1080: How to Say No When the World Demands Yes with Dr. Sunita Sah

Pete Mockaitis
Sunita, welcome!

Sunita Sah
Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into some of the wisdom in your book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. Could you kick us off with a particularly intriguing, fascinating discovery you’ve made about us humans and defying from your research?

Sunita Sah
Yes, absolutely. I mean, this book really came from decades of research and also my own personal experience growing up as a good girl, really. I remember asking my dad when I was quite young, “What does my name, Sunita, mean?” And he said, “In Sanskrit, Sunita actually means good.” And mostly I lived up to that.

So, I did what I was told, got up when I was told to, went to school on time, did all my homework as expected, because these are often messages that many of us received in childhood, not just from parents, but from teachers and the community, it’s to be good. And what does that really mean? We think it’s to fit in, to obey, to do as we’re told.

And that’s the dynamic that becomes very familiar to a lot of people, I’ve found, that we start equating compliance with being good, and defiance with being bad. And then when we grow up into adults, it becomes very difficult for a lot of people to defy because it has such a negative connotation. And it becomes so hard to defy an order, even an unspoken one, from an authority up here or even a stranger.

And so, when we actually need to resist something, to do what we think is the right thing to do, it becomes very difficult, indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! And so, when you say good and bad, we don’t just mean, you know, kind of desirable and pleasant, but rather morally, ethically, good, bad, like noble and/or evil.

Sunita Sah
Yes, absolutely. That’s what we think. We think the right thing to do is what we get told to do a lot of the time because we often think people in authority know best and we would often hope for that, but it’s not always true. So, what happens when we need to resist that? That becomes really important. And even if we think about, like, our workplaces, what do people mean by a good employee? It’s often someone who’s seen as going along with things, being agreeable, doing what their boss wants them to do.

And when we start equating our moral behavior in terms of how well we complete a task or how well we obey our boss, things become really constrained to just the cubicle that we sit in, and we forget about the larger picture, what’s going on, the larger impact to other people, to ourselves, to society in general. And that can really erode the soul at times. It can be soul-destroying, in a way, if you keep bowing your head to other people and disregarding your values.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, this is so big and there’s so many directions we can run with it, so let’s go with your book. So, what would you say is the big idea or core message there?

Sunita Sah
It’s really to reframe defiance, because I’ve been so fascinated by what that single powerful word, defy, means for such a long time. And if I ask people, you know, “How many times have you wanted to object to something or opt out of something, but you end up just going along with it, you end up swallowing your words?”

And we think that it’s so good to be compliant, but when I really delved into the research, and I conducted my own research, I really saw how compliant we are and it can end up causing serious problems. So, for example, one survey found that nine out of 10 healthcare workers, most of them nurses, felt too uncomfortable to speak up when they saw a colleague making an error.

And it’s also not just in medicine, across industries, another one found that in more than 1,700 crew members on commercial airlines, only half of them spoke up when they noticed an error. So, these are situations you want people to be speaking up, right? And so, you start to wonder, “Is it sometimes bad to be so good? And what do we actually sacrifice by being so compliant?”

And when I spent more time looking at this and finding this dynamic in so many areas, even when it’s not life and death, what I found that I think is crucial and really substantially changed how I think is that we’ve simply misunderstood what it means to defy.

So, I came to this revelation that we need a new definition for defiance because this old definition that often has negative connotations is that to defy is to challenge the power of another person, openly and boldly. Whereas, my definition of defiance is simply to defy is to act in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise.

So, it becomes this positive force, a proactive, even pro-social force in society because, if we think about all our individual acts of compliance, of consent, of dissent, they really build the places that we live in, our workplaces, our homes, our communities.

And that’s why it’s really important to understand what we mean by compliance, by consent, by defiance, and how to live a life really aligned with your values.

Pete Mockaitis
This is very powerful stuff, and the word defy really has a lot of power to it. And thinking from an American context, in some ways, we celebrate it, like, “Yeah, to defy, we’re going to defy King George, and revolution. This country is born and we have freedom because we defied,” or, “We are going to defy the injustice of slavery,” or, Rosa Parks.

It’s, like, it sparks within us something beautiful and strong, and we dig it. And yet, when push comes to shove and we’re right there in the emotional moment, we don’t have good pleasant hero-vibes associated with defying someone who’s right in front of our face.

