Resistance to Change Isn't Rebellion; It's Biology (with Travis Hahler)

I'm so excited today to have Travis Haler on the podcast. Travis transforms how Fortune 500 companies navigate change by revealing a startling truth. Resistance isn't rebellion, it's biology. As senior director of global strategy and transformation at Salesforce, and founder of the neurological nomad, Haler brings an unprecedented fusion of neuroscience and business acumen to organizational transformation.

His unique journey, conducting EEG research in Denmark, studying neuropsychology at Harvard, earning an MBA, and leading change at Google, Salesforce, and others, makes him a unique transformation expert who can explain why your amygdala sabotages your strategic plan and why you can blame everything on your basal ganglia. His signature keynote, the Neuroscience of Change, has reached over 25,000 leaders across 150 global events, consistently delivering that aha moment when executives finally understand why 70% of transformations fail to achieve their goals.

And, more importantly, how they can join the successful 30%. Travis, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you, William.

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author, and leadership and executive coach, Dr. William Attaway. How did you get started?

Yeah, um, so you know, honestly, I got into this work and there's kind of two areas of this. One is my like full-time job and how I got into doing change work. And then the other side is how did I start doing this, you know, this neuroscience of change kind of perspective? And they they kind of came together and then kind of diverged at one point.

But I got into this work because I started to, I loved people and I started to see this uh this pattern emerge throughout my career uh that I just I really just couldn't ignore. It just kept coming back. It was kept nagging at me. So early in my career, I was really leading and advising change efforts across organizations.

And I kept seeing the same thing. Smart leaders were really good at the strategy and they still ran into resistance. No matter how good a leader they thought they were, how good the vision was, they still ran into resistance. And at first, like a lot of people, I thought that resistance really meant that people weren't bought in.

It was, it was a, it was a defect, right? It was something that was a problem. Leadership hadn't communicated. There was something on the checklist that hadn't happened.

And but the more that I studied the neuroscience, the more that I got back to my psychology roots and that human behavior route, I really realized that there was a lot more to the story. And what clicked for me was that resistance wasn't usually a character issue, it's a protective response. And so the brain is constantly scanning for those threats, that uncertainty, overload, loss, disruption, all those things. Um, and it loves familiar patterns because it's safe.

So once I started to look into resistance and look at it from that lens, everything kind of changed. And the way that I approached it changed. So I really stopped trying to push as a leader harder against people and started asking what that resistance was really telling me about that person and about this organization. And that shift ended up shaping my work, the way that I lead.

It ended up ultimately becoming this book and the topics that I talk about. But for me, that was kind of the unlock of becoming a leader of change and a leader of global strategy and transformation. It was really around that moment of realizing that resistance is not rebellion, as you said. It's really information that we oftentimes are ignoring that help us be better leaders, help us understand how to lead better and lead people in a more meaningful way.

That's fascinating. I would love to dive into this a bit because you know I think any leader, any leader worth their salt, in William's opinion, is going to be a part of change. They're going to be leading change. That's what we do.

Leaders lead change recreationally because we want to make things better. We want to help things to grow. And that requires change because growth only happens on the other side of change. But there's always resistance.

Always. Any organization, any size, any team, any business, it doesn't matter. And so when I was reading about you, your research really caught my eye. You know, 70% of organizational change initiatives fail.

That's astounding. Why is that? Well, for me, and the way that I've looked at it, I think there's there's a million reasons why they fail, right? Uh, but I think the biggest one that I point to when it comes to change is that leaders are unprepared for what it takes to actually lead change.

And what I've what I've noticed, at least of as I talked to leaders and I did this work over the last two decades, is really that what I was what I was saying around, you know, thinking about resistance as a checklist item that hadn't been fulfilled versus seeing resistance as that information of what you need to do and the support you need to bring as a leader is a very different lens. And oftentimes the way that leaders look at change is they look at it from an ego lens. And I think like an unpopular opinion is that all leaders have some form of ego in the game, right?

