How Can I Resist?: Defiant Leadership Through Impossible Decisions
The years 2020 and 2021 gave us phrases like the Remote Work Revolution, the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting.
These phrases helped us make sense of seismic shifts in how we work and lead. They gave voice to the collective reckonings that reshaped leadership and workforces worldwide.
In 2025, I find myself wondering: What will we call this moment we’re living through?
Because, once again, we’re facing a turning point—especially for those leading in the social impact sector.
The first few months of this year have hit us hard. From mass firings (often communicated through impersonal and disrespectful notices), to the sudden freeze of critical federal funding that’s left hundreds of thousands of nonprofits in a state of uncertainty. Leaders are being forced to make high-stakes decisions with enormous consequences and almost no clarity.
In my work as a coach and facilitator for mission-driven organizations, I’m noticing a troubling pattern: every decision feels like a lose-lose situation, with a heightened risk of moral injury. Many leaders are asking themselves: Do I comply, defy, or lie? Leaders are constantly grappling with impossible choices:
Do I risk losing vital funding to stand up for what’s right?
Do I stay silent, hoping no one notices a quiet compromise?
Every day, it feels like our core values are on the chopping block.
There’s No Easy Answer—But There Is Another Question
Recently, a leader reached out to me wrestling with these impossible questions. I began to respond in an email with a little guidance. My fingers typed out a question almost instinctively:
"How can you resist?"
When I read the question, I read it through the lens of personal discipline… like resisting temptation or impulse. But what I really intended to say was:
“How might we use our leadership—and our agency—to resist injustice?”
The more I sat with these questions, the more I realized both meanings are one in the same. To resist injustice, we must first resist the temptation to stay quiet, stay small, or stay the same. That’s where our leadership is most needed right now: not in perfect answers, but in powerful resistance. Here are three ways to start.
3 Ways to Practice Leadership as Resistance
1. The Body Keeps The Score
Practicing resistance doesn’t always require a grand public gesture. It often begins with the quiet work of paying attention to your own physical experience. Leadership pulls us into our heads: we are frequently asked to plan, strategize, get cerebral etc. But remember that your body holds vital data, and our bodies usually show us the first signs of dissonance. Start with these simple questions:
What situations/decisions show up as tension in my body? What makes me clench my jaw or ball up my fists?
What is absolutely exhausting me right now? What is giving me life?
How am I sleeping? If anything is keeping me up at night, what is it exactly?
As you become more aware of these physical signs, challenge yourself to resist your typical temptations. Resist the temptation to ignore what your body is trying to tell you. Resist the urge to push through exhaustion. Resist keeping quiet about what’s weighing on you. Resistance can show up in the smallest of moments. On a micro level, it might look like a simple (although not easy) practice of creating space in your day for rest and recovery so you can return to challenging decisions with renewed energy.
2. Ask For Advice, And Know Your Own Truth
We are all navigating a landscape filled with fear, scarcity, and misinformation. It’s important to lean on others for guidance. None of us should have to move through this alone. No one has all of the answers. Seeking advice can help fill the gaps in knowledge, perspective, and support.
So yes, defer to your trusted advisors when needed. But remember: one of the most powerful forms of resistance is knowing yourself, thinking for yourself, and believing in yourself. Perhaps the clarity you need is knowing what you stand for… and, as the kids say, “stand on business.”
What is the truth you know deep in your bones? What makes you most proud in your leadership? This kind of knowing doesn’t come from contingency planning or brainstorming a revised fundraising plan with your board. It comes from within… through the deep reflection that calls you back to who you are. Yes, knowledge is power. But in times like these, truth is king.
Knowledge is power. But in times like these, truth is king.
3. If You Can’t Be Certain, Be Curious
One of the biggest traps leaders fall into is the belief that they must have the right answer, immediately, and at all times, with no margin for error. Resistance doesn’t require certainty and having all the answers. It requires courage and the willingness to keep going simply because you’re curious about what could be.
I often speak with leaders about the power of liminal space: the space between “no longer” and “not yet.” We can't go back to the way things were. And we’re not yet sure where we’re headed. It’s uncomfortable being stuck in the middle.
Instead of rushing to action or defaulting to what worked yesterday, what if you paused in that in-between space to ask better questions?
What might be possible if we allowed ourselves not to know—just for a little while?
What ideas, relationships, or pathways might surface if we resisted the grip of urgency?
The beautiful thing about liminal space is that it's where new possibilities are born. If we can loosen the grip of urgency and binary thinking, we may access new forms of creativity, collaboration, and alternatives that weren’t previously visible.
Is This The Great Resistance?
Perhaps this is what we’ll call the leadership movement of 2025. The Great Resistance might emerge if we can allow ourselves to resist not just politically and socially, but also personally on physical, spiritual, and mental levels. When we as leaders resist the forces that want to keep us silent, small, and complicit, our organizations follow and benefit greatly. Before we know it, the “defy, comply, or lie” dilemma fades. We lead—and we resist—from a place of wisdom, self-trust, and unrelenting curiosity.
I’ll leave you with these powerful words from Toni Morrison:
“There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.”
You don’t have to be fearless. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have all the answers. What you must do is trust that you can resist—even in the smallest of moments: when your body chooses rest, your heart chooses truth, and your mind chooses curiosity. This is how we RESIST!
If you’re a social impact leader who needs support in resisting, truth-telling, and finding the strength to slow down, then please get in touch. My purpose as a wellbeing-oriented leadership coach is to talk through the messiness of leadership with people just like you. Get In Touch.