Welcome to Changemaker Stories from LOCAL - an ongoing series of personal interviews with leaders driving change across every industry and discipline. Because change shouldn’t mean going it alone.
This week, we sat down with Gretchen Huestis, a passionate change leader with more than 20 years of experience from consulting and leading Organizational Development teams to running her own business and collaborating with world-class agencies. We talked about the power of emotional connection, the value of experimentation, and how DJing helps her find inspiration and clarity.
Leading change within your organization can be very meta. While you’re guiding your clients and teams through a transformation, you’re working through changes yourself.
One of my biggest lessons in starting a business is to not do it alone. Success comes from shared expertise, trusted collaborators, and a mix of perspectives that push your thinking further.
One of my favorite parts of leading change is seeing the unlock, that moment when something clicks. Whether it’s a frontline employee or a CEO, there’s nothing more rewarding than knowing that I made a connection, offered a new perspective, or helped someone take a different next step.
One of the most important drivers of change is giving people a sense of agency. When they see their role in the change, it gives them power. It invites reflection on how they’re showing up, what they’re doing in the moment, and how they choose to respond to a change.
For senior employees, it goes even deeper. They may not realize how their own sense of agency shapes the agency and outcomes of those around them.
“When people understand their role in a change, they start to see opportunity. That ownership is a powerful motivator.”
I am a huge believer in the growth mindset. No matter how tough or uncomfortable a change may be, working through it will help you grow as a human.
That mindset applies at the organizational level, too. To stay relevant and resilient, a company has to keep evolving, even when it’s hard. Growth is what keeps it alive.
When introducing change, I focus on key cultural factors: comfort with risk, how people interact, the presence of psychological safety, whether trying new things is encouraged, the transparency of leadership, and the organization’s overall commitment to learning and growth.
A growth mindset starts at the top. Leaders set the tone by modeling curiosity and celebrating efforts to try new approaches. Highlighting these successes across the organization sends a powerful message that innovation and learning are valued.
I recently heard the CMO of Duolingo share that he encourages his global marketing team to dedicate 70% of their time to testing and learning, leaving 30% to steadily advance what’s already proven to work. It’s a smart balance between experimentation and execution.
Humans have two innate sides: a creative, emotional side and a rational, analytical one. For change to truly take hold, you need to engage both.
In Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, they use a powerful metaphor: imagine a rider on top of a 10-ton elephant. The rider represents our rational side, planning, analyzing, and setting direction. The elephant is our emotional, instinctive side that actually powers the movement. And more often than not, the elephant’s strength outweighs the rider’s logic.
The most effective change happens when both sides are engaged. Too often, organizations focus heavily on the rational, analytical side and overlook the emotional. To balance this, they need to try approaches that tap into deeper purpose and meaning.
“There is research that shows that the emotional side of our brain has no capacity for words.”
It’s not enough to send out a deck with the business case and all the points on why a change needs to happen. We've got to connect to that emotional side to really drive people.
I believe every organization needs a clear, compelling purpose – that unique, passionate reason for being. A strong North Star like this becomes a vital touchstone, especially during challenging times.
Too often, change is seen as flipping a switch or simply following a checklist like Kotter’s eight steps. But from my experience, real change is nonlinear and requires more than just a formula.
A key to success is giving yourself and others permission to experiment. It will get messy at times, but through that messiness, we learn and keep moving forward.
Outside of this kind of work, I’m a DJ. When I need inspiration, I get on my decks and start mixing and experimenting with the music. When I'm finished, it's amazing. I have so much energy and clarity from being in a state of flow.
