You’re in a meeting when your boss suggests changing a number to make the quarterly report look stronger. Heads nod. The slides move on. You feel a knot in your stomach: Do you speak up and risk being branded difficult, or stay silent and become complicit?
Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, it’s often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance.
I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone else’s needs above her own. But one day, when I was 7, I saw a different side to her.
We were walking home from the grocery store in West Yorkshire, England, when a group of teenage boys blocked our path in a narrow alleyway. They hurled racist insults and told us to “go back home.”
My reaction was instantaneous: Stay quiet, avoid conflict and get past them as quickly as possible. I grabbed my mother’s arm, urging her to move with me. But she didn’t. My quiet, deferential, never-confrontational mother did something completely different. She stopped, turned and looked the boys directly in the eyes. Then she asked, calmly but firmly, “What do you mean?”
She wasn’t loud or aggressive. And in that moment, she showed me that defiance doesn’t always roar, and it can come from the people you least expect.
I’ve carried these lessons into my work as a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. For decades, I’ve studied why people comply, staying silent when they don’t want to, and how they can resist wisely. In my book “Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes,” I offer a framework based on behavioral science research that can help you defy in ways that are intentional, effective and true to your values.
One setting where the choice to defy or comply can arise is work.
FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images
What defiance really is
When people think of defiance, they often picture teenagers slamming doors, protesters shouting in the streets or rebels breaking rules just for the thrill of it. But that’s not the kind of defiance I study or the kind that shapes our lives most often.
Defiance is not about being oppositional for its own sake. It’s about choosing to act in line with your values when there is pressure to do otherwise.
That pressure can come from anywhere: a boss urging you to fudge the numbers, a friend nudging you toward something you don’t believe in, a culture telling you to stay in your place. Defiance in those moments might be as small as saying “no,” asking for clarification or simply pausing instead of rushing along with the group. Other times, it means speaking up, challenging authority or maybe walking away.
Seen this way, defiance isn’t a fixed trait that some people are born with and others lack. It’s a practice: a skill you can…