Sunita Sah
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, there’s so much in what you said about what our image of defiance is and what defines actually can be. So, one aspect is, as you said, that in America, we’re sort of valued for being free-thinkers and we like our agency and independence. And yet in my research, I found that there’s such a high level of compliance.

Like, even a very simple one with no consequences for saying no, if you give people two options, option A and option B, just giving them the choice, pretty much everyone over 95% chooses option A because it’s just much better for you, right?

But if you have someone just telling them to choose option B with absolutely no consequence if they said no, it’s just a stranger, I find really high levels of compliance, going up to like 85%, which is ridiculous. And when they have an opportunity to change their mind in private, they will do so. So, it really shows the difference between what our public behavior and our private preferences.

And what I aim to do is really get that gap mitigated so people can act in alignment with what their preferences actually are. And responding to what you just said about our image of defiance, one of the myths about defiance is that it has to be loud and aggressive and maybe violent. It is about revolution, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be done in a very quiet way.

And really done in a way that’s more natural to us. We don’t have to change who we are. It’s just a skillset. It’s not a personality. And so, once we learn to defy, that is key to sort of making better decisions, in general.

Now, if we think about Rosa Parks, because she is famous for her no on the bus, but she actually complied many times before with segregation laws before she said her famous no. And so, we have to think about, like, we can be compliant one day and defiant the next. We have to choose the time where it’s going to be sort of both safe and effective.

Now you could argue that it wasn’t actually safe for Rosa Parks, it was never going to be safe for her, but she made that particular decision that day, even though it was preceded by probably hundreds of moments of compliance. And that gives us hope because it’s not about defiance just being an emotional response.

Yes, it can be based on some emotion, it can be based on her belief of really believing in equality here and wanting to stand up for something, or sit down for her principles. But it really is connecting with our values and learning how to defy, because that is the one thing that many of us have not been trained to do. We’ve been so trained in compliance, we don’t actually know once we decide to defy, we don’t actually know how to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’d actually like to dig into some of the details there with that 90% of folks will pick A over B, unless someone tells them, “Hey, pick B.” Could you zoom us right into that social psychology experiments in terms of what is A and what is B? What are people being presented with?

Sunita Sah
Right. So, I conducted a series of experiments, mostly in the US, where I have people pick between two different lotteries. So, they’re different prizes in the lotteries, but lottery A is twice the expected value of lottery B. It’s just worth so much more. So, of course, most people are going to go with lottery A. It’s the superior lottery. And why would you not choose it?

But if I pair them with a stranger, and just call that stranger an advisor and the participant as the chooser, and the advisor then says, “You should go for option B,” because either they know or they don’t know that the advisor is actually going to be paid more if they get to choose this option B. So, they’re really giving them bad advice, poor quality advice.

What happens is, even when the choosers, the participants, have full information, they feel too uncomfortable to say no to this stranger. And so, they go with option A, and they say it’s because of this social pressure to go along with people around them. And what I’ve found in my research is one aspect of this social pressure I call insinuation anxiety.

And it’s a distinct type of anxiety that we have when we worry about our non-compliance with another person’s wishes, that it’s going to be interpreted as a signal of distress. It’s going to insinuate that the person is not who they appear to be or should be.

So, for example, if your doctor tells you to do something, it’s quite difficult to say no because it insinuates that they can’t be trusted, they’re incompetent. And we don’t like to do that. We don’t like to do that with our friends, our peers, our trusted advisors, our colleagues.

And so, this aversive emotional state that we have keeps us quiet and compliant, and it’s actually quite powerful. It could range from, for example, something small, like you’re at the hairdressers and they’re saying, “Trust me with this new haircut,” and they’re cutting away and you just want to say, “Stop!” A lot of people, if you’re like me, find it very difficult to say so. We might just smile and say, “That’s great,” and even tip them at the end of the day.

Or it could be the life-and-death decisions that I’m talking about, the nurses unable to tell a physician that they’re making a mistake, or the co-pilot unable to tell the pilot that they think this is the wrong way to go. So, that force, that insinuation anxiety, this reluctance to signal distrust to someone else, because we don’t want to insinuate that they’re untrustworthy, is really quite powerful.

So, we have to understand that it comes up in these social interactions that we have, and figure out how we can decrease that social pressure so we can overcome insinuation anxiety and speak up for what we think is the right thing to do.

