From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel and this is Hello Monday. It's our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing all of us.

Today we have an important episode about saying no and it might be especially relevant as we think about what we want to say yes to during the holidays and in the new year.

Now, if you're anything like me, you have spent a lifetime pleasing other people.

I mean, most of us learned to do this when we were really tiny.

I remember being a little girl and having my parents tell me to be good.

Be nice.

And part of being good and nice meant going along with people, even when I really didn't

want to give my great aunt a hug after dinner or read that book that my father really wanted

me to read.

And that has landed me here as an adult who still has a really hard time voicing my own

opinion, especially when it

involves saying no to someone more powerful than me. And look, let me be real with you.

The consequences of saying no can be tough, and they're much greater for some of us. But owning

our defiance, digesting it, defining it, expressing it, it's going to imbue us with a quiet authority.

It will become your power move.

So today, we're going to have a lesson in how to stand up for ourselves right after this.

Our guest today is Dr. Sunita Saw.

Her new book is Defi, The Power of No in a world that demands yes.

Now, Sunita is a leading behavioral scientist and a professor at Cornell University.

She's known for her work on decision making, ethics, and influence.

Basically, Sunita knows exactly why it's so hard for us to say no and who it's so difficult to say it too.

Now, her research can help anyone stand firm against pressure.

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