'The Power of No' with Dr Sunita Sah

In this episode of The Evolving Leader, hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are joined by Dr. Sunita Sah, a physician turned organisational psychologist and Professor of Management at Cornell University. Together they explore the power of saying “no” in a world that rewards compliance. Drawing from her acclaimed book “Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes”, Dr Sah reveals how our upbringing, institutions, and social pressures teach us to equate being “good” with being obedient, and how that conditioning can silence our values. She introduces the concept of “insinuation anxiety,” the discomfort of implying distrust when we disagree, and shares how to build the courage and skill to act in alignment with what truly matters.

For senior leaders, this conversation reframes defiance as an essential leadership practice, not rebellion, but integrity in action. Sah explains the five stages of defiance, the cost of compliance, and why organisations that cultivate psychological safety and intellectual humility outperform those that suppress challenge. It’s a thought-provoking guide to leading with authenticity, courage, and moral clarity in complex systems where it’s often easier to say yes.

Further materials from Sunita Sah:

“Defy: The Power of No in a Worlds That Demands Yes”, (Blink Publishing, February 2025)

“The science of defiance: A psychology researcher explains why people comply – and how to resist”, (The Conversations, September 2025)

“America thinks it’s a country of free thinkers. But we’re actually compliant”, (Los Angeles Times, February 2025)

 “How to Say No and Mean It”, (Psychology Today, January 2025)

 

 Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Episode Transcript

Jean Gomes (00:14):
From our earliest years, we are constantly defined
by the expectations of others,starting with our parents and
teachers, our friends and thencolleagues. So saying no can be
supremely difficult. Defy bySamantha Shah unpacks the art of
refusal, shifting ourassumptions from it being an

(00:34):
angry or passive aggressive actto being the means to gracefully
align our intentions andbehaviour. Tune in to an
important conversation on theevolving leader.

Scott Allender (00:44):
Hi folks.
Welcome to the evolving leader,the show born from the belief
that we need deeper, moreaccountable and more human
leadership to confront theworld's biggest challenges. I'm
Scott Allender, and with me, asalways, is leadership expert
Jean Gomes, and we are excitedabout the conversation we are
about to embark on, and I thinkyou will be too, because it's a
topic that we all have varyingdegrees of experience with. From

(01:08):
our earliest moments as youngpeople, we are influenced about
many things, but one of them is,how is our experience of being
able to say no? What is ourpermission to say no? Some, you
know,many of us feel that we have to
be assertive or withdrawing, orsome of us end up being passive

(01:29):
aggressive with our nose.
There's a whole array ofexperiences we have, and today
we're going to unpack that, andwe're going to do it with an
expert in the space. We'rejoined today by Dr Sunita Sara
who is as a physician turnedOrganisational Psychologist and
Professor of Management atorganisation Cornell University,
SC Johnson College of Business.
She's a leading scholar oninfluence, advice and

(01:53):
compliance, and her researchinvestigates why people follow
or resist guidance, especiallyunder conflicts of interest, and
how transparency,professionalism and culture and
norms shape our judgement. Herdebut book defy the power of no
in a world that demands yes hasquickly garnered considerable
critical acclaim, and we aredelighted to welcome her to the

(02:14):
show to explore this work. DrSah, welcome to the evolving
leader.

Sunita Sah (02:20):
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for
inviting me,

Scott Allender (02:23):
of course. So let's jump in. Can you set some
context for your work? What wasthe what was the route, what was
the journey that led you toexplore this topic.

Sunita Sah (02:34):
Well, I've been fascinated by what that single
powerful word defy means for avery long time. As a child, I
was known for being an obedientdaughter and a student, I asked
my dad at one point, what doesmy name Sunita mean? And he
said, My My name, Sunita inSanskrit means good, and so I

(02:58):
mostly lived up to that. I didwhat I was told. I did what was
expected, went to school ontime, did all my homework, I
even had my hair cut the way myparents wanted me to. And that
is a lot of the interpretationthat we get from being good.
It's like, what does it mean?
Does it mean to fit in, to obey,to be polite, to not question
authority. And many people, notjust me, many people have that

(03:21):
socialisation when they'reyoung, not just from parents,
but from teachers and thecommunity, to be good, and they
start equating being good withbeing compliant and being bad
with being defiant, and thenthat becomes really difficult
for us to defy when we getolder. So having been brought up
with this master class almost incompliance, and certainly, my

(03:44):
first career as a physician wasdue to expectations, I really
wanted to delve in and look atwhy people go along with bad
advice. And so it first of allstarted off in the in medicine,
where my first career was, butit expanded out to finance the
criminal justice system, andthen any kind of interpersonal

(04:05):
relationship, really looking atthe powerful forces that keep us
compliant and silent. And wemight think it's a good thing,
but what I found in my ownresearch and other research that
I delved into is that it cancause serious problems if we are
always so good, if we're alwaysso compliant. And that really

(04:25):
got me thinking, is it sometimesbad to be so good? What do we
actually sacrifice by being socompliant?

Jean Gomes (04:35):
Sunita, welcome to the show. You write that
Defiance is not just saying noto something that feels wrong,
but saying yes to the world youwant to create. So if every
listener pause right now tochoose one norm to defy or one
thing that they wanted tocreate, what would that be that
you'd hope they'd pick? And why?
Well, I think the first part ofthe work is really thinking

(04:57):
about, who am I and what are myvalues? Because this is
something that we forget a loton a daily basis. We think that
we are high integrity, honesty,benevolence, compassion. We
think we live by these values.

