Defy

Todd Henry [00:00:02]:
On December 20, 1943, an American B17 bomber called Ye Olde Pub, which was piloted by 2nd Lt. Charlie Brown, was severely damaged during a mission over Germany. With one crew member dead and many others injured, the crippled aircraft struggled to return to friendly territory. A German fighter pilot, Franz Stigler, was dispatched to intercept the vulnerable bomber. Upon approaching, Stigler saw the extensive damage and the injured crew through the aircraft's torn fuselage. So instead of attacking, he made an extraordinary decision. He flew alongside the bomber, escorting it to safety and preventing German anti aircraft guns from firing upon it. Extraordinary.

Todd Henry [00:00:44]:
The American crew, though skeptical of Stigler's original intentions, managed to reach a British airfield. Before departing, Stigler offered a salute to the bomber crew, a gesture of humanity amidst a horrible war. Years later, Brown and Stigler would actually meet, forming a friendship that lasted until their deaths. When asked about this decision, Stigler referenced the words of his former commanding officer in North Africa. He said, quote, if I ever see or hear of you shooting a man in a parachute, I will shoot you myself. To Stigler, the defenseless bomber was no different from a parachuted airman. Despite knowing he would face questioning upon return to base and potentially severe consequences, he chose to defy his commanding officer's orders to shoot down the plane. Now suspend for a minute your beliefs about World War II and who was fighting for each side and who was right and all of that, and just consider the weight of Stigler's very human decision.

Todd Henry [00:01:44]:
His fellow soldiers knew that he'd taken off to intercept the bomber, that he was instructed to shoot it down. Ground forces could see him escorting enemy aircraft. The war was at a critical point in 1943, and he faced potential punishment, severe, severe punishment for his actions of defiance. And yet, Stigler chose principle over compliance. At your personal testing point, everything that you truly believe will be revealed, your values will be tested. In that moment of testing, what will be revealed about what you truly believe, not what you espouse, because it's personally or politically beneficial to you, but the foundation of what you truly hold to be reality. This is a story from my latest book, the Brave Habit. In life and in leadership, we often face moments of testing just like this.

Todd Henry [00:02:39]:
We may not be flying fighter planes over enemy territory, but the consequences of our decisions in these moments of testing can have ripple effects throughout our team, our organization and our community. So what do you do when you're asked to do or live with or comply with something that violates a deeply held value? Do you just go along so as not to make waves. Or do you choose to defy, even at potential cost to yourself? On today's episode, we explore what it means to make a brave decision in the face of uncertainty. This is Daily Creative, a podcast for creative pros who want to be brave, focused, and brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:03:29]:
I'm Dr. Sunita Sah. I'm a professor at Cornell University, an organizational psychologist, and my book is called the Power of no In a World that Demands.

Todd Henry [00:03:40]:
Yes, that word defy conjures up images of contrarianism, rebellion, and maybe even outright disrespect for authority. But that's not exactly what Dr. Sunita saw is advocating. Her definition has more nuance.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:03:55]:
So the old definition of defy is to challenge the power of somebody else either boldly or openly. And my definition embraces something else entirely. And I came to this revelation after many years of studying this and thinking about this. And my new definition is that to defy is simply to act in alliance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise. And that really transforms defiance from this misunderstood negative trait or personality to a proactive, positive force in society. Because if you think about it, all our individual acts of consent or dissent, they all build the society that we're living in. So it affects our lives, our workplaces, our communities. And that's why I think it's essential to have this new definition of when we need to defy in order to do the right thing.

Todd Henry [00:04:54]:
You've probably heard the phrase, go along to get along. It essentially means, don't make waves, just go with the flow, don't get in the way. Live and let live. And that's fine when the consequences are neutral, but what about when going along violates something that you believe deeply? When going with the flow means that you are compromising a part of yourself and your deeply held beliefs.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:05:17]:
It's about putting your values into action. Because so many of us, what I've seen again and again is that so many of us, who we think we are and how we act are actually quite different and is to bring together our actions with our intentions, our values. And there's one thing I do talk about in the book is that we often think about defiance as being loud and sort of violent, maybe aggressive, or that you have to have a strong personality, be larger than life. And I say you don't. You know, there's many different ways to defy, and it can be unique to the person depending on their own strengths. And you just have to Know who you are and act in alliance with what you believe.

