Rethinking Resistance: What Leaders Misunderstand About Change with Travis Hahler

Resistance is often treated as a barrier to organizational change—something leaders need to overcome, reduce, or eliminate. But resistance may be telling leaders something important. Rather than signaling poor attitudes or a lack of commitment, it can reflect predictable human responses to uncertainty, disrupted habits, and perceived loss.

In this episode of the Change Management Review™ Podcast, Theresa Moulton speaks with Travis Hahler, Senior Director, Global Strategy & Transformation at Salesforce and author of Rethink Resistance: Embracing Neuroscience to Lead Transformational Change, about how neuroscience can help leaders better understand what happens when people experience change. Travis challenges the tendency to take resistance personally or assign negative intent, encouraging leaders instead to treat resistance as information that can reveal what people need in order to move forward.

Drawing on more than 15 years of experience guiding complex transformations and his study of neuroscience and human behavior, Travis explores how leaders can anticipate resistance, respond with greater insight, and create conditions that support meaningful engagement and adoption.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why resistance to change should not automatically be interpreted as opposition or poor buy-in.
• How the brain responds to uncertainty, disruption, and perceived loss during organizational change.
• Why taking resistance personally can make it more difficult for leaders to respond effectively.
• How leaders can treat resistance as useful information rather than something that simply needs to be overcome.
• Ways neuroscience can help change leaders anticipate and respond to predictable reactions during transformation.
• Why understanding human behavior is increasingly important for change professionals navigating complex organizational transformation.

Whether you’re leading organizational transformation, supporting employees through disruption, or seeking better ways to understand resistance to change, this conversation offers a neuroscience-informed perspective on how leaders can listen to the signals resistance provides and use them to lead change more effectively.

Guest Bio

Travis Hahler is Senior Director, Global Strategy & Transformation at Salesforce and author of Rethink Resistance: Embracing Neuroscience to Lead Transformational Change. A neuroscience-informed change strategist, Travis has spent more than 15 years guiding organizations through complex transformations. His work explores how the brain responds to uncertainty, disruption, and loss and how those insights can help leaders better understand resistance, engagement, and adoption during organizational change.