Pete Mockaitis
You know what this brings up for me is, just recently, I was trying to upgrade some internet speed, so I called up Comcast Xfinity, which is an infamously unpleasant experience for folks. And I was speaking with someone, and they said, “Oh, yeah, well, this plan will have 300 megabits per second upload speed as well.” I was like, “Oh, okay, well, that’s pretty good.”

But when I looked at the website, it says 41 is the upload speed. And it was interesting because, like, before my eyes, I’m looking at one thing, he is telling me another. And I said, “Well, could you help me understand why it is I’m looking at 41 and you’re saying 300?” He was like, “Oh, well, you know, recently they upgraded the speed.”

It’s like, “Okay, that’s cool. It’s plausible that upgrade hasn’t made it over to the webpage that I’m looking at yet. Could you send that to me so I could see what you’re looking at?” And for whatever reason, it wasn’t sending. And it was wild how, even though I’m looking at it with my own two eyes, I’m thinking, “Well, this guy works for Comcast Xfinity. He’s saying this with conviction, and that he has some sort of reference,” and I was just stuck.

We went through, we went in circles for more than an hour on this matter because I had to figure it out for myself, it’s like, “Well, I guess we’ll get it and I could see for myself, and if it’s no good, I’ll cancel it.” And so, that’s where we landed.

And even in, like, a social status-y position, I guess, like, I am the customer, this is a customer service person. I will never see this person again. But I could not bring myself to reject fully his assertion. It’s like, “No, you are wrong. I’m looking at it with my eyes. I reject what you say and we’re done with this conversation.” I could not bring myself to do it even in the rosiest of circumstances, and our compromise was, “Well, I guess I’ll see what happens.”

Sunita Sah
That’s how difficult it is because it seems so confrontational. It seems like you’re implying that this person is lying to you, lying straight out. And that’s so hard to do because, as a society, we value integrity so much. We do not want to be known as being an untrustworthy person.

And that’s why it becomes so difficult to tell someone else that, “I don’t think you’re telling me the truth here, right? This is my experience. I’m seeing something different and so you must be wrong.” It’s just so hard to say. And that is classic insinuation anxiety.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and if anyone was curious, sure enough, the speed was 41, as my eyes told me in defiance, or in contradiction, I should say, of what he had to say.

Sunita Sah
Did you cancel? I’m dying to know if you canceled.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, once AT&T is hooked up, I’m canceling that one, so they’ve lost me. And sort of that’s how that unfolded. Okay, so it’s powerful. It’s in us. And so, we’ve got these emotional learned things all hooked up in our brains and emotions and nervous system that, “Oh, compliance is morally good and noble and wholesome, and defiance is bad or evil, objectionable and not something you want to do.”

So, then that is a bit of a pickle. So, can you share with us, before we get into the how, just kind of what sorts of goodness is on the other side if we manage to overcome this? Could we hear a tale of perhaps a professional who got really good at defiance and what kind of cool results that opens up for them?

Sunita Sah
I mean, for me, this was my journey from learning how to be bad at times, what people might say bad at times, because I went along to get along. I was good. I listened to what teachers told me. I just did what I was told. And then when I found that, like, teachers can be unfair and people can make errors, it just dawned on me that, if I really wanted to be living up to the values I thought was important, I had to learn how to defy.

And so, I found that these five stages of defiance, which is part of the skill of learning how to defy, and stage one is actually pretty important because this is one that people might be able to relate to, that you might be able to relate to in just what you were telling me about your experience with Comcast, is that the first stage is tension.

We have this tension between what is happening, the situation, what’s expected of us, and what we actually think is the right thing to do. And that tension can manifest in different ways, right? Some people just feel deeply uncomfortable. Some people feel a knot in their stomach. They feel some general unease, a tight throat. It manifests in us in different ways.

So, getting used to that sign is really important because that first stage of tension is really important to register and acknowledge to ourselves. And that’s like moving to the second stage, because what we often do is say it’s not worth our doubt, it’s not worth our anxiety, and so we sweep it away.

But after I learned how to defy, and what I’ve seen in many of the people I’ve interviewed, and in my research, is that if you can get to stage five, which is the final act of defiance, that tension that you had in the first stage, it just dissipates. So, if you just try to sweep it away at the beginning and say, “It’s not worth it. The other person knows better,” it comes back, it stays with us. We feel a lot of resentment.