Sunita Sah (05:14):
Yes, and yet, what I find is, in my research, over
and over again, what peoplebelieve their values to be is
quite different from how theyactually behave. And so how do
we decrease that gap? Is reallyabout connecting with your
values, and then about beingable to put your values into
action, because we so oftenfreeze in certain situations,

(05:36):
it's not that we completelyforget our values, we just don't
know how to enact them, and sowe need the skill set. So in
terms of pausing, I thinkpausing is really great, but
it's really recognising what aremy values. Like a lot of people
don't think about their valuesunless they're explicitly asked
to think about them and why thisis so important is that if you

(05:59):
think about your values and youwrite them down, the research
shows that you're more likely toact in alignment with them. So
just writing them down andsaying why they're important to
you is a really good exercise,and then clarifying your values
as well, has shown that we havea lower stress response, lower
cortisol levels. So it's reallygreat in numerous ways to know

(06:22):
what our values are, and that isthe first step really
identifying who am I and what doI stand for, because once we
know that, then we can thinkabout, how do I get the skill
set to defy How do I get theskill set to say no in certain
situations that go against myvalues? Just dig into that for a
tiny bit longer, because whenyou know you described a set of

(06:46):
values that you grew up withthat have been kind of viewed
and viewed from your parents aswhat could look like, and
therefore there's values in inthat. How does one
kind of ensure that these are myactual values rather than the
ones that I've espoused? BecauseI've just almost on autopilot,
thought this what I should besaying about myself. Yeah,

(07:07):
that's a great question. So whenI talk about sort of the
obedience I had, or compliancethat I had, I wouldn't really
name it a value, it was like adefault compliance to put your
full trust in other people andwant to live up to their
expectations or please otherpeople. So in actual fact, that

(07:27):
really comes from not knowingwhat our values are and what we
want is following what otherpeople expect of us. And if you
my definition of compliance isreally it's something you either
slide into automatically. It's adefault response, but it comes
from something external, someexternal for force, you know, an
order, a suggestion, or evensociety's expectations. That is

(07:50):
compliance is not what I callconsent. Consent is
fundamentally different, but ourvalues is something when I ask
my executive students to thinkabout their values and write
them down, it is something thatwe develop often in childhood or
young adulthood, like we have anencounter or something that's
really important to us, and thenwe realise, oh, integrity is

(08:13):
really important to me, orliving my life in this
particular way is something Iwant to live up to, and I
haven't been doing that. Infact, let me tell you about a
little exercise that I give mystudents. I basically ask them
to rate themselves on theirlevel of honesty relative to
other people in the class. So ifthey think they are the least

(08:36):
honest person in the room, thenthey should rate themselves at
zero. If they think they're themost honest person in the room,
it should be 100 but if it'sthey're about average, it should
be 50. And you can probablyguess the results I get year on.
Yeah, everybody's honest.
Everybody's honest. Everybody'ssaying like 8590 95 right? Which

(08:58):
is impossible, because half theclass needs to be above 50, and
half the class below. But hardlyanyone says 50, and nobody is
going below 50. So we rateourselves, and we value honesty
a lot, right? It's veryimportant to us to have this
character trait of displayinghonesty and integrity. And yet,

(09:20):
when it comes to it on a day today basis, when we see injustice
or we see something thatrequires us to do something that
would mean that we're acting inalignment with that value, we
fail to do it, and that's notbecause we've forgotten our
moral compass. It's becausewe've been so trained to be

(09:41):
compliant and silent, we forgetto speak up. So for example, One
survey found that nine out of 10healthcare workers, most of them
nurses, do feel toouncomfortable to speak up when
they see a colleague or aphysician making an error, and
that could be a life and deathsituation. But in many

(10:02):
situations, we don't speak upwhen we see something is wrong,
even when we know it's wrong.
And in my research, I've foundthat giving people really
obviously bad advice, they go.
Along with it, so we're muchmore compliant than we think we
are.

Scott Allender (10:19):
I really like this distinction between
compliance and consent. I thinkthat's super helpful.
I've got so many questions, andI want to dig more into the
medical, medical example youjust gave, and as a important
illustration of why defiance canbe so valuable. And what I'm
hearing you say in this isthere's a lot of extrinsic sort

(10:40):
of pressure around creatingvalues that help us navigate the
stories in which we live. Right?
So if you've got a high value

Sunita Sah (10:48):
family around certain demonstrating a certain
goodness or compliance withcertain behaviours, you're going
to adapt that strategy becauseit's going to help you survive.
Help you survive your childhoodand navigate that world. It
doesn't mean it's your natural,inborn sense of how you want to
be. I'm curious what else youfound, because as you're talking
I'm thinking, I can think ofpeople like you who are probably

(11:08):
super compliant and just wantedto like, avoid friction, but I
can think of other people I grewup with who were particularly
rebellious, right? They didn't.
They had no problem saying no.
Almost felt like they would defyfor the sake of defiance. Did
your research kind of cover thesort of vast majority and sort
of different spectrum of howpeople show up to this? I'd be

(11:28):
curious to see what you Yes, itdid absolutely. So yes, we do
have a range in differentrelationships with both
compliance and defiance. And socoming back to what is that
distinction between complianceand consent? Because it's often
conflated, but it's actuallyfundamentally different. If we
take informed consent inmedicine, it's really great to

(11:51):
have that framework and apply itto other decisions that we make
in our lives. So to have sort ofconsent, or what I call your
true Yes, you need fiveelements. So first of all, you
need capacity, so that you'renot under the influence of drugs
or alcohol, you're not too sick.
Then you need information. Youneed knowledge. So you need to
be given good information aboutthe decision that you're going

