The Long Arc Requires Steady Hands

A reflection on leadership, power, and care in uncertain times

As we head into a long weekend honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., many of us are holding a familiar tension. One that feels especially personal right now.

There is a lot happening in this country. Funding uncertainty. Policy shifts. Public rhetoric that increasingly points blame at places, people, and differences. For many of us, including immigrants, people of color, and those whose identities sit outside the margins of what is often centered, these moments do not stay abstract. They land in our bodies, our families, and our work.

At the same time, many of us hold responsibility for teams, institutions, and communities. We are being asked to lead while absorbing uncertainty, grief, and fear, often quietly.

This weekend invites a different kind of reflection. One that asks us to slow down and reconsider what leadership and power actually mean, especially in moments when belonging itself feels contested.

Leadership Is Not a Title

We often talk about leadership as something granted by position. A job title. A seat at the table.

That framing is incomplete.

Leadership shows up in the way a colleague names what others are afraid to say. In the way a supervisor creates safety for difference rather than discomfort with it. In the way people continue to lead with care even when systems feel hostile or brittle.

Leadership is not limited to formal authority. It lives in how we choose to show up when conditions are hard and identities are politicized.

Every organization, every system, every movement depends on people exercising leadership without permission.

Power Is What People Entrust to Us

Power is often misunderstood as control. Control over budgets, decisions, or outcomes. In reality, power is about influence and stewardship.

One of the most profound forms of power we hold as leaders is entrusted, not assigned.

When people share pieces of themselves at work, stories of their families, their identities, their fears, their immigration status, their mental health, their lived experiences, they are offering something vulnerable. They are giving up a piece of their power and placing it in our care.

What we do with that information matters.

Do we protect it?
Do we honor it?
Do we use it to create safety, or do we allow it to become currency, leverage, or exposure?

The way leaders hold these moments sets the trajectory of who we are and what kind of organizations we build. Power exercised without care erodes trust. Power exercised with integrity creates conditions where people can remain whole.

Especially now, leadership requires discernment, restraint, and deep respect for the humanity people bring into our spaces.

Our Differences Are Not the Problem

There is a narrative circulating that difference is something to manage, minimize, or blame. That our complexity is a liability.

It is not.

Our differences, of culture, language, history, and perspective, are what make humanity resilient and creative. They are the source of innovation, empathy, and collective strength. Systems fail not because of difference, but because they are unwilling to hold it with care.

Leadership in this moment is about resisting the impulse to flatten people for the sake of efficiency or comfort. It is about choosing belonging over blame.

This Is Work of the Long Arc

Dr. King reminded us that justice bends slowly, and that leadership rooted in values requires patience, courage, and moral clarity.

Many of us are navigating funding freezes, political pressure, and institutions under strain. It can feel like every decision must be immediate and absolute. But leadership is not just about reacting to the moment. It is about holding the long view.

What does this moment ask us to protect?
What does it ask us to build, even quietly?
What does it ask us to refuse?

Leadership grounded in values does not abandon strategy. It sharpens it.

A Grounded Invitation

As we move through this weekend, here is a simple reframe worth holding.

You do not need more authority to lead well.
You do not need certainty to act with integrity.
You do not need to carry everything alone.

Leadership lives in how we hold power, how we protect humanity, and how we choose steadiness over fear.

At Piñon, we believe leadership is less about visibility and more about stewardship. Less about performance and more about responsibility, especially now.

May this weekend offer space to pause, reflect, and recommit to the kind of leadership that honors difference, protects trust, and endures for the long haul.