Leaders should ask question like….

1. Is there something we could do different to achieve a better outcome?
2. What is my reason for wanting to accomplish this?
3. Am treating people better than the product/service?
4. Do I have other peoples best interest in mind?
5. What are the long term and short term consequences of doing it this way?

Evaluation is a Great thing!

• It doesn’t always feel like a good thing. Because leaders do this they often think people just don’t get it! “No one else is even considering the good and the bad of this.” Some people think it is actually a hindrance to progress, to ask so many questions, to evaluate critically, so they ironically evaluate and criticize your desire to examine things. The Bible even teaches that self evaluation is good.
• 2 Cor. 13:5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
• Lamentation 3:40 Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!

Important things should be evaluated more often.

• Evaluate your marriage, how you interact with your children, your job situation or the business you operate. Evaluate your motives.  Everybody evaluates.  Not everybody evaluates the right things.  People evaluate their video game performance and their sports performance more than their relationships.  We think about our physical lives and often don’t even consider how it effects our relationship with God.  Leaders evaluate the important things.

Don’t evaluate to criticize others, evaluate to be a better leader.

• We are always better at criticizing others than we are at criticizing self, but the purpose of leading is to help others. Maybe helping others includes changing the way we are going about helping them. Maybe the way we discipline our children is actually not helping them overcome a weakness. Maybe the attitude we approach people with is not displaying true leadership. Maybe there is a another way to address your employees to create better morale and less turnover.