(12:13):
to make. But it's not enoughjust to have that information.
The third element isunderstanding, a thorough grasp
of the risks, the benefits andthe alternatives. So if you have
the capacity, the knowledge, theunderstanding, the fourth
element is the freedom to sayno, because if you don't have
the freedom to say no, then it'smerely compliance. It's not

(12:34):
consent. If those four elementsare present, then the fifth
element is your authorization,which is a deeply considered
verbalization of your trueconsent, which should be in
alignment with your values. Soif you want to say yes, that's
your true, yes, if you want tosay no, that's your true No, and
that's defiance. So defiancealso requires the same five

(12:57):
elements that consent requires,so they're two sides of the same
coin, and really understandingthat is important when we think
about different acts that wemight call defiance, which might
be defiance, or it might just bewhat I call false defiance. So
if you think about teenagers,for example, and my son went

(13:20):
through a stage where he woulddo the exact opposite of
anything I asked him to do. Nowsome people might think that's
defiant, and I can understandwhy they would term that
defiance, but if you think aboutmy definition of what is a true
No, if he is doing the exactopposite of what I am asking, he

(13:43):
is listening very intently towhat I want and then doing the
opposite. So it's actuallyexternally imposed. It's not
coming from any true values orthoughtful process. It's just
opposition to what I want. Andso yes, you might have that
opposition. But is that the typeof defiance I'm talking about?
And here now, once we'veclarified what compliance and

(14:06):
consent is, what a true yes anda true no is, it's really
interesting to think about, whatabout that word defiance? Now,
if you look at the OxfordEnglish Dictionary. They define
defiance as to challenge thepower of someone else openly and
boldly. But I don't usuallydisagree with the Oxford English
Dictionary, you know, havinggrown up in the UK, but in this

(14:28):
case, I do think that thisdefinition is too narrow and it
doesn't honour the agency thatwe have, because sometimes we
need to defy to stay inalignment with our values. And
my definition of Defiance is todefy is simply to act in
alignment with your values whenthere is pressure to do
otherwise. So we transform thisaspect of defiance from this

(14:53):
almost negative connotation thatit seems to have to a positive
force, even pro social insociety, and know that we need
to do this. One of the reasonswhy I really wanted to
to redefine defiances in thisway was medicine. Was.

(15:13):
First degree, but the third yearof medical school, I went to do
an intercalated degree inpsychology, and that's when I
first came across the infamousMilgram Stanley experiment. So
the obedience to authority,where he had participants come
in and think they were takingpart in an experiment on

(15:36):
learning, but it was actually tosort of look at their obedience
levels and whether they wouldgive harmful electric shocks or
what they thought were harmfulelectric shocks to another
person in a different room. Anda lot of them did. A lot of
them, they had to read out wordpairs to this other person that

(15:58):
they thought was anotherparticipant who was actually an
actor. There was no actualelectric shocks being given, but
every time the actor got theword pair wrong, they had to go
up from 15 volts in 15 voltincrements all the way up to 450
volts, which was labelled as x,x, x, severe shock danger, and

(16:18):
two thirds of participants didgo up all the way to 450, volts.
And Milgram called them theobedience subjects, and the ones
that said, No, I'm going to stopthe defiant subjects. So now we
immediately see why defiance canbe positive, because we don't
want to be so obedient andcompliant to people if they're
asking us to do something that'sharmful, harmful to ourselves or

(16:42):
harmful to other people, wemight not think that we're going
to be in that situation, or ifthat we were in that situation,
we'd find it easy to say no. Butin many of the experiments that
I've run and other studies thatI've run that have been far more
ethical than this one,we see high levels of compliance
that people their privatepreferences are very different

(17:03):
from their public behaviour. Sohow do we get those two things
to align?

Jean Gomes (17:11):
I'm fascinated by this set of ideas in the context
of organisations, buildaccountability, Sinclair to
prevent people, leaders,particularly, from having to
deal with difficultconversations. So you're in the
queue at the airline and you'retold your flight's cancelled or
you're bumped off and you can'tcomplain. There's no one to

(17:34):
complain to. You can't go up,you can't go down. It's an
accountability sink. It's analgorithm that prevents you and
you know, increasinglyorganisations just use this to
scale their organisations, toprevent them from having to deal
with, with with with moral andinterpersonal challenges. How
does defiance in that contextgoing to work?

(17:59):
Defiance in terms of thestranded passengers complaining,
either the stranded passenger oractually the employee who's
thinking, No, I this is wrong.
You know, I'm doing somethingwrong on behalf of the company,
because the system is telling meto do something that's wrong,
which is what exactly to lie, tonot meet the customer's needs to

Sunita Sah (18:25):
to deny accountability for something
right now? Yeah, so I mean this.
I like the example, but thishappens more, like in many more
places where you might get askedto lie or
not give the whole truth aboutsomething. And then this comes
down to, what,where am I working? What? What

(18:46):
happens when my boss asks me todo something unethical? Because,
you know, it could start offwith something small, but then
it could go to something reallyquite large, and you could find
yourself complicit in somethingthat really doesn't sit well
with you. And in thesesituations, we have to think
about like again, who am I? Whatare my values? What do I stand

(19:08):
for? And the whistleblowers thatI've interviewed, which is one
extreme end of defiance, theysuffer many costs from that,
right? So I don't want to saydefiance doesn't have costs. It
definitely has costs, but thereason that whistleblowers do
this mostly is that they arevery much connected with their
values and responsibility, andthey want to see that the

(19:30):
organisation that they'reworking for lives up to those
values. So instead of being likethese problem makers, or for
being defiant, I find that thewhistleblowers are actually very
much in alignment with theirvalues, and they really want the
organisations, institutions,sometimes the ones that they

(19:51):
love and really believe in, liveup to what they should be living
up to. And when they see harmbeing done to themselves or to
other people, they take theresponsibility they don't
dissipate it to someone else,and just say I was following
orders or other things thatMilgram found with the two
thirds of of participants thatwent up to the most severe shock
levels in.

