When I saw the word defiance in the title of a podcast episode featuring Dr. Sunita Sah, I almost skipped it.
The word hit something in me. It felt sharp—aggressive even—and not something I resonated with. But I challenged myself to listen. And I’m so glad I did.
As I heard Dr. Sah reframe defiance in a completely new way, I felt something click. She wasn’t talking about rebellion for the sake of being a rebel—she was describing what it means to stand in alignment with our values, especially when we feel pressure to do otherwise.
Dr. Sunita Sah is a physician turned organizational psychologist and a tenured professor at Cornell University. Her national bestseller, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes, explores how we can act with integrity even when there’s pressure to comply. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American.
To defy is simply to act in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise.
—Sunita Sah
Sunita grew up in a culture that equated obedience with goodness. “We start equating being compliant with being good, and being defiant with being bad,” she explained. But through both personal experience and years of research, she began to question that assumption.
“I really started to wonder, is it sometimes bad to be so good? What do we sacrifice by being so compliant?”
Rather than viewing defiance as disobedience or aggression, she now defines it as something more powerful: “To defy is simply to act in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise.” With this redefinition, defiance becomes a form of integrity—a way to reclaim our agency.
Automatic Compliance Can Come At A Cost
“We’re so trained to comply,” Dr. Sah told me, “and we don’t get trained for defiance.” The result? We stay silent when something feels off. We go along when we know we should speak up. And in some industries, that silence can have devastating consequences.
“One survey found that nine out of 10 healthcare workers, most of them nurses, don’t speak up when they see a colleague or a physician making a mistake,” she said. “And it’s similar in other industries as well. If you look at another survey of crew members on commercial airlines, only half of them spoke up when they noticed an error.”
Even when the stakes aren’t life or death, staying silent can corrode our sense of self. “If you’re silent when you feel something is wrong, it can really be quite soul destroying.”
That Tension You Feel? It’s Not Weakness—It’s Wisdom
A big part of learning to defy is learning to listen to what Sunita calls tension—that internal discomfort we feel when something doesn’t sit right.
“Tension is the first stage of defiance,” she explained. “We sweep it away thinking it’s not worth our doubt, not worth our anxiety, that somebody else probably knows better. But really listening to that tension is very important.”
Tension is the first stage of defiance.
—Sunita Sah
Dr. Sah shared a personal example from her time as a patient in the ER. Even though she, a trained physician, knew a CT scan wasn’t necessary, she found herself saying yes to it anyway.
“I should have said no, and yet, just because the doctor told me to have it, I found it very difficult… I thought the tension would go away, but it didn’t. It actually made me feel worse and it grew and I experienced a lot of regret from it.”
Her takeaway: Even those with knowledge and experience need to train for defiance. “I realized I need to train myself for defiance.”
The Psychology Behind Our Tendency to Obey
During her medical training, Dr. Sah took a year to study psychology. That’s when she first encountered the famous—and ethically controversial—Milgram experiment on obedience. In this 1960s study at Yale, participants were told by an authority figure to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to another person (an actor who did not receive the shocks, but the participants didn’t know that) whenever they gave an incorrect answer. Despite hearing protests and signs of pain, many participants continued simply because they were told to.
The results were startling, revealing how easily people can comply with authority—even when it conflicts with their values. “What they found was that every single person pulled the lever at 150 volts. Every single person pulled the lever at 300 volts. And 65% pulled the lever at 450 volts—the deadly maximum voltage.”
What fascinated her most wasn’t just the obedience. It was the tension participants showed.
“They had many signs of nervous laughter, they were sweating, they were stuttering… It wasn’t that they were happy to go up to 450 volts. They were really trying to resist. They just didn’t know how to resist.”
That’s what drives her work now—giving people the tools to resist when it matters most.
Two Essential Elements: Responsibility And Skill
According to Sunita, defiance isn’t about being loud or confrontational. It’s about building the skill to act when our values are at risk.
Defiance is available and necessary for all of us.
—Sunita Sah
What does that require? “First of all, taking responsibility for our actions. Second, developing our skills to defy. Because our skill set really drives our confidence and our ability to say no.”
Sunita emphasizes starting small. Speak up in everyday low-stakes moments—like when a taxi driver takes the long route or when a colleague makes an offhand comment that doesn’t sit right. “If you are not used to being defiant, if you’ve never been trained for defiance, we want to find some small situations where we can start practicing.”
And anticipate. “We can start thinking about these situations that we might encounter… visualize it, and then we practice by scripting it out and role playing. That’s the thing that changes our neural pathways.”
How To Support Others In Defying
Defiance is a skill and we can help others build it too. So how do we encourage others—especially team members—to own their agency?
“In work situations, people don’t speak up due to two main reasons… they don’t feel safe, or they feel it won’t be effective,” Dr. Sah explained. “What leaders can do is create the type of environment where it becomes very apparent that it’s safe. And that they’re going to act on it.”
A Mindset Shift For All Of Us
If you take just one thing from Sunita’s work, let it be this:
“Defiance can be quiet, it can be subtle, and it can be done in a way that’s more natural for us. You don’t have to have a self concept of being a superhero or having a strong personality or being larger than life. It isn’t just for the brave or the extraordinary. Defiance is available and necessary for all of us.”
In Bold Gratitude,
Lainie
Connect with and Learn from Sunita Sah:
Book: Defy: The Power Of No In A World That Demands Yes
Website: SunitaSah.Com
Newsletter: Defiant By Design
Discover Your Defiance Style: Take the Quiz
