The Morning Everything Changed

It was late February 2022. The world was just beginning to emerge from the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many technology leaders, I had grown accustomed to managing remote teams from my home office at a major UK retailer. Our daily virtual standups had become routine — a stabilising force in uncertain times.

Then came that Thursday morning. I awoke to news alerts flooding my phone: Russian forces had launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

My stomach dropped. Both of our development teams were based in Ukraine.

With growing anxiety, I prepared for our morning standup, uncertain if anyone would even attend. To my astonishment, almost all members from both Scrum teams logged in on time. Some were in different locations than usual, but they were there — composed and professional, ready to discuss sprint progress and ticket updates.

"Sorry for being a few minutes late," one developer said matter-of-factly. "There might be connection issues today due to the situation."

The situation. Such a calm euphemism for what was unfolding.

Priorities and Perspectives

I immediately addressed what felt like an elephant in our virtual room. "Listen, everyone. The work isn't important right now. Your safety and your families are the only priority. We can pause everything."

Their response left me speechless. Almost unanimously, they wanted to continue. In those uncertain early hours, our familiar workflow provided something desperately needed: normalcy, purpose, and distraction from the chaos unfolding around them.

Yet beneath this professional composure, an unmistakable current of anxiety permeated our call. The team comprised both men and women, and I learned the men had started to receive notifications to register for potential military service. Questions hung silently in the digital space between us: Who would be called up? Would infrastructure remain intact? Were family members in danger?

The situation was further complicated by our team's diverse composition. Several team members were Russian or Belarusian nationals working remotely from their home countries. This created additional layers of complexity as sanctions against Russia and Belarus emerged. A significant team restructure was required, moving resources and responsibilities between team members based on their geographical situation and the constraints they faced. Meanwhile, our Ukrainian colleagues were dealing with the immediate dangers of conflict. The geopolitical crisis wasn't just affecting those in the war zone; it was forcing a complete reorganisation of our carefully built multinational teams.

The Days That Followed

The next morning, one of our Scrum Masters sent a brief message that he wouldn't be attending standups "for some time." He had volunteered and was heading to the front lines. The message ended with a simple request to keep his job open if possible.

Over the following weeks, our team meetings became unlike any I'd experienced in my career. As the lead architect overseeing two Scrum teams with multiple backlogs, I was already juggling complex technical priorities, yet now our development discussions were interspersed with matter-of-fact reports of:

"I'll be working from a basement shelter for a few hours."

"I've relocated to my parent's village where internet is spotty but safer."

"I need to drive my family to the Polish border tonight, but I'll be online tomorrow."

Despite everything, code was still being committed. Pull requests were still being reviewed. The resilience was extraordinary and humbling.

Leadership Through Crisis

Looking back on this period, several insights emerged about leadership during genuine crisis:

  1. Humanity Before Productivity: While this seems obvious, many organisations talk about putting people first but falter when business pressures mount. Real leadership means genuinely prioritising team wellbeing over deliverables, even when stakeholders are demanding results.

  2. Support Takes Many Forms: For some team members, the most supportive action was maintaining work structure when everything else was crumbling. For others, it meant extended leave. Flexibility and individualised support proved far more valuable than blanket policies.

  3. Create Psychological Safety: Team members needed space to express fears without judgement, show vulnerability, or simply acknowledge they were struggling to focus. Creating this environment across two Scrum teams amid crisis became my most critical leadership function.

  4. Transparent Communication: Being honest about what the company could and couldn't do to help, while maintaining regular and predictable communication rhythms, provided stability when everything else felt uncertain.

The Corporate Challenge

This crisis revealed both strengths and limitations in how global corporations respond to humanitarian emergencies:

Many organisations, including ours, had robust business continuity plans for technical outages, cyber attacks, or financial disruptions — but few had meaningful frameworks for supporting teams living through war zones.

The experience forced us to rapidly develop new approaches to support our team members across multiple countries affected by the conflict in different ways. In retrospect, these measures should have been part of our disaster planning all along. The crisis exposed how our corporate risk assessments had overlooked the most fundamental risk of all — threats to our people's physical safety and wellbeing.

The Lasting Impact

Looking back from January 2025, almost three years after those first uncertain days, I can reflect on how profoundly that experience shaped both the team and my own leadership journey. By the end of 2023, both myself and the team members had moved on from that company, but the lessons and bonds formed during that crisis remain.

Our team evolved throughout the conflict — some members relocated permanently, others returned to Ukraine when possible, and sadly, we lost contact with some talented colleagues amid the ongoing conflict. The company itself changed too, eventually restructuring in ways that led to our departures.

But the experience transformed how I approach leadership in meaningful ways. When I speak about "people first" in my work now, it carries the weight of real experience. When discussing risk management, human factors always take centre stage.

Most importantly, the bonds formed through crisis created a level of trust that no team-building exercise could ever replicate. Many of us still maintain professional relationships and friendships that transcended our time at the company. The Ukrainian developers, BAs, and testers who navigated that period demonstrated extraordinary resilience; the experience changed how I view professional commitment forever.

A Leadership Lesson

The greatest insight from this experience was profoundly simple: true leadership isn't about managing people through ordinary challenges. It's about supporting humans through extraordinary ones.

When the veneer of normal business operations is stripped away by crisis, what remains is the essence of leadership — creating safety, providing clarity, and honouring the humanity of those who look to you for guidance.

In the corporate world, we often measure success in deliverables, timelines, and financial metrics. But in those uncertain weeks in early 2022, success meant something different: a team that felt secure enough to express both their fears and their determination, knowing they would be met with understanding rather than judgement.

If there's one lesson I carry forward, it's this: the measure of leadership isn't how you perform when everything goes according to plan — it's how you respond when nothing does.