(20:13):
Is that if we can take thatresponsibility both as leaders
and employee employees, thenthat's going to change the
environment, and we need to makean assessment as to
whether Defiance is going to besafe and whether it's going to
be effective. They're the twoquestions that I find that

(20:34):
people asking organisations whenthey're considering whether to
speak up or not, whether to defyor not, is it safe for me to do
so, and if I do so, will it beeffective? And what we find is
that, you know, if it's notsafe, of course, right? You're
going to hesitate. If there'sfinancial consequences, you're
going to lose a job, you'regoing to lose a relationship, if

(20:55):
there's even physical safety incertain situations, you want to
think about safety along allthose different measures. And
then also, I've spoken up manytimes before, but nothing ever
changes. I hear that a lot thatyou want your leaders to make it
safe for people to speak up andthen also take action when once
they speak up that way, you'regoing to create not just a

(21:18):
psychologically safeenvironment, but also an
effective environment in termsof improving things. If you say
your values are customerservice, to put the customer
first, transparency, honesty,then you want to live up to
those values. You

Jean Gomes (21:37):
you talk about five stages of defiance. Can you just
walk us through those? Becausethey're kind of like a personal
change operating system forpeople. Be really interesting,
just to get your sense of howyou came up with that and how it
works.

Sunita Sah (21:53):
Yeah, absolutely. So these five stages I've found are
really useful to think about,especially when you're learning
how to defy because many peopleexperience them.
Not everybody experiences everystage, and you can go back and
forth or skip levels, but it's areally useful framework that you
can probably even see inyourself, and also train

(22:16):
yourself to get from one stageto the other if you find it
difficult to defy. So the firststage, which I think many people
are familiar with, is thetension that we feel when we
think this is the right thing todo, or we want to say something,
but there's this expectation todo something else. So it's that
tension that arises in thatsituation, and it can manifest

(22:39):
in people in different ways. Sosome people might feel like some
unease in their stomach. Otherpeople might feel a dry mouth, a
constricted throat, a headache,you know, some people might
sweat or stutter. There's manydifferent ways to feel that
tension. And in fact, inmilgram's experiments, many of
the participants displayed signsof tensions, of this nervous

(23:02):
laughter, this questioning, thisstuttering, like they weren't
just happy to go and deliverharmful electric shocks. They
were really trying to say no,they just didn't know how. So
first of all, that aspect oftension in stage one is
important that you don't try topush it away like you know,
dismiss it, say it's not worthour anxiety. It's not worth our

(23:25):
doubt. Stage two is actuallyacknowledging that to ourselves
and examining it. Why do I feelthis tension? Is this, Emma? Is
this a situation in which Imight need to defy
so once we've explicitlyacknowledged that to ourselves,
then stage three is expressingthat to someone else, so

(23:45):
vocalising it to another person.
Now this is a really criticalstage, because there's a number
of things that goes on here andin this stage. Once you get to
stage three, the research shows,again, you're more likely to get
to the end stage five. And thatact of defiance, and this is
simply telling someone I'm notcomfortable with this. Or can
you clarify this? Or have youconsidered this? They're very

(24:08):
small scripts that you can usethat something that's more
natural for you. So you're notsaying yes straight away. You're
just saying, I'm not sure. I'mnot comfortable. Tell me more.
What does this mean? What aboutdoing this instead? So it's
really asking questions andclarification, because if you
can get clarification onsomething, it raises the volume

(24:29):
on the situation. I love thisscript of what do you mean by
that? Because it really getspeople to have to articulate
what they mean, and that canhelp clarify, and even if they
don't change their mind, theother person, other people have
heard it, and they're morelikely to think twice when

(24:49):
you're in the same room, or theother people that are present
are in the same room, so justgetting out there in the
environment this raise, you'vealready changed the water in
which everyone is swimming, soyou can still be in a
subservient position in stagethree, you know, you're merely
asking for clarification. Stagefour is when you say you can't

(25:10):
do it. Is your threat a.
Non compliance that, no, I can'tdo this. And sticking with that
is important, if people try topressure you to go back to some
of the previous stages. So it'sjust saying, No, I'm sorry that
doesn't sit right with me. Idon't think that's the right way
to go, or it's just simply notright for me. And if you can

(25:30):
stick with that, then the nextstage is your act of defiance.
And what's really fascinatingabout that stage is that if you
can get to that stage, thattension that you had in stage
one, it just melts away. Itdissipates. And so here is one
of the positive aspects aboutdefiance that people seem to
neglect. We always think aboutthe costs of defiance, but not

(25:52):
about the costs of compliance,because often the cost of
compliance is that tension thatyou try to get rid of.
It doesn't go away. It usuallystays with you. If this is an
important decision, especiallyif it's something that might
cause you harm or you reallydon't want to do, you feel
resentful about it in workplacesthat if you're going along with

(26:13):
things that you think areunethical. It takes its toll.
You know, emotionally, evenphysically. You know the chronic
inflammation, burnout, stress,anxiety, all of those things we
need to think about the cost ofcompliance as well as defiance.
But if you can get to stage fiveand you act in alignment with
your values, that tensiondissipates. You feel more

(26:36):
yourself, more authentic,there's more honesty, there's
more joy in that you've managedto do what you would really want
to do. You've managed to alignyour private preferences with
your public behaviour.

Scott Allender (26:48):
You also talk about this idea of insinuation
anxiety, so people acceptingadvice that they privately
doubt.

