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

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

Jul 31, 2025•45 min

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Episode description

Dr. Sunita Sah reveals the dangers of compliance and offers strategies for building the skill of defiance.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) The powerful force that makes saying no so difficult

2) How to disagree while still being a team player

3) A super sentence to make defiance easier

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— ABOUT SUNITA —

Sunita Sah is a national bestselling author, an award-winning professor at Cornell University and an expert in organizational psychology. She leads groundbreaking research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance. A trained physician, she practiced medicine in the United Kingdom and worked as a management consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. She currently teaches executives, leaders, and students in healthcare and business.

Dr. Sah is a sought-after international speaker and consultant, advisor to government agencies, and former Commissioner of the National Commission on Forensic Science. Her multidisciplinary research and analyses have been widely published in leading academic journals and media entities including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American. She lives with her husband and son in New York.

• Book: Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes

• Study: “Kicking Yourself: Going Against Your Inclinations Leads to Greater Feelings of Control and Culpability” with Kaitlin Woolley

• Website: SunitaSah.com

• Substack: Defiant by Design

• Instagram: @drsunitasah

• LinkedIn: Dr. Sunita Sah

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Study: Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (Perennial Classics) by Stanley Milgram

• Book: Animal Farm by George Orwell

• Study: Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment

— THANK YOU SPONSORS! —

• Strawberry.me. Claim your $50 credit and build momentum in your career with Strawberry.me/Awesome