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Organizations actively pursue digital transformation strategies to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving landscape of digital tools and capacities. As organizations implement digital transformation strategies, fundamental shifts are made to business operations, culture, product and service offerings, and the customer and employee experience. This qualitative research study examined the lived experiences of 25 employees who have experienced role disruption due to digital transformation efforts and their attitudes toward future digital transformation efforts. The participant’s experience was captured through open-ended interviews and analyzed during open coding. Employees were generous with their stories and shared the challenges they faced, their emotional experiences, their perspective on technology, their learnings, and the internal capacities they leveraged or developed during these experiences. Strong emotions, such as fear, were potent and balanced only by describing the complex emotional journey employees experienced. Inner capacities such as perspective-taking, agency, and openness were leveraged or developed. Digital transformation necessitates building the capacity for navigating and thriving in complexity for the employee. This research contributes to a limited body of academic literature on the employee experience of role disruption due to digital transformation efforts.  It also contributes to the academic literature examining transformative learning and adult development in the workplace context. This study has the potential to impact digital transformation practices and aid organizations to better support employees navigating role disruption.

Keywords: digital transformation, digital disruption, disruptive innovation, employee experience, emotions, transformative learning, adult development, mindset