Whether we want to admit it or not, we all have some ego in what leadership means to us. What I saw, especially from very high-level leaders, was that they approach change as a I'm gonna put together the best story I possibly can. I'm gonna sell the heck out of it. And everyone's gonna stand up and cheer and applaud, and I'm gonna be the savior of like how we did this thing.

And that's kind of how change starts in in a lot of leaders' brains is this is the thing that I'm gonna get people behind and I'm gonna sell it. Every change, as you said, William, every change equals resistance. And that's because every change equals loss. And leaders go out on that stage and they say, Here's what we're gonna do.

Everyone get excited, and they're ready for everyone to jump up and applaud. And everyone sits like crickets, looking terrified, unsure what to do, right? And and those leaders have almost an existential moment where they're like, uh, this is a great change. I sold the heck out of it.

Why is everyone not so excited? And then their ego starts to come in. They're like, well, do they just not believe in me? Do they not think that I can do it?

Do they not, are they not bought in? Do I am I just surrounded by people that, you know, just want to collect a paycheck and do an eight to five and they're not invested in the business and our mission and our vision and all these things? They start to think in this way. And it's really dangerous when leaders start thinking in this way because they typically respond in three ways.

First, they might have what I call like the authoritarian response, which is, well, if they're not with me, I'm just gonna tell them we're gonna do it and they're gonna do it, or they can leave. Oftentimes, leaving looks pretty good when you've got an authoritarian leader at a company, right? The other one is they almost kind of go through this process of talking themselves into why the change is great. And they they they look at the silver lining of it and look at the positives of it, and they say, it's so great, why wouldn't they want to do it?

So I just need to sell it better. And then they go and and they say, you know, here's all the reasons and all the things, and they go on this big campaign and everyone's still like, you're you're not getting it, right? And then the third way that oftentimes they'll approach it is is in this idea that not necessarily the authoritarian, but they go kind of the opposite where they're like, well, my people are lazy, they just don't want to do any more work. So we need to set expectations and we'll performance manage people out and you know, whatever.

You know, it's kind of this idea that workers just don't want to do anything else. And that's why they're not jumping up and cheering because it means more work. All of them are wrong. And they're all wrong because resistance is the natural response to disruption.

So every human resists change because it's disruption and it is a threat to us as people over our, you know, the way that we have evolved over the years. That is what I see leaders typically fall into, and they don't look at it in the way that it is information on how to support your people. So that's been the biggest kind of change, and the way that I've seen this information get into the hands of leaders and really be meaningful for them with their teams is you're gonna go out on the stage, and I can tell you right now, if you get applause, it's because people are afraid that if they don't applaud, that someone's gonna see them and they're gonna get fired.

That's why they're applauding. Not because they're gonna love it, because their initial response is gonna be, I don't love it. And so if you go out with the expectation that they're all gonna love it, you're gonna be very disappointed. You should go out with the expectation that no one's gonna love it.

And what you're gonna do as a leader, when no one loves something, it's because you need to support their journey through understanding, through engaging, through that change curve. And so you stop going, I need to sell the heck out of it. And you start going, I need to tell them what's happening and bring with it the tools and the support to show them that we're on this journey together. And here's what I'm gonna do to make sure that you're not left behind that we're thinking about you, that we've thought about you, and that I can bring you the tools you need to go on this journey.

So now you can get excited because I'm not just leaving you alone and saying, change or or leave. I'm saying we're gonna do this together. This is what's happening. And it changes your leadership, it changes the way you engage with your teams.

It's an amazing moment and opportunity for leaders to build incredible relationships with their teams through transformation and disruption if they let it. And I feel like you're reading my mail. It's like you've been following me around for the last 30 years, taking notes, like, okay, this is this is what he's doing. That's not the I mean, seriously, like that so many of the things as you were saying, those things, I was flashing back in my mind to decisions and moments when I thought, oh, I must not have cast that vision clearly enough.