Sunita Sah (26:57):
What habits can we adopt? What What strategies can
we adopt be? You know, inaddition to our inventory of our
values and the cost ofcompliance and the cost of
defiance, what else can we do tosort of address this and take
this head on? Yeah, soinsinuation anxiety, you can
just explain a little bit aboutwhat exactly that is. So it's a

(27:20):
distinct type of anxiety that wefeel when we start being
concerned that our noncompliance with somebody else's
wishes is going to beinterpreted as a signal of
distrust, or insinuate that thatperson cannot be trusted, is
incompetent, is plain wrong, issexist or racist. We find it

(27:41):
very difficult to insinuate orgive somebody else a negative
evaluation of themselves. Sothere's many distinct types of
anxiety. So for example, likethe physiological response of
anxiety is the same, but if wethink about performance anxiety,
for example, or social anxiety,people are worried about how

(28:01):
other people are going toevaluate them, and so they feel
anxiety. For that reason,insinuation anxiety is kind of
the reverse. You're worriedabout sending a negative signal
to someone else, a negativeevaluation to someone else, and
this can happen in quite smallstake situation. So
I don't know about you, butlike, imagine being at the

(28:24):
hairdressers, if you were mewith longer hair. If you're at
the hairdressers, and they'resaying, trust me with this new
cut, and they're cutting,cutting, and you're thinking,
stop, stop, stop, but you findit very difficult to say so, and
you hate the cut, and you justsay thank you, and if you like
me, you probably tip them andwalk out and then feel awful
afterwards, you know. So that'show I wound up bald. I may have

(28:45):
a full head of hair, but I justdidn't have the guts to say
anything. So it would have beenhelpful for you to know about
insinuation anxiety, and thiscomes up in these small state
situations andbut also in bigger state
situations. It could be thereasons why nurses find it
difficult to tell physiciansthat they've made a mistake. It
could be why co pilots don'ttell pilots that they're making

(29:08):
an error, because we have thisact of deference, or
this reluctance to imply thatsomebody could be doing
something wrong. So we feel thisanxiety every time we need to
insinuate something negative tosomeone else, and that is
actually quite a powerful force,I found in my research that

(29:30):
keeps us from speaking up. Itpressures us to go along with
other people when we'd rathernot. That feels true to me. But
also, I guess I have a question,

Scott Allender (29:43):
do you think that that's more of a driving
influence in those situationswhere the co pilot doesn't speak
up, or is it more probably asafety issue? Perhaps around
speaking up could cost me my jobif I challenge his authority. Or
is it both? And

Sunita Sah (29:59):
it could be both, right as so in that those
situations where the co pilot,and there's been some research
shown on this and KoreanAirlines, where there is a large
amount of deference given topilots and.
In these situations, we can seethat
this resistance to tell someonethat they are wrong if they're a

(30:22):
superior is quite powerful. AndI think in those situations,
it's not so much theconsequences, because this is
life and death for all of us,you know. So we are really
thinking about just this signalof telling someone who you think
should have your best interestsat heart. As a patient, speaking

(30:43):
to a doctor telling them, oh, Idon't think that's the right
thing for me. Sometimes very,very difficult to do so. And so
that insinuation anxiety, youknow, is something that can be
extremely powerful, that keepsus from even, even when there's
no consequences for defying,even when it's with a total

(31:03):
stranger. We can feelinsinuation, anxiety.

Jean Gomes (31:09):
So defiance doesn't operate in a vacuum. You it's
usually to Well, usually topower, usually to somebody in a
higher authority, more expertiseor so on. How do you
how do you deal with that? Howdo you respond to defiance?
Well, what have you learnedabout that? Yeah, so

Sunita Sah (31:33):
we've covered like two things for why people
actively resist defiance, andthat's the pressure to go along
with other people, includingsome of those psychological
concepts, such as insinuationanxiety we've covered, like this
misunderstanding of whatDefiance is, what compliance and
consent actually are. And thenthe third reason why people

(31:53):
don't defy is that once theywant to or they decide to defy,
they don't actually know how.
They don't have that skill setin the situation. And here it's
about building up the abilityand the confidence to defy, and
that comes with practice,because we've been so trained
for compliance in our childhoodand maybe young adulthood, we

(32:13):
need to train ourselves fordefiance if we haven't had that
training before. And so whatdoes that mean? So in a lot of
situations,defiance, when you think about
big moments of defiance, likeRosa Parks saying no on the bus,
it's preceded by hundreds ofmoments of compliance, you know
there were many times that RosaParks complied with segregation

(32:35):
laws. In this situation, shemight have asked herself those
two questions, is it safe and isit effective? It wasn't actually
safe for her to defy in thatsituation, she received lots of
death threats. Afterwards, shelost her job. She was unemployed
for 10 years. There was lots ofstress and anxiety that came
from that defiance. But for her,the questions were, really, is

(33:00):
it safe enough? Will it beeffective enough? And some
people feel so connected withtheir values that it becomes
very important for them todefine that situation. So that
becomes a personal decision, apersonal cost benefit analysis,
if you like, of when you'regoing to defy or not, but to be
able to defy, you do need topractice for defiance, and many

(33:22):
of the situations where Defianceis required is probably
situations in which we'vecomplied before, so we can
predict them. Oh, I know my bossis going to ask me to do this
unethical thing, because they'veasked me many times in the past,
and we can think about, what isit I would have liked to have
done. What is it I would have Iwould have liked to have said so

(33:43):
we can anticipate it, we canvisualise it, then we can script
it and role play and practicefor it. Why? Because that's the
only way we're going to changeour neural pathways if we've
been socialised to comply andalmost wired to comply. We need
to change those neural pathwaysby practising for defiance and

(34:04):
getting our mouths used tohearing defiant words and our
ears used to hearing defiantwords coming from ourselves. And
we need to do this long beforethe moment of crisis, because we
can't expect to be in asituation and suddenly become
defiant if we haven't before. Sothat practice is really

(34:25):
essential. And in fact, there'sa wonderful quote that's often
attributed to Bruce Lee, but wasactually a Greek poet that said,
under distress, we don't rise tothe level of our expectations.
We fall to our level oftraining. And that is why I say
Defiance is a practice. It's nota personality, and a lot of us

(34:48):
think, you know, that's adefiant person, I'm a compliant
person, but it's not apersonality, it's a practice.
It's the skill set that we canchoose to use or not we can be
compliant one day and defiantthe next day.