Todd Henry [00:06:03]:
That all sounds fine, but it's not easy to do. Why do so many people fail to act in ways that are consistent with what they say they believe? After all, it seems so simple, right? Well, Sunita says that the reason so many of us fail to align our values and our actions is because we're actually wired from an early age to not make waves.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:06:25]:
We get so many messages growing up as children, maybe especially girls, and I certainly had this in my life was, you know, to be good, to comply, to obey, be polite, don't question the teachers. And so we get conditioned, we get wired to comply, and we start equating compliance with being good and defiance with being bad. And what my research and experiences taught me is that sometimes it seems to be bad to be good, right? It's sometimes bad to be so compliant because we sacrifice so much. And there's a lot of data, when I started looking at this, that especially in healthcare, which is Also my background, 9 out of 10 healthcare workers, most of them nurses, said that they felt uncomfortable speaking up when they saw their colleagues making an error. And in another survey, similar survey of over 1700 crew members in commercial airlines, nearly half of them didn't feel comfortable enough to speak up when they saw their superiors making a mistake. So these can be real life and death that can have real life and death consequences. But even when it doesn't, even when it's not life and death, we can still feel drained if we constantly violate our values or bow our heads to other people. And I wanted us to really think about defiance in this new way that becomes a positive force and allows us to be more authentic in our lives and speak up and develop that ability to speak up, too.

Todd Henry [00:08:05]:
What are some reasons that you discovered in your research why we tend to be wired for compliance? Why? You know, for example, it is difficult for nurses to speak up when they see something going obviously wrong, or airline, you know, employees to say something. What are some of those reasons?

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:08:20]:
One is that we're often socialized, so our default setting, you know, the way our neurons get set, is that we get rewarded for compliant behavior from a young age and not rewarded for defiant behavior. And also people might fear some of the consequences. One of the psychological processes that I've discovered I call insinuation anxiety. And that is that you don't want to insinuate that another person could be wrong, biased, corrupt, unethical, and that could be the reason why some of the nurses don't speak up. They don't want to tell their colleagues, you're doing something wrong or you're taking a shortcut or, you know that's not the right way to do this. It's often very difficult to send that signal to someone else. And that. That can arise in lots of situations.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:09:08]:
Like even in if you're in the back of a taxi and the taxi driver's taking a really long route and you want to tell them, you could have gotten a much faster way. Sometimes we don't. Right? Sometimes we just don't speak up because we don't want to the other person to think that we have a negative opinion of them. We don't want to insinuate anything negative about them. And so that's like a powerful force that affects some people. And also people think about some of the consequences of defiance. They think they might lose their job, they might lose a relationship, and they might even be embarrassed, you know, so that holds us back. But what we're not thinking about is some of the costs of continually complying.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:09:49]:
And when you continually violate your values, I often felt drained and muted, and I felt this tension between what others expected me to do and what I wanted to do. And those costs of continuously sort of going along with other people are quite high. They can even affect our well being, our mental and our physical health, if that's what we keep going along with. What I've realized is where I talk about the stages of defiance in my book. And it starts off with this tension that we feel something's wrong, we want to speak up or we want to defy. And that tension, if we don't address it, if we just try to get rid of it, I've found it actually grows. But if you can have that final defiant act, much of that tension dissipates. And if you can learn to defy, especially in important moments, you end up living a more honest life.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:10:42]:
It has actually is more joyful and honest and authentic. So we need to think about some of the costs of complying as well as the cost of defying.