I gotta go double down. I I gotta go, uh that vision's not white hot enough. It's not compelling enough. I gotta, I gotta put more into it.

That'll bring them along. How many times had I have I thought that over 30 plus years of organizational leadership? I'm in there with you. Early in my career, that's what I thought too.

So as I was early and really talking to these leaders, I was in the same mindset where I was like, you're right. You know, we just can't spend time on those resistors. And we say that word a lot in organizational change, right? The resistors, the resistors, we them them, right?

It's them versus us. And that is a very dangerous place for change to happen, is a them versus us mentality. It's it's never going to achieve the objectives. So back to your original question, William, which was why do 70% of these things fail?

It's because it's an us versus them mentality. It's a we're gonna lose great people because we're not helping them through this transformation effectively enough. It's because we don't actually get the rewards or the ROI from this transformation because people are complying but not buying in and adopting. So you get these weird things that happen, and they're not so weird because they're super common, is that someone will say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, great.

Absolutely. We'll use the new report. And then you find out that they've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet on the side and doubling the amount of work that they have to do. So actually, when you're supposed to cut their workload in half, you actually doubled it because they're using both.

You know, your your your notes there about loss and uncertainty ring so true. You know, I think, I think I can think back to times when I've introduced change into an organization, and there has been a sense of loss and uncertainty on the part of some. And I thought, well, maybe you just don't understand. Maybe you just don't get it.

And I didn't really make space for that, you know, and acknowledge it as this is something that is valid biologically, like you're describing. How does that show up? This sense of loss, this understanding of uncertainty and perhaps instability. How does that show up neurologically during a season of change?

Yeah. So there's a lot that happens in the brain when loss occurs. It's not just, you know, in a lot of the areas of the book, I talk about specific systems of the brain. Loss is one where it's like a whole team effort.

Like everything has a little bit of a something to play in that. And what's interesting about loss, especially in our world of corporate America, is that we almost forget what loss is like when we walk in the door of a work in the morning. And so let me let me kind of play this out in two ways. One, I'll give you an example of kind of how ridiculous it is the way that we actually think about loss at work.

And then I'll tell you a little bit about why, why some of this exists. So the my favorite example, this is this is my absolute favorite example. And typically when I talk about this, it gets the most giggles of the whole, you know, speaking engagement. But we approach loss at work as if it's a problem that we have to overcome, not something we engage with.

So the way that we typically approach loss at work, so we're gonna launch a new system and we're we're gonna give you an 87-page slide deck presentation about all the amazing reasons why this new system and the way that we're gonna do it now is the best thing ever, right? We're gonna sell you on it. Now, that's how we look at it. We look at it as a silver lining approach.

Problem is the brain actually weights loss and gain. And there's there's not a specific number, but I usually anchor in like if you're you were to just put it in like random numbers, if every gain or every loss were equal to something, it would be like 10 gains. So for every little thing that you feel like you're losing, you need exponentially more wins to overcome that feeling of loss. So the 87 slide deck, 87 page slide deck, that is probably like 10 times that size if you were to try to actually outweigh loss and gain.

It's an it's an unwinnable game. So the way that I put this in perspective is let's put our personal lives into this because we all understand loss on a personal level very deeply, right? We all get it. So let's use our corporate version in a personal scenario.

You have a family pet, and unfortunately, they pass. You have a really sad kid at home. You do not walk up to that kid with a projector and an 87-page slide deck as to why losing Fluffy is the greatest thing that's ever happened to them. Good point.

No, you don't do it because you realize how ridiculous it sounds. Instead, you sit next to them, you put your arm around them, you say, Hey, I'm really sad too. It's okay to be sad. We're gonna get through it together.

How do how do we how could I help you in this moment? What do you need right now? You use empathy, you use understanding, and you bring that support. So the way that that that kind of plays out neurologically, if we're thinking about, you know, in in corporate America and we're going through change, how do you do some of that, you know, in a company as a leader?