And even though we often think that, “Oh, I’m going to upset someone,” “I’m going to lose a relationship,” “I’m going to lose my job even,” we don’t think so much about the costs of compliance, which can be significant. This tension, this anxiety, this stress, it can keep us up at night. It can lead to chronic inflammation, burnout, dissatisfaction, so many things.

Whereas, if we can live in alignment with our values, that tension dissipates, we feel more joy, we feel more authentic, and ultimately, it’s a more honest life. We feel like we’re making progress. We can be more of ourselves, which is something that, you know, we don’t want to give our soul away to be a good employee, right?

And so, that’s something that we really have to remember that, on the other side, that living a life aligned with what you think is the right thing to do is really reclaiming your agency. It’s very powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
It is powerful. That’s a good feeling. I want to zero in on the tension point. I think it’s also possible that you can defy and then have lingering worries of, “Oh, no, have I upset them? Is our relationship now in a bad place? Oh, are they going to come back at me in terms of retribution? Or are we no longer…?” whatever, dah, dah, dah. There’s any number of, like, little anxious worries and upset-ness that can linger with us post-defiance. What do you think about those?

Sunita Sah
Yeah, and these are the things that often keep us silent is because we have these worries before we defy. And, defiance in itself, and compliance actually, both are inherently risky, in a way, like, neither action is like risk-free because there could be great harm that comes from compliance. We’ve seen that in history, that unchecked compliance can lead to devastating consequences.

And so, this aspect of regret, a lot of people regret not speaking up when they could do. That’s a huge aspect of the cost of compliance. Do we regret defiance? Maybe sometimes we do if we haven’t thought about, “Is this the right place and time?” So, one of the aspects of considering, “Is this situation going against my values?” is one question that we can ask ourselves.

And then, “Is it safe? And will it be effective?” And that’s a very individual choice of learning how to defy and when to defy is figuring out. You know, Rosa Parks, as I said, it wasn’t safe for her. She received many death threats from her action, and yet it was effective. It was effective. And she made a strategic choice that day. And she had, like, a couple of really good examples.

When she was a child, she saw her own mother refuse to move on the bus for a white passenger. And that must have stayed with her. And I talk quite a bit about this sort of ripple effect of parents because I was brought up in a pretty compliant environment myself, and my mom especially, I thought was very compliant until one day I saw her defiance, and that stayed with me.

And so many people have told me about the ripple effect of their parents. So, it’s a great role model for that. But she was very strategic in that she waited for that particular moment to say no. And she had the community behind her, and she could make a difference.

So, understanding what your own defiance calculus is and knowing that you’re acting in alignment with something that’s really important to you, really reduces that element of regret of, you know, this is something that you feel that you have to speak up when it matters most.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. Great thinking there in terms of it’s like our default mode is compliance and that is profoundly suboptimal because compliance may or may not be the right answer, all things considered.

And so, at the very least, if we can stop and say, “Hey, does this match my values? Is this safe? Is this effective?” It’s like, “No, I’m doing lottery A, of course. And then that’s that,” is super handy. And then occasionally, the decisions get rather tricky in terms of, “Is this the time and the place for my defiance?”

Sunita Sah
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a wonderful summary. And I think you’re right as well, it does get tricky for people, like, “How do you decide?” And I always say, ask yourself, “Is it safe enough? Will it be effective enough?” Because if we say, “Is it safe? Is it effective?” we could just use that as a rationalization to never act, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Sunita Sah
Because it’s never going to be 100% safe. It’s never going to be 100% safe.

Pete Mockaitis
“Because this person could flip out and assault me.” “How dare you pick lottery A? Are you saying I’m an idiot? Aargh!!”

Sunita Sah
Yes, even though the chances of that were pretty slim with everybody around you, and you know you’re taking part in this particular experiment. But it’s true that people will have a different calculus because it is a very individual choice. And many people defy even when they don’t know if it’s going to be effective because they so strongly believe in doing what they think is the right thing to do in that particular situation.

Pete Mockaitis
But just to really highlight, as you’re doing the calculus, you’re weighing it out, the resentment and regret on the side of compliance when that was not worthwhile, will often weigh much stronger psychically than the worry of, “Uh-oh, is something bad going to happen?”

