None of Us Are Sane Enough to Be Sane by Ourselves

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“None of us are sane enough to be sane by ourselves.”

~Jordan Peterson

That sentence made me laugh the first time I heard it. Then I thought about it for a moment and realized it really isn’t very funny. Because he is right.

Every one of us possesses a remarkable ability to make our own thinking sound reasonable to ourselves. Give us enough time alone with an idea and we can explain why what we want is necessary, why what we did was justified, why the other person misunderstood us, why the criticism isn’t really fair, and why—after carefully considering all available evidence—we have once again reached the astonishing conclusion that we were right.

That should frighten every leader just a little.

One of the great dangers of leadership is not that leaders stop thinking. It is that they can gradually become the only person allowed to evaluate their thinking. When that happens, even intelligent, experienced, godly people can become remarkably foolish.

The Person Most Capable of Fooling Me Is Me

Scripture does not have a particularly optimistic view of our ability to evaluate ourselves objectively. Jeremiah tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, BSB).

That verse is very easy to apply to somebody else. It becomes considerably more uncomfortable when I realize Jeremiah is describing me.

My heart does not merely deceive other people. It can deceive me. I can have wrong motives without recognizing them. I can become defensive while believing I am merely explaining myself. I can call stubbornness conviction, impatience urgency, control stewardship, fear prudence, and pride leadership. Worse, I can construct very persuasive arguments supporting every one of them.

That is why self-awareness, while enormously valuable, is not enough. You cannot see every blind spot simply by looking harder. Some things about you can only be seen from somewhere you are not standing.

We Need Someone Standing Somewhere Else

Proverbs gives us a wonderfully practical description of this problem: “The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.” (Proverbs 18:17, BSB).

Have you ever listened to someone describe a conflict and thought, “Wow. The other person is obviously the problem”? Then you talked to the other person.

Oh.

There was apparently another chapter.

That does not necessarily mean the first person lied. He may have told you exactly what happened—as he perceived it. The problem is that perspective is never the same thing as omniscience. There are no maverick molecules. God alone sees everything simultaneously and perfectly. The rest of us are standing somewhere, and wherever we stand gives us a particular view.

That is one reason God puts people around us. Your spouse stands somewhere you do not. Your employees stand somewhere you do not. Your pastor stands somewhere you do not. Your friends stand somewhere you do not. Your children may even see things you do not. The wise leader understands that these perspectives are not merely obstacles to overcome. They may be instruments God uses to reveal something we cannot see from where we are standing.

The More Authority You Have, the More Dangerous Isolation Becomes

This problem becomes increasingly serious as a person gains authority. Early in your career, people tell you when you’re wrong because they can. Later, they may stop because it costs too much.

The CEO makes a questionable decision, and everyone around the conference table suddenly becomes strangely interested in their notes. The senior pastor proposes an idea that several people believe will create problems, but nobody wants to be labeled unsupportive. The department head speaks harshly to an employee, and the people who witnessed it quietly decide it would be safer not to mention it.

Eventually the leader begins to experience an artificial world in which very few people disagree with him.

That can feel like confirmation. It isn’t.

Sometimes silence means agreement. Sometimes silence means fear. A leader who cannot distinguish between the two is in trouble. The frightening part is that the leader may sincerely believe he has created a healthy culture because nobody challenges him anymore. He has mistaken the absence of disagreement for the presence of trust.

Those are very different things.

Strong Leaders Need People Who Can Say, “I Think You’re Wrong”

One of the greatest gifts you can give a leader is respectful disagreement, and one of the greatest gifts a leader can give an organization is permission to provide it.

That requires security. If every disagreement becomes a contest, people will eventually stop disagreeing with you. If every question is interpreted as disloyalty, people will eventually stop asking questions. If every criticism receives a fifteen-minute explanation of why you were actually right, people will eventually learn that feedback is pointless.

You may win every argument. You may also lose every truth-teller.

That is an extraordinarily expensive way to be right.

Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to counsel.” (BSB). Notice that wisdom is not defined there as already knowing the correct answer. Wisdom listens.

That means wise people deliberately expose their thinking to examination. They ask, “What am I missing?” They ask, “What would you do differently?” They ask, “Did I handle that well?” They ask, “Is there another way to see this?”