It's really about taking that time to listen, taking that time to acknowledge that loss is happening. And every single change that you're making equals loss in some way. And I get a lot of pushback on that, especially from, especially from leaders who are like, not all change is loss. What about a promotion?

More money isn't losing anything, like, you know, all this stuff. More money is a gain, but it also means that you lose something in that, in that trade-off, right? It might mean that, you know, you can afford more, but just because you can buy the bigger house doesn't mean that you aren't sad about losing and selling your old house, right? It doesn't mean that getting a promotion and being excited about that doesn't mean that you're also not worried about losing some of the relationships that you've built or entering into a space where you're a little uncertain.

You, you know, this is maybe your first time leading a big team. I don't know if I could do it. Do I have the competence to do that? Am I able to actually do this job?

There's a loss there in comfort, right? Competence, comfort, all those things, predictability. Loss exists no matter what if the change is positive or negative. It's still loss.

That is such a fascinating point. I don't know that I've ever thought about it that way. You know, I tend to think of the resistors, like you say, as people who just aren't there yet. We got to get on the solution side of the problem.

We got to talk this through and help you understand it. My goodness. Like, what does it look like for a leader to lead in an aware way when it comes to what you're describing? Like, how do you how do you increase your self-awareness so that you can help walk other people through this?

So, for me and the leaders that I've worked with, a lot of times I brand it as like becoming a resistance fortune teller. And actually, I got that because someone called me that one time and I was like, actually, that's kind of a funny nickname. So I've latched onto it in some ways, but I talk about it as that fortune telling, which is if you can understand the barriers. And in the book, I talk about the six neurological barriers to change.

And we go into the different brain systems and talk about the neuroscience behind why they create natural barriers to change. And there's six ways to overcome them. So if you think about those barriers to change as kind of your tarot cards, where you're like, I'm flipping this one up, that person, you know what? They're an extreme, uh, extreme super user of this system.

They know it inside and out. They are going to experience an extreme loss of competence if we move to a different system. I need to approach them in a way that says, okay, their biggest barrier is going to be that competence that they're losing. I need to come to William and say, okay, William, we're moving to a new system.

I realize you know this one in and out. And you're probably feeling like, wow, I'm worried about my ability to do that same level of work in this new system. Here's the plan of how I'm going to help you get to that level of competence. We're going to do some workshops.

I'm going to free up some time for you to actually do some trainings. I've thought about, you know, maybe some masterclasses that will help really, really get you into that competence level that you're used to. And this is going to be a journey. I'm not expecting you tomorrow to be the ninja you are today in that new system.

So we'll go on that journey together. But let's stay in touch and talk about how you're feeling about it. Is it helping you move forward? Do we need more resourcing?

Do we need to free up more of your time to play even in the new system? And you can start to approach people with what the barrier is that they're going to experience the most. And you can start there. It's almost like you can create your own Maslow's hierarchy of needs per person.

Like that's going to be your foundational. And then we can move to the next thing. And once we kind of move through those barriers, people are more likely to move along that change curve and start to engage and adopt. But the biggest thing for any program and change is getting people through.

I I like to think about the change curve as like the grief stages too, right? Like first you have denial, then you have, you know, your bargaining and resistance. And then you go into kind of acceptance, then you then you move towards, you know, this engagement and growth side of the house. But if you can't get people past the bargaining and resistance, they're not going to engage it at all.

So this is like your step to get them to start engaging and start playing with it and actually be willing to accept that it's happening. So by acknowledging the thing that they're afraid of, you're calling out the elephant in the room, so to speak. You're reducing their anxiety and their fear that they're not going to be as competent as they are now. And you're set you're assuring them, I'm going to walk alongside you and I'm going to help you get there.