Jean Gomes (35:00):
So I have a member of my team who defies me in
his practice and so on becauseI've asked him to do something
that is unreasonable orunethical and so on. What advice
would you give to.
Leaders tonot react immediately out of
habit or anger or, you know, youknow, feeling humiliated or

(35:23):
whatever. What? What do leadersneed to do to be able to embrace
people in their organisationswith good motives trying to do
this.

Sunita Sah (35:37):
So for leaders, when we think about, what do we
actually want from ouremployees? Right? If we want a
healthy workplace with lessanxiety, stress, burnout,
turnover, we want creativity alot of the time, and we want
innovation. And if you ifeverybody is complying and
saying yes, then you're going tolose that. You know, you

(36:01):
actually want people to come upwith new ideas. That's how a
workplace survives, anorganisation survives. And so
you want to cultivate a placewhere people feel safe to speak
up without severe consequences.
You know, they're not going tobe penalised for speaking up.
That's what we callpsychologically safe, and that
you will act on theirsuggestions. Because if you have

(36:23):
that type of workplace, you'regoing to get more innovation,
more creativity, and you'regoing to get a more loyal
workforce, actually, that isless likely to leave because
they can express themselves, andthey can say that here, this
might be a better way, you know.
And we say our mission is this,or we say our values are this,

(36:47):
but if we go along down thisline that's not representing our
values,

Sara Deschamps (36:53):
welcome back to the evolving leader podcast, as
always, if you enjoy what youhear, then please share the
podcast across your network andalso leave us a rating and a
review. Now let's get back tothe conversation.

Scott Allender (37:06):
Your work shows that mandatory conflict of
interest disclosures canbackfire by increasing
compliance with biassed advice.
Can you give us some examplesand talk maybe about some
guardrails to be thinking aboutin this space?

Sunita Sah (37:20):
Yes, this aspect is where I discovered the
psychological process ofinsinuation anxiety. So you can
imagine a situation where you goto see your physician, and the
physician recommends that youenter a clinical trial, and then
they disclose the receipt of areferral fee if you enter the

(37:43):
trial. Now they have to disclosethat. Like, it's required a
disclosure to tell like, if youenter a patient to a clinical
trial and you receive money fordoing so, you must disclose that
to the patient. We all thinkthat's great. We want
transparency. We want to knowwhat's going on. If our advisor
has a conflict of interest, wewant to know about it. But what

(38:03):
I see happen in these situationsis that people are more likely
to comply. Why? Because prior tothe disclosure, there could have
been a range of reasons forrejecting the clinical trial.
It's still really hard to rejectyour doctor, but you could have
said, I don't like thoseparticular side effects, or I
don't want to take it's toorisky for me. I'd rather take it

(38:24):
the standard drug that I've hadin the past. There could be a
range of reasons, but now thatthe doctor has disclosed this
conflict of interest, there'sanother reason that becomes very
salient between you and thedoctor, the patient and the
doctor, and that's you don'ttrust the doctor is giving you
good advice because they havethis conflict of interest, and

(38:44):
you don't want to insinuate thatthe doctor is biassed. And so
what I've found in my studies isthat people will say that they
trust the advice less with thisconflict of interest disclosure,
which is arguably the intendedpurpose of the disclosure.
There's some uncertainty as tothe quality of advice, but at
the same time, they feel moreinsinuation anxiety. They feel

(39:04):
more pressure to comply, andthen they can end up complying
more with advice that they trustless. So in that way,
transparency in this situationactually backfires the conflict
of interest disclosure backfireslike that's not the intended
purpose of the disclosure. Andthere's certain situations where
we can implement disclosure thatis better for the patient, which

(39:27):
is before they go to see thephysician, before they've made
the choice of the physician, andin private, in writing, not
directly in front of them, wherethe signal of rejecting the
doctor's advice is far greater.

Jean Gomes (39:42):
What do you think in terms of the shift to a world
where more things are happening,interactions are automated, and
we have co intelligence and soon? Where does defiance fit into
a world whereit's difficult sometimes to to
know who you're talking to andwhat the motives for various
acts are. I think we want toagain come back to who am I?

(40:07):
What are my values? And thenwhat type of situation is this?
You know?