And one more piece I think is undervalued in the weighing of compliance versus defiance is that, like a boss in particular, I love it when I get smart defiance in terms of, so I bought this business, Cashflow Podcasting, our CEO is fantastic, and so I am an owner. And so, she could just do the things I say, but some of the times, she really proves how exceptionally competent and capable she is, in my own estimation, is when she is telling me well why I’m wrong.

I was like, “Hey, what if we change the survey to have, like, 12 options here?” And she’s like, “Well, I mean, we could do that, but my concern is that they will simply not reply because it will be overwhelming with too many options.” I was like, “Okay, yeah, you’re right. It’s like you have told me why I’m wrong in an excellent way that supports what we’re trying to accomplish here. I value that.” As opposed to, if you have a total sycophant, who is like, “Okay, yeah, whatever you say, Pete. You’re the boss,” then we’re getting suboptimal outcomes for what we’re working on.

Sunita Sah
Yeah, absolutely. To be a good boss, to be a good leader, you don’t want just yes-people around you because you’re not going to have any creativity, you’re not going to have any innovation. It’s really the death of creativity in that aspect. If you want your business to succeed, if you don’t want a high turnover, you need to really reward defiance in your workplace and see it as this positive aspect.

And so, creating those environments where people feel that they can speak up, so it’s great that your assistant can speak up to you, right, the people that you work with can speak up and say, “Actually, this would be my concern if we went down that line.” And that it’s effective as well.

So, I found like the two main reasons that people don’t speak up in the workplace is that they don’t think it’s safe, they think there’s going to be repercussions for them speaking up, or that they don’t feel any fear. They think it’s safe enough but they’ve spoken up many times before nothing happens so it’s not effective anymore.

And so, if as a leader, we can like create workplaces where people will not be penalized for speaking up, and you take action and show that it’s effective when they do come up with a fantastic idea, or that they stop you doing something that would have thrown the business off a cliff, then that is wonderful that we can create those places that’s going to be far more successful and retain far more people for the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, so can we zoom right into the heat of battle, there’s something coming our way, we think, “Hmm, it doesn’t seem quite right to me.” We’ve got our five stages. Can we hear, what are the stages? What does it feel like? And what’s our best practice to move on through and defy effectively?

Sunita Sah
Yeah, so these five stages are really helpful to think about, like, once we get really experienced with the defiance, we might not go through all of them. Some of us at the beginning might go back and forth, but they’re useful, it’s a useful framework. So, as I said, stage one is tension. It’s like that tension that you feel somewhere.

Sometimes we know that something is wrong before we’ve even consciously registered it. But I’m not talking about like a gut feel here. I’m not talking about an emotional reaction to something. I’m talking about that tension between what’s expected of us and what we think is the right thing to do.

So, here, we want to think, “Why am I having that tension?” and acknowledge it to ourselves. So, stage two is really acknowledging there’s something uncomfortable here and trying to understand why. And the reason I say that is not just a gut feeling, is that there’s different types of tension that we can experience from our gut, right?

One is expert intuition that we’ve done something so many times before, we know that this is the wrong thing to do in this situation, or, like, this is the way that we should go, and we know it instantly once we see a particular pattern.

So, the best way to describe this is like a chess grandmaster when they see a pattern on the board. They’ve experienced it many times before. So, you need a predictable environment, immediate feedback, hundreds of repetitions to get that expert intuition.

Gut feel is something different, and it could be expert intuition or it could just be our biases, and be able to distinguish between the two is really important. So, we have that tension, we acknowledge it, we figure out what it means, and that’s stage two, stage one and stage two.

Then stage three is one of the critical stages. And this is really just vocalizing your attention externally to someone else. So, it can be something as little as, “I’m not comfortable with that,” or, “What did you mean by that?” or, “Can you clarify that?” So, it’s asking questions and just stating that you’re uncomfortable.

And the reason this stage is so critical is due to a number of things. First of all, the research shows that if you can get to stage three, you’re much more likely to get to stage five. So, learning how to get to stage three, and those little questions or clarification things are really important because, once you ask for clarification, you raise volume on the situation, you change the environment somehow.

And you’ve put it out there that you’re not comfortable, which means you can’t go back in time and then say, oh, you were fine with it to begin with if you comply. That cognitive dissonance can’t kick in if you’ve already said that you’re not comfortable with it. So, that’s stage three is just, you can still be in a subservient position. You can just be asking your boss for clarification here.

