Out from the Abyss
An interview with Aris Psyllos by Michelle Pauk
Agility is about so much more than processes and frameworks. It teaches us to be resilient and prepares us to better handle change.
Aris told me a story about an organizational change that affected him personally and what this experience taught him about resistance and resilience.
He had been happily working as a Scrum Master for a team for about 10 months when the team members were all abruptly re-assigned to a new corporate initiative. Aris was informed he would not be joining them on this temporary assignment. This disappointment was soon replaced by a greater shock: the department’s new senior director announced that Aris’s role would be eliminated, as there was no longer a team for him to support. “I was in a panic, I was in an abyss of despair,” he told me. He had been doing a good job and enjoyed his work with his team. He’d done everything right, and yet he still found himself facing this very undesirable and sudden change. “I’m about to lose my job. Why? It wasn’t my decision. So why do I have to go through this?”
What a deeply relatable reaction! It’s so frustrating to do your best and find that your world can be upended nonetheless. As Aris shared his emotional response to this news, I couldn’t help but think of the countless teams and individuals I’ve worked with who have had their carefully built careers seemingly swept out to sea by an unexpected corporate change. As change agents, we tend to focus on the benefits of change for the organization. It’s so easy to ignore what is being taken away from people in the process.
For Aris, reaching out to others for guidance helped tremendously as he coped with the shock of the news and what it meant for his career. They encouraged him to look for other roles in the company and enlist his management for support. This guidance shifted his perspective: “And suddenly, I realized that it's all about us. It's how we perceive all the things around us, how we act. I tried to stay calm.” With this new mindset, the next action came easily: “After a week, having spoken to different individuals and mentors, I told myself, it's high time–you have to act immediately to find another space for you.” With the help of his network, he quickly found a new position as a Scrum Master at the company. Feelings of depression, fear, and anxiety gave way to happiness, acceptance, and forward movement.
As Aris shared with me, this experience of unwanted change brought him some powerful lessons about the nature of change. First, everyone responds to change at their own pace. Now facing another likely organizational change, Aris anticipates his response to this new change will be much quicker than the last. Second, adversity has taught him resilience. He feels better prepared to handle change, knowing he’s been able to navigate successfully in the past. It has also taught him deeper empathy for those experiencing change.
This experience also inspired Aris to learn more about how people handle change as a result: “In studying change, I have realized that there are three categories of people. There are the rebels. They resist, they don't want to do anything, they are not interested. They are afraid. They just want to quit. Then there are the bystanders. They might say, ‘Okay, I want to but I'm really hesitant.’ And then there are the early adopters. Maybe before I was a bystander, but now I feel like I am an early bird, an early adopter.”
The key in this shift, he told me, is building a growth mindset through the challenges. “How can you become stronger after? Can you become smarter, wiser? How can you become better?”
And isn’t that really the question agility asks of us every day? Change is relentless. It’s up to us to learn to harness it for our advantage.
“I strongly believe that one of the most wanted and vital skills in the near future, not only as professionals but also as individuals, is to develop our change resilience skills. This resilience is a muscle we train deliberately every time we are facing an undesirable change but we do not give up. It takes persistence and perseverance to cope with the hardship, but this is the only way out. Change resilience in this VUCA world is a life-changing skill, one that we as mentors and parents have a responsibility to teach to our kids and those around us.”