Sunita Sah (40:13):
Know, yes, you need to look at the source and their
level of expertise. And if it'ssomething that's automated, we
might want to think twice beforethinking, oh, you know, that's
what chat GPT advised me towe might want to think twice and
ask, like, what would be thealternative here? Do we really
have a thorough knowledge andunderstanding. Because again, if

(40:35):
we go back to those fiveelements that we need for both
consent and defiance, thatknowledge and understanding is
very important, and especiallywith the amount of
misinformation that we havehere,

Jean Gomes (40:49):
it's really important to understand that and
look at the source of theinformation. Yeah, because I
think, you know, one of thethings I really love in your
work is that often when peopletalk in this space, there's,
there's a lot of conflatingfeelings with facts. So the
people are acting in define.
They're defying something thatthey they don't really

(41:10):
understand, they don't reallyunderstand themselves, but they
they're defying something thatthat feels a loss of control or
or something like that, ratherthan acting on true values and
an outcome that they canenvisage. And I'm interested in,
you know, some of the widerresearch you've done in the
political sphereabout how you think society

(41:32):
needs to evolve this, becausethis is a significant form of
maturation of a human being tobe able to do this, both in
terms of self awareness and selfunderstanding, because and an
accountability to act upon beinginformed, rather than just react
through an emotional perspectiveand feel that that Defiance is,

(41:54):
you know, is warranted. Yeah, sohere the this aspect of having
intellectual humility is reallyimportant, so knowing that
there's limits to our level ofknowledge, and then being open
to what else could be true inthis situation. And when I teach
critical thinking to mystudents, we go through a very

(42:16):
rigorous process, because

Sunita Sah (42:21):
the first thing is, is really knowing yourself
right? What are my personalbiases? And there's ways to get
to these. I assign a reallygreat case that people have very
different, conflicting views on,and then I ask them, Why? Why is
it that you dislike this thingso much? And really getting to
know yourself is how you getthat wisdom and really thinking,

(42:43):
Well, what if I'm wrong in thissituation, especially if you
love like, if you hone in onthis is right and this is wrong
straight away, or this is thebest solution for this? It's
like, you know, you need tostand back and really look at
the context. And if you cananalyse, like, everything that's
happening in the context, thenyou can determine what is the
problem here, what is theproblem we're trying to solve?

(43:04):
What are the root causes? Andthen what is the best solution,
but always going back tocounteract like, especially if
you're in love with a solutionthat you think is the right way
to go is to ask, What? What ifthis wasn't true? You know, what
if I thought what I think is nottrue? What if something else was

(43:25):
true? Or who is going to hatethis? Why is this risky? What
think about the worst casescenarios in that situation,
rather than just having a senseof, I'm completely right, just
that aspect of intellectualhumility is, I think, something
that's really important forleaders to develop, especially

(43:46):
in today's world.

Jean Gomes (43:48):
And do you see, you know, because there's been some
pretty interesting researchpublished in the last few months
around the falling levels ofconscientiousness in younger
generations and the origins ofwhich are, you know, there's
many things that are at workthere, but what you're talking
about is the opposite of that.
You know you have to be highlyconscientious to defy you. Need

(44:10):
to know who you are, what youreally believe,
the intellectual humility to nottrust your feelings as facts, to
recognise that you might havepartial sight of what's going
on, that you haven't looked atit from other people's
perspectives and so on. What doyou see, both positive and
negative, in terms of, you know,our hope for future generations

(44:34):
be able to do this. What are youseeing? Yeah, so, I mean, I
take, I teach a range ofstudents, and,

Sunita Sah (44:44):
like, most of them are curious. I mean, they're a
self selected group, right? Sothey're going into further
education, but most of them arecurious, and they just need,
like, sometimes an extra push tothink about things that they've
never thought about before. Soproviding that type of
environment, I think, is reallyimportant. So why? You know, I

(45:04):
think this comes back to alarger societal problem is, why
do we have this drop inconscientiousness, and can we
determine.
And what might make people morecurious and in some ways, like
learning from our mistakes anderrors might be one of them. But
again, you still need to have,like the conscientiousness, but
also openness, you know, torealising that we might not be

(45:29):
right all the time. I think thisis a really tricky one to think
about, because even as a juniordoctor, I remember when one of
my first patients came in that Iwas seeing and had been taught
in a particular way, right? Youtake a history, and then you do
an examination, then you come upwith a list of differential

(45:50):
diagnoses, everything you couldit could be. Then you, you know,
request various procedures orinvestigations that might distil
that down, only if it wouldchange clinical practice. And I
had just finished talking to apatient. I hadn't even started
examining her, and the firstthing she said to me was, what's
wrong with me, doctor? And Isaid, exactly what was on my

(46:15):
mind, I don't know yet. Ihaven't examined you. And the
look on her face, she did notwant to see that there was some
uncertainty. And so I realised,okay, then do doctors need to
express more confidence? Orshould they not right? Because
they these are situations wherewe want our doctors to be well
calibrated, so confident whenthey know that this is right,

(46:38):
but Express uncertainty whenthey're not sure. And what I
realised is, I'm not going tocommunicate my uncertainty
immediately to a patient, but atleast I am aware that we have a
list of different things thatcould be and then talk to the
patient once we've narrowedthose things down. So

(46:59):
it's a very difficult questionto think about. How can we
increase conscientiousness?
There are ways to increaseintellectual humility, which I
think is a start, and that couldbe from having people document
known unknowns. So what do Iknow that I don't know that has
been shown to actually increaseintellectual humility, and I'm
actually right at the beginningsof a project where we're looking

(47:22):
at ways and interventions toincrease intellectual humility,
like this is a fairly newconcept in the psychological
literature over the just thelast few years, and so we do
need to do a lot more researchin this, but I think that's
really promising. Way forward isto to look at those
interventions, because if it'sas simple as documenting known

(47:42):
unknowns, or if there's othersimple interventions, I think
this could have a great, greatimpact, not just on workplaces,
but on society as well. Staywith the society piece a bit
longer. Do you think the lack ofintellectual humility is a
considerable factor in what'ssort of happening on the world
stage right now? I'm thinkingmore divisiveness, more you

(48:04):
know, people are so assured oftheir particular position,

Scott Allender (48:10):
the erosion of political norms I'm seeing, you
know, we talked a lot about theimportance of evaluating our own
values and coming back to thoseand anchoring around those. But
I'm seeing, watching people'svalues change considerably, or
at least, you know, reportedlychange as more extremism is
happening in the world.