Stage four is when you actually say you can’t comply, that you can’t go along with this. And you could have conditions, “Unless this happens, or that happens, or this happens,” or you can’t go along with it because of these concerns. And then stage five, as I said, is the final act of defiance, that you say no, you don’t go along with it, and that’s when you see that tension dissipate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, what I like a lot in step three, escalation, is it sounds like you can vocalize anything any way professionally in terms of like and then it is very helpful for us, in terms of you say, “Oh, we could do that. Although, might that result in this?” And it’s just, like, super friendly, super professional but you have articulated something. And just doing that does a lot for us.

Sunita Sah
Exactly. This is where people can defy in their own unique way with far less angst than they used to have, because we need to get rid of the myth that defiance is a particular way or a particular personality. We can do it in a way that feels most natural for us and becomes comfortable. So, we can practice that even if it’s just a little script.

I love this, “What do you mean by that?” When we hear something in a meeting and we don’t think it’s quite right, it’s like, “What do you mean by that?” then the other person has to repeat it and explain it. And if there’s like some logic that doesn’t make sense, then everybody else gets to hear it too. And what you’ve done is you’ve put it out there, you’ve changed the water in which everybody is swimming.

And even that person that’s saying that thing might think, “Oh, okay, maybe it isn’t such a good idea.” Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but people have heard it, you’ve heard it, and that makes a big difference. So, it’s just a small thing that you put out there in the environment that can make a massive difference.

Pete Mockaitis
“Sunita, what I mean is we should break the law in order to get more money.”

Sunita Sah
“Can you just clarify that? Can you clarify?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Like, that’s kind of what I was worried about.”

Sunita Sah
Right. Interesting. You see, now it’s out there and everybody’s heard it.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. All right. Well, so then, when you say scripts, I love scripts. Can you give us some other favorite turns-of-a-phrase that work wonders?

Sunita Sah
Yeah, so I have to stress “What do you mean by that?” It’s such a great one that I use over and over again. It’s so simple. Just, “I’m not comfortable with that.” Like, for example, when you were talking to them about your internet speed, and you know the fact that it’s different to what you’re saying, “I’m not comfortable with that.”

It’s a great opening into, “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s quite right for me, you know. I’m not feeling comfortable here. What can you say to make me feel more comfortable?” And then they will be acting with conviction, it’s like, “I’m still not comfortable with this,” right? It’s sticking to it at that point. So, they’re two great ones, “What do you mean by that?” “I’m not comfortable with this.”

“Can you clarify? Can you clarify?” again is another one. Just use those three. And then the other thing that you can do is think about many of the situations that need our defiance are ones that we’ve experienced again and again. As I said, Rosa Parks had been on that bus many times before. She’d experienced it, many other situations before.

So, think about the situations that we’re in that we comply that doesn’t sit right with us, and then think, “What is it that I wish I would have said or how I could have said it?” Because sometimes we can follow up, like, if email is easier for you, you can maybe compose like a very polite email. And I did this quite recently, “Oh, could you help me understand why this decision was made? Any clarification that you can give would be greatly helpful.” And, actually, the decision got reversed, which I was amazed about.

So, just asking those questions, you’re still in a subservient position, but you’re defying, you’re on the stage to the final act of defiance. And even those questions can jump you straight up to stage five.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m thinking about any general pointers or principles to bear in mind. If we’re worried that if we defy too often, does it seem like, “Oh, you know, Sunita is not a team player. She’s difficult to work with. She’s selfish”? Any thoughts on how we can defend against negative reputational impacts?

Sunita Sah
Yeah. So, a few things there is, first of all, I’m not talking about cooperation. We can all be cooperative, we can all be team players, but often the best thing as a team player is to point out if you’re going down the wrong track. So, the people that you work with that tell you their concerns, do you see them as being difficult or do you see them as being really helpful?

So, a lot of this is to do with how it’s communicated and whether you’re offering great ideas or avoiding huge errors. And again, it depends on the workplace. So, if you’re in a workplace that really can see sort of the benefits of people not being 100% compliant, right? There are some workplaces where you might not be able to do that at all.

But, hopefully, in most of the healthy workplaces that we’re in, when you are defiant, it’s going to be something positive, not just for you in terms of, like, your selfish needs, but for the organization as a whole. And when I look at, like, I’ve interviewed whistleblowers and things, what I’ve found is that these whistleblowers are not doing this for selfish reasons.