And then comes the difficult part.

They actually listen to the answer.

Asking for counsel is useless if we spend the next ten minutes explaining why the counsel is wrong.

Marriage May Be One of God’s Greatest Sanity-Checking Devices

Marriage provides an especially humbling version of this principle. Your spouse has watched you for years. She knows the public version of you, but she also knows the version who cannot find something that is directly in front of him. She has heard your leadership principles and watched you violate one before breakfast. She knows which stories have become slightly more impressive with each retelling. She may also recognize that you are becoming unreasonable long before you do.

That can be irritating.

It can also be grace.

The person closest to us will not always be right. Neither will a friend, mentor, employee, elder, colleague, or child. That isn’t the point. The point is that I am not always right either.

Therefore, when someone who knows me well says, “I don’t think you’re seeing this clearly,” wisdom should at least make me curious. I don’t have to become immediately convinced. I can simply become curious enough to ask, “What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?”

That question has probably saved more marriages, organizations, ministries, friendships, and careers than we will ever know.

Accountability Is More Than Asking Whether You Did Something Bad

Christians sometimes reduce accountability to confession. Did you look at something you shouldn’t? Did you lose your temper? Did you keep your commitments? Did you do what you said you were going to do?

Those are worthwhile questions, but accountability should go much deeper. Sometimes I need someone who can challenge not merely my behavior but my interpretation of my behavior.

Perhaps I keep calling something discernment when it is really fear. Perhaps I tell myself I am giving someone another opportunity when I am actually avoiding a difficult conversation. Perhaps I complain that nobody understands my vision when I have not communicated it clearly. Perhaps I say my team will not take initiative while failing to recognize that I punish them whenever they do. Perhaps I say I am protecting the organization when I am really protecting myself.

Now we are getting somewhere.

That kind of relationship requires someone who loves you enough to risk irritating you. Proverbs tells us, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (Proverbs 27:6, BSB).

A faithful friend occasionally wounds, not because he enjoys hurting us, but because he loves us too much to help us lie to ourselves.

David Needed Nathan

King David provides one of Scripture’s most sobering examples. After committing adultery with Bathsheba and arranging the death of Uriah, David had apparently constructed some way of continuing with life. Somehow the king who had once demonstrated extraordinary sensitivity toward God had managed to accommodate something horrifying within his own thinking.

Then God sent Nathan.

Nathan told David a story about a rich man who stole a poor man’s only lamb. David became furious at the injustice and declared that the man deserved punishment. David could recognize evil quite clearly when he believed someone else had committed it.

Then Nathan delivered four devastating words: “You are that man!” (2 Samuel 12:7, BSB).

David could recognize injustice in someone else while remaining remarkably blind to it in himself.

That is the terrifying power of self-deception. We can sometimes diagnose in another person the very disease presently consuming us.

David needed Nathan.

So do I.

So do you.

The question is not simply whether there are Nathans around us. The question is whether we have created an environment in which Nathan is allowed to speak.

Do People Really Have Permission to Correct You?

Almost every leader will say that people have permission to disagree with him. That is not the best question.

The better question is: What happens to people after they correct you?

Do you become cold toward them? Do you withdraw? Do you immediately defend yourself? Do you begin explaining why they misunderstood the situation? Do you retaliate subtly? Do you stop including them? Does the relationship become just a little less comfortable? Do people eventually discover that although you technically permit disagreement, there is a relational price for exercising that privilege?

If so, you do not really have an open culture. You have a culture in which people have learned the rules.

There is a simple response that can begin changing that: “Tell me more.”

Those may be three of the most powerful words a leader can learn.

Notice that “Tell me more” does not mean “You’re right.” You do not know that yet. The other person may be wrong. His perception may be incomplete. His criticism may eventually prove unfounded.

But “Tell me more” keeps the door open long enough for truth to enter.

Build a Personal Board of Sanity

Every leader should have several people who possess unquestioned permission to challenge him. Not admirers. Not people whose livelihoods depend entirely upon keeping him happy. Not people who think exactly as he does. We need people who love us, respect us, understand us, and are unimpressed enough with us to say, “I think you’re wrong.”