Sunita Sah (48:31):
That's a lot to unpack with a few minutes we
have left, but I'd love to getyour thoughts on kind of what
you're seeing, what's happening,what's the what's the
opportunity in this? Yes,intellectual humility is
certainly one aspect of that,but also it's people tend to
have a sense of hopelessness attimes where they're not acting

(48:52):
because they think it doesn'tmatter anymore, or like there's
not a lot I can do. And I thinkthat sense of feeling like
there's nothing much I can do isreally preventing change,
because I really do think itstarts with small acts so we can
assess our own personal risk insub defying and some people will

(49:14):
have more risk than others, andthe people that have less
personal risk are the ones thatcan actually do something. Not
everybody can march, protest orspeak up when they really want
to, but I do think it starts offwith the individual person
taking responsibility andthinking about what is possible,
and that is what I hope my workwill do. Like one of the things

(49:37):
that I hoped with the book aswell is that it gives people the
skill set to be able to defywhen they want to, and know that
small acts can make a bigdifference. So we don't need to
be loud or aggressive or violentor have a certain type of
personality. We just need thatmindset shift about what
defiance actually is. It's apositive trait, and it's acting

(50:00):
in alignment with our values,and we can all do it in our own
unique way, with far less angstthan we used to have. And it's
just finding out those ways,because what I don't want is
people that really do want todefy and.

Jean Gomes (50:13):
Speak up and do something, but not knowing how
to do it. And I want to makedefiance accessible, because it
is available and it's necessaryfor all of us to know this. I
think that's a brilliant summaryof your work. And I guess the
last thing I'd love to get asense of, if it's front of mind,

(50:36):
is an act of defiance thatyou've seen personally that's
inspired you.

Sunita Sah (50:42):
Yes, well, I have, like, a very personal story of
defiance, which was when I wasyoung, and
my mother was like the mostobedient, compliant person that
I know. She did all the cooking,the cleaning, the grocery
shopping, everything foreveryone else. And she was
always putting everybody else'sneeds above their own. So I saw

(51:03):
her as extremely compliant,subservient and looking after
other people. And then one day,we were walking back from the
grocery store. I was about sevenor eight in West Yorkshire in
England, and we were draggingour rickety shopping cart behind
us. It's like looks like wheeledluggage, two little wheels, and
we were dragging that behind us.
And it was a long walk backhome, and we decided to take a

(51:25):
shortcut through what we call asnickert in West Yorkshire. And
I was always told never to gothrough the Snicket by yourself,
but we were together. We weretired, we decided to go through
it, and so we entered thealleyway, and that's when we saw
them. So there was a group ofteenage boys. They blocked our
path, and one of them yelledout, go back home. And the

(51:48):
others laughed. Now my reactionwas instant in that situation. I
grabbed my mom's arm and I dideverything that I'd been taught
to do was like, you know, saynothing, avoid conflict, keep
the peace, and I just wanted tomanoeuvre as fast as possible
past the boys. But my mom, whoalways kept her head down and

(52:08):
was quite compliant, she didsomething different that day
that really stunned me. So shewas wearing her blue, green
sari. She had her hair in asingle, neat, long plait at the
back, and I thought she wouldjust walk with me, but she
didn't move. And she turned tothe boys, and she looked them

(52:29):
directly in the eyes, and shesaid, What do you mean? It
wasn't loud, or she wasn'tshouting, but it was
unmistakably defiant. And myheart started racing at this
point. I grabbed her arm eventighter, and I whispered to her,
come on, Ma. And then she saidno to me, and she shook off my
arm, and she put the shoppingcart upright. She put one hand

(52:50):
on her hip. She's She's quitepetite, four foot 10, but
somehow she just seemed tallerin that situation. And she
turned back to the boys again,and she said again, what do you
mean?
And the boys just startedlooking at each other and didn't
say anything. So my mom said,Ah, big, clever boys, yeah, big,

(53:15):
strong, tough boys, right? Andagain, they didn't say anything,
and one of them just looked atthe other, and then they said,
let's go. And they justdispersed. My mom grabbed the
shopping cart, and she walkedreally fast through that
snicker. And I stood therethinking what just happened. And
you know, that showed me so manythings that day, because it

(53:37):
showed me that defiance isn't apersonality, it's a practice.
And I had seen my mom come homemany times muttering, and I
thought she was kind of annoyedabout the shopping cart, but it
must have been that she'd seenthose boys, or, you know, people
like those boys, before, and inthat situation, she decided to
do something different. When Italk about defiance being

(53:59):
transformative for ourselves,and it really is. It also
affects the people around us. Soit has this ripple effect,
because that moment stayed withme for so many years, and it
really affected how I thinkabout defiance. And so what I
hope is that if we can modeldefiance, if we can parent for

(54:19):
it, that one of these days, oneof the teens in that alleyway
will speak up and say,

Scott Allender (54:26):
let them pass, or this is not right, so my
immigrant mother doesn't have tocarry it all alone. So that's
the type of society that I hopefor and that I hope that this
work will make accessible toeveryone. Wow, a powerful story.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you. Thank you for foryour time and your insights.
It's beautiful, beautiful stuff,and so important for the times

(54:49):
that we're living in. And wewish you well and folks, before
you do anything else today, stopright now and order your copy of
defy the power of no in a worldthat demands Yes. Now, don't
defy me. I really want you tostop and order this right now.
It's very important, and untilnext time, remember the world is
evolving. Are you?