You're not alone. I mean, it seems like you're keying into so many different aspects of anxiety and fear just in that one path that you're taking as a leader there. Is that right? Absolutely right.

And I I think that's like that's the part for me of leadership that I think we sometimes forget about is that being a great leader. Isn't setting the vision and you know using the stick to get people to actually do it. It's understanding your people to a point where you can bring them the support that they need. And great leaders are the ones that can take someone who, you know what, is maybe uneasy, unsure, not confident, and who can build that person up to become a very, very competent, confident and excelling individual within the workplace.

That's great leadership. That's what this is. That's being able to identify the areas where you can help bring that person from where they are to where they can be, the potential, and pull that out of them. I'm sure that you have had some pushback on this from folks who who Yeah, right.

Folks who are like, well, aren't you talking about like reducing our pace. You're talking about lowering our standards. You're talking about like curtailing our progress, you know, just to help people feel better. You know, I mean, when you hear that kind of pushback, it's I'm sure this is high capacity, high performance leaders who are, and they're all about getting things done.

Moving the ball up the field, let's go. And this can feel like a break on that process. When you hear that kind of pushback, and and some of our listeners may be thinking that right now. So when you hear that, how do you respond?

I would be shocked if probably 90% of the people listening right now aren't thinking that, which is wow, this sounds like a lot of effort. How are we going to ever do that? For me, what neuroscience unlocked for me, and what I think it unlocks for a lot of teams, especially those leading change, is oftentimes when we get into conversations about transformation, change, we're sitting across tables and we're, we're, we're negotiating based on gut. And what I mean by that is you're saying we need to go faster.

And I'm saying, I don't think we can go faster. We we don't have that kind of ability to speed this up. And we're having a gut conversation, right? I'm telling you my gut says we can't go faster.

You're telling me that we can go faster based on your gut, and we're having that negotiation. What neuroscience unlocks in that conversation is the ability to remove the gut conversation and start having a conversation about facts. So you say, I think we can move faster. And I say, you know, let me lay it out for you.

Right now, we've got a group of people who are extremely competent at this. We're gonna be dealing with loss of competence. We're gonna be dealing with org structure changes. That's a loss of relationships and a loss of understanding of their place in this company.

We're gonna be dealing with here are all the things that we have to get them through. The only way that we can get them through that is by doing the following things. We can make that fast, but on the back end, we're really gonna struggle with that adoption. So you're not gonna get your adoption on launch, quote unquote, launch day.

You're not gonna get that. You're gonna get launch day and resistance until we can build them up. So you're still actually having the same amount of time. It's just on what side of the launch are we spending that time?

And do you want to make it more difficult prior to the launch and then have people actually adopt at that moment because that's when you need it? Or is it something where we just need to get it out the door because we need the ability to start utilizing it in other pockets and people can come along? So I think it's a bit of that negotiation around fact of what do we actually need and what's our expectation. Because if people are, you know, coming to this and saying we need this out in a month, which I work in tech.

So everything needs to have been done five months ago, right? So we constantly talk about we don't have any time, we're just gonna launch it. And then we'll deal with how we get people there later. And so for us, that that ability to send it into market is more important than necessarily taking the time to get everyone ready to use it on day one.

So a lot of my time is spent after launch, helping people build that competence to be able to actually utilize what we've launched. But in a lot in other companies, they're expecting they have a board that says, well, if you're gonna launch in May, I expect to start seeing an ROI by January. And if that's the reality, then it's really important for you to get people to that adoption state before you're actually launching. So it helps you have conversations in fact.

And and if you're sitting in a room, especially a boardroom, I'm very unpopular in boardrooms, I'll tell you that, William. Um, because I talk about things like we need more time, we need more resourcing, we need these things. And it's always a negotiation, right? Um, but I think the thing that that we can have really good conversations about is anchoring it in that fact and saying, here are the things that we can do to help guide people through that loss or that competence or building the skills.