We need people who know our patterns. They recognize what happens when we become tired, threatened, excited, angry, discouraged, or overly confident. They recognize our favorite rationalizations because they have heard them before. They know when our normal strengths are beginning to become liabilities.

Preferably, some of these people should be very different from us. Someone who thinks differently may frustrate us precisely because he notices things we routinely miss.

The cautious person may see the risk the visionary ignores. The relational person may see the human cost the task-oriented leader overlooks. The analytical person may discover the flaw hidden inside the exciting idea. The decisive person may recognize that everyone else is still discussing something that should have been decided three meetings ago.

The traits in other people that sometimes drive us crazy may be the very traits God uses to keep us sane.

That changes the way we think about disagreement. Instead of asking, “Why can’t this person see what is so obvious to me?” perhaps we should occasionally ask, “What can this person see precisely because he is not me?”

That is an entirely different posture.

Counsel Does Not Remove Responsibility

There is an important balance here. Seeking counsel does not mean surrendering responsibility. A leader cannot collect opinions until he finds one that relieves him of having to decide, nor should he outsource conviction to a committee.

Scripture says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” (Proverbs 15:22, BSB). Counsel informs judgment. It does not replace judgment.

We listen. We pray. We examine Scripture. We consider our motives. We seek wisdom. We invite disagreement. We seriously consider perspectives different from our own. Then, when the responsibility belongs to us, we decide.

But we decide as people who understand that our first interpretation of reality may not be the complete one.

That posture is not weakness.

It is humility.

Jesus Did Not Need This. We Do.

There is one enormous distinction that must be made. Jesus Christ did not need someone to correct His distorted perception because He had none. We do.

He could trust His judgment perfectly. We cannot. He knew the hearts of men. We struggle to understand our own. He saw reality without the contamination of sin, pride, fear, insecurity, ambition, selfishness, or limited knowledge.

We do not.

Yet sometimes we lead as though possessing authority has somehow granted us omniscience. It hasn’t. Leadership does not make you less susceptible to self-deception. In some environments, it makes you more susceptible because fewer people are willing to challenge you.

That is why humility is not merely an attractive personality trait for a leader. Humility is protection.

It keeps us listening when pride would make us defensive. It keeps us curious when insecurity would make us angry. It keeps people speaking when authority could easily silence them. It reminds us that being responsible for the decision does not mean possessing all the information necessary to make it wisely.

Who Can Tell You That You’re Wrong?

Think about that question seriously.

Not theoretically. Name someone.

Who can look you in the eye and say, “I love you, but I think you’re wrong”? Who can tell you that your attitude is becoming a problem? Who can challenge your motives? Who can tell you that you’re being too harsh? Who can tell you that you’re avoiding something you need to face? Who can tell you that the brilliant idea you fell in love with Tuesday may not actually be brilliant?

And perhaps more importantly, what will happen to that person if he does?

Will you listen?

Because having truth-tellers around you does very little good if you have trained them not to tell you the truth.

“None of us are sane enough to be sane by ourselves.”

That is more than an amusing observation about human psychology. It is a call to humility. God has surrounded us with people for many reasons, and one of them may simply be that occasionally we need someone standing somewhere else to help us see what is right in front of us.

So find those people. Treasure them. Give them permission to speak. Pay attention when they do. And when one of them takes the risk of saying, “I think you may be wrong,” resist the instinct to prepare your defense while he is still talking.

Instead, try three words:

“Tell me more.”

You might discover that God has graciously placed someone beside you who can see what you cannot.

And that may be one of the ways He keeps you sane.

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Five Coaching Questions

1. Who are the three people in your life who have genuine permission to tell you that you are wrong—and would they agree that they have that permission?
2. Think about the last time someone seriously challenged your thinking. What was your first response: curiosity, defensiveness, explanation, anger, withdrawal, or gratitude?
3. Have people around you become increasingly agreeable? Could that indicate growing trust—or have they learned that disagreement carries a cost?
4. What recurring behavior or motive might you be rationalizing by giving it a more respectable name—control as stewardship, fear as wisdom, stubbornness as conviction, impatience as urgency, or avoidance as grace?
5. Whom could you ask this week, “What is something about me that you think I may not be seeing clearly?” Can you receive the answer without defending yourself?

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