Todd Henry [00:10:57]:
The five stages of defiance, what are those? Well, according to Dr. Tsah, there are five distinct markers that we experience as we choose to act according to our values, rather than going with the flow. These five stages of defiance, according to Dr. Tsah, are number one, tension. This means recognizing when something is wrong or when something needs to be challenged. This means paying attention to what happens around you and how it makes you feel, whether it aligns with your values, whether it forces you to compromise in some Way, acknowledgement to ourselves. This means making the conscious choice to take action and stand up. The conscious choice piece is important because it creates intent.

Todd Henry [00:11:38]:
We have to choose that we're going to act on what we feel. Number three is escalation. This means deploying the courage to speak up and to take first steps to externalize what we're feeling internally. This is something that I also wrote about in my book the Brave Habit. It can help to reinforce your vision of the way you think things should be, to claim the agency that you need to affect change, and to act even when it feels uncomfortable. Number four, threat of non compliance. This is when it gets difficult because when you escalate, there are typically consequences. People don't like it, it creates friction.

Todd Henry [00:12:18]:
This is when many people back down, they begin to doubt themselves or they let themselves off the hook. They rationalize, well, maybe it isn't really so bad. However, Dr. Sah says it's critical that you stand your ground. And then finally, number five, act of defiance. This means standing firm in your position even when you're tempted to let them off the hook or to just go with the flow. Now, these stages might not always happen in order, but they're typically experienced when going through an act of defiance. It's important to note that defying is not about being disagreeable.

Todd Henry [00:12:52]:
It's not. It's about taking important stands on issues that are in conflict with your core beliefs.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:13:00]:
I'm not talking about changing our personalities to become always disagreeable with other people. I'm talking about values based defiance that we're defying in situations that are particularly important. So one way to discover like the first way to start with that is to really know yourself and to know your values. Because if you don't know your values, you don't know how and when to defy. And I ask my executive students to, to do this in our class. I get them to do an exercise where they have to explicitly write down their values. Because that research has shown if you can do that and you can explicitly write them down, you're more likely to act in alignment with them. And knowing who you are can also decrease some of your stress responses too.

Dr. Sunita Sah [00:13:47]:
And most of the students, they have very similar values once you cut them down. Like they're very simple words like integrity, honesty, fairness, equality. All these different simple words, but powerful words that we often don't live up to in our day to day lives. So if you come across something that's unjust or unfair or unethical, or you experience a sexist comment at work or you hear one, how do you react to that? Do you let it slide? Do you allow the culture to grow in this way where those things are accepted? Or do you stand in and say something and it doesn't have to be done in a very loud or adverse way that upsets everybody? It's a great skill for leaders to be aware of because it's so easy to get into being swept into the organizational values rather than your own values. And you need to retain some of that, especially if you're in an organization, because it's so easy to start thinking that the only thing that matters is pleasing the boss and pleasing whoever's above you. And then you can become so narrowly framed in your head that you only assess what's good and bad based on how well you've done the job for your boss rather than your true values.

Todd Henry [00:15:10]:
Dr. Sunita Sah's book is called Defy and it's available now wherever books are sold. If you'd like to hear our full, nearly 30 minute conversation, you can do so on the Daily Creative app at DailyCreative app. In that conversation, we explore how to prioritize when to defy and what's actually worth defending. So what does it mean to lead? Doesn't it mean to follow your core values, to inspire others toward a better possible future, and to bravely step out in the face of uncertainty, even at potential costs to yourself? Well, to do this means that you will likely have to engage in occasional acts of defiance. And according to Dr. Tsaw, this means first getting very clear about what you value, why it matters to you, and what you're going to do about it when push comes to shove. So do you know what you value and have you decided what it's worth to protect it? This is the first act of leadership.

Todd Henry [00:16:05]:
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you'd like daily episodes, Q and A segments, full interviews, and access to the full archives dating back years and years and years. You can get them in the Daily Creative app at DailyCreative app plus it's a great way to support the show. My name is Todd Henry. You can find my work, my books, and my speaking events@toddhenry.com thanks so much for listening. Until next time, May you be brave, focused and brilliant.