Um what's important to you by the end of that? Is it just we need them to be okay with it and not actively sabotaging that we're launching this? Or is it that we need them to use it? Those are two very different timelines.

And we can we can negotiate that all day long. That's so good. And this is your new book. This is this is what we're talking about.

Is is what's your new book that's coming out in June? Rethink Resistance. Embracing neuroscience to lead transformational change. This will be available everywhere, I'm assuming.

It will be. Amazon being Barnes and Noble. Yeah, everywhere that they sell books, it should be available. I'm very excited about the book itself.

I think, you know, part of what I've learned through talking to leaders about neuroscience and change and leadership through change is that leaders are really looking for something that isn't just another framework, isn't just another acronym. And they're really looking for ways to be better leaders. And there's a desire in this market, in this world that we're living in right now, for people to who have these expectations of transformation faster and faster and faster all the time.

They want to understand how they can not only lead change, but also understand it intrinsically for themselves too. Because the vast majority of our leaders are not the person coming up with the change. I call them the leaders, the actual leaders of change. There's leaders, there's drivers, and there's recipients.

There's always a leader and always a recipient, right? But there's this middle group that is getting bigger and bigger in our middle management that's being asked to change and also ask others to change. And it's oftentimes happening at the same time in today's world. Whereas you used to have a moment of like, we're gonna give our leaders a chance to digest this and understand it, and then we'll roll it out to their teams.

That's not the case anymore. We're rolling it out to leaders and teams at the same time. And so our leaders are like, I am at the exact same spot as everyone else. How do I lead a change that I don't even know if I'm bought in?

And that's where I think this book really helps. It helps you to not only see your team as a way of how do I support them through this with very tactical, realistic ways that they can actually go to their teams and support them. It also in the reading and the understanding of the neuroscience helps you reflect on yourself too. And each chapter has a section at the end that's key takeaways, but also there's reflections.

And it it does ask things like where in my work am I pushing my team harder than maybe I need to? Where am I maybe not being as kind to myself and my journey with change too? And so it makes you kind of stop and think as a leader, like, this is actually me at the same time as it is my team. So if I understand the neuroscience, I also understand myself and how I could help myself through the change because no one's coming to help me.

And that's what I hear from middle leadership all the time is we're helping everyone and no one's helping us. Like, we don't have someone coming to our rescue. We have to do the rescuing. So I think this book bridges that nicely and gives leaders a way that they can approach this crazy accelerant that is AI, especially in the change ecosystem, and do that with empathy and with support and in a way that builds stronger relationships with their teams and also creates better leadership on their side that they can really feel good about.

That's so good. And that's, I think, why I'm looking forward to diving into this book because I think there's so much to learn here. This episode's gonna drop on the day your book releases on June 23rd. So, listeners, when you're hearing this, you can go and get this book.

And I'm gonna challenge you to do that. Now, this is one I'm gonna dive into, and this is gonna be a slower read because I'm gonna want to really pick up a lot of these nuggets that you've gotten a taste of today. Travis, this has been so incredibly valuable. Thank you for being so generous today.

I know folks are gonna want to stay connected to you and continue to learn more from you and about what you're up to these days with the book and beyond. What's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, well, first off, thank you so much for having me on this uh on this podcast. I think, you know, it's been a wonderful conversation, but also uh I hope that people listening also look at this and say, you know what, this is an interesting way to think about it.

And I want them to know that I'm accessible. I think that's that's the other part. Like reach out to me on LinkedIn, reach out to me through my website. When when we launch this, William will we'll have some links for them to utilize.

But I am accessible. I want to be able to interact. This is where I get uh a lot of the joy that is the work that I do. Uh so I hope that it's a wonderful way for for people to lead better.

Um, and and I'd love to hear, you know, how it's going. Well, thank you for writing it and for being accessible. We'll have those links in the show notes. Again, listeners, grab this book.

This is one I don't want to miss, and I don't want you to either. Travis, thank you. Thank you.