If they were, they would not say anything at all because some of the costs of whistleblowing are huge. They are really huge. They take a big toll on people. And I’m not saying that we should be whistleblowers, but actually these people are the ones that really believe in the mission of the organization, and they want to bring the organization up to align with the values that they say that it has. That’s what concerns them.

And so, the people that are defying are actually defying from a great place. It’s the people that are just complying, even when they know that something is wrong, that leads to the negative outcomes most of the time. But I would also add to that that we choose when it’s the right time and the right place for that defiance to be effective, and to be seen as a team player.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, any final thoughts, top dos and don’ts to make sure to mention?

Sunita Sah
Absolutely. So, one of the key things that, you know, once you’ve learned the difference between compliance and defiance and consent, because there’s differences in those aspects, the five stages of defiance, and really got rid of the myth of defiance as being something negative, the key thing that I want from people is that those people that say they want to defy but they don’t know how is to know that it’s not a personality, it’s a practice, and it’s a skillset that we can all learn.

And it’s not just for the brave, for the extraordinary. It’s available and it’s necessary for all of us, and it’s to start building up that skillset. So, I have a defiance compass that asks three questions, “Who am I?” So, it’s really understanding your values and what you stand for. “What type of situation is this?” This is the safety and effectiveness that we were talking about. And then that last question is, “What does a person like me do in a situation like this?”

And this is tapping into your aspirational self to really understand, “If I am a person who values integrity or justice or equality…” whatever you value, “…what would I do in a situation like this?” And that really gets us in alignment with who we aspire to be, who we want to be, rather than regretting by not failing to put our values into action.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sunita Sah
“Under duress, we don’t rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Sunita Sah
Yes. So, I actually really like the Milgram studies, the Obedience to Authority studies. To some people it’s controversial, but what I find really fascinating about these studies, and there’s been a series of them, is that people really often focus on that stark delineation between those that comply and those that defy.

But if you delve into the actual participants, and we’re talking about the study where subjects came in and they were told that they were taking part in a learning experiment. And what actually happened was the experimenter asked them to give harmful electric shocks to another person. And what Milgram found was that two thirds of people would go ahead and give electric shocks up to a very fatal dose of 450 volts just because somebody else told them to.

But when you look at those participants that did comply, they’re not just happily giving the shocks. They’re actually showing signs of nervous behavior. You know, they’re stuttering, they’re sweating, they don’t want to do it, they just don’t know how to say no.

And that gives us a lot of hope in that if we can learn how to defy, then we don’t have to be those people that are pushing the lever for 450 volts when we don’t want to.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Sunita Sah
Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Sunita Sah
Oh, a daily walk every single day. If I can do it first thing in the morning, it just sets me up for the day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share with folks that really seems to connect and resonate with them, they quote back to you often?

Sunita Sah
I would say the definition of defiance is one that they come back with, like just learning sort of what defiance actually is. And then also learning the difference between compliance and consent. If you have a minute, I can really quickly take you through the difference between that.

So, compliance is what we have been talking about, something that we were socialized to do, that we slide into it. It’s usually some external force that causes us to do so. But when I think about consent, I take informed consent in medicine and I apply it to other decisions that we make. And for that, we need five elements.

We need capacity, so not being under the influence of drugs or alcohol or being too sick. We need the brain capacity. We need the knowledge, but it’s not just the information. We need the true understanding, which is the third element, like a real grasp of the risks and the benefits and the alternatives.

Then the fourth element is this freedom to say no, because if we don’t have the freedom to say no, it’s merely compliance. It’s not consent. And if those four elements are there – the capacity knowledge, understanding, the freedom to say no – then the fifth element is your authorization, your true yes and your true no.

It’s very different to compliance. Your true yes, consent, is radically different to compliance even though people conflate the two.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Sunita Sah
You can go to my website, which is SunitaSah.com, S-U-N-I-T-A S-A-H dot com. I have a newsletter on Substack which is free to subscribe. It’s called Defiant by Design, and you will get more things, more knowledge about defiance, compliance, and other research on personal and professional growth. And also, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram. That’s all there on my website.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Sunita Sah
Have a mindset shift as to what do you think about defiance being a particular way. And then just ask yourself, when you’re in a situation, “Does this situation go against my values? And what would a person like me, with these values, do in a situation like this?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sunita, thank you.

Sunita Sah
Thank you very much.