It’s the most wonderful time of the year—time to reckon with darkness. The days are getting shorter and the nights are growing longer. My neighbors and I in the northern hemisphere are now living mostly in the dark, and as the solstice approaches I know it’s going to get darker before it gets lighter.

And it’s been a dark year. More than 1 million people (and counting) were laid off in 2025, as economic inequality is at a record high. AI appears to be on an increasingly dystopian trajectory, according to the people who created it, but many CEOs are delighted to finally replace their troublesome human employees with robots. Meanwhile, democracy is on shaky ground around the world, and we are continually shocked (but less and less surprised) as hard-won human and civil rights are rolled back or brought up for debate.

For me, it’s been a year of watching systems and structures I’ve long trusted—and, if I’m honest, taken for granted—start to crack. The paradigms we’ve been operating under for the better part of the last century (e.g. “work hard enough and you’ll succeed,” “more is better,” and “for me to win, someone must lose”) are, in bringing us to this moment of brittle tension, proving themselves to be deeply flawed.

And we haven’t yet found new paradigms to replace them. So we find ourselves in a liminal space, betwixt and between what once was and what has not yet emerged. The classic interregnum line from Antonio Gramsci has been on my mind all year: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

So yeah, it’s a dark time. It feels important to say so, especially as champions of the old paradigms continue to insist that everything is going perfectly according to plan.

But what if this darkness isn’t a problem? What if it’s the source of real solutions? What if it, like this winter season, is a natural and necessary phase in a much larger cycle of transformation?

And what might that mean for how we need to lead right now?

“What if this isn’t the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”

—Valerie Kaur (watch her full speech from New Year’s Eve, 2017)

DARK X LIGHT

What Darkness is For

Every cycle that sustains itself has a dark phase: The earth needs winter to restore the soil. Our bodies need sleep to consolidate memory and repair cells. Seeds germinate underground, nourished by rich soil, before they break through. The moon wanes so it can wax again.

Yet we’ve built organizations—and societies—that resist this rhythm. We pursue exponential growth, with perpetual increases in productivity and profitability that defy natural limits, forgetting that, in the human body, exponential growth is a sign of cancer. In this model, patience is a liability, rest is a weakness and relationship is a risk.

But darkness is not to be denied. If we don’t make space for it, it manifests as chaos. Things break. Structures crumble. What felt stable becomes unstable.

Donella Meadows wrote about how systems—from corporations to governments—lose their resilience over time when they operate against natural limits. “One day [the system] does something it has done a hundred times before and crashes.”

The darkness is that moment of reckoning for systems operating the same way for too long. Now we can see they were never truly stable, as inequality and exploitation have always been part of the paradigm. The deeper the darkness we find ourselves in, the harder this is to ignore, the more people awaken to the reality of the systems they’re living within, and the more energy they bring to remaking them.

If we’re willing, that is. The darkness is only womb (and not tomb) if we actually let it transform us.

Rather than sit on the sidelines until the darkness passes, or power through it to get back to business as usual, we are invited to integrate what it’s trying to teach us—that however divided we may seem, we are in this together, that growth has limits for good reasons, that we are responsible to more than our shareholders. If we can do that, individually and collectively, then something genuinely new becomes possible.

The question isn’t “Can we survive this dark time?” It’s “Will we let it change us?”

The leaders who are navigating this most skillfully recognize the season they’re in, and are operating accordingly:

• Re-grounding in their purposeful vision and core principles
• Pausing to rest, reflect and respond, rather than react
• Leaning into tensions rather than dealing in absolutes or rushing to quick fixes
• Asking for help, inviting ideas from everywhere and co-creating with (not for) their people
• Running experiments rather than rolling out untested solutions at scale

Because change is not a solo enterprise, not a sprint, and not a zero-sum game. It’s something we do together, feeling our way forward as we hold hands in the dark.

In Practice: Planting Seeds

As I write my book on the 10 Truths of Radiant Change—which invite leaders into the practices mentioned above—I’m gathering information on (and inspiration from) emerging models around the world. In the realm of protecting and progressing democracy, check out The Citizen’s Assembly in Paris, the Citizen’s Council in Belgium and the People’s Budget in Richmond, Virginia. In each, everyday citizens gather to set priorities—not officials deciding for them, but communities shaping key initiatives together. Taiwan is going further, using AI technology to foster participatory democracy by mapping public opinion, building consensus around key issues, and making it easy for government to be responsive to its citizens.

These are just a few of the innumerable seeds being planted now, the signals of change to come. This vital work doesn’t make big headlines or sustain doomscrolling algos, but it’s happening everywhere, every day. And we can take advantage of this moment to plant seeds of our own.

Here’s how to lead well in the darkness:

1. Name the season you’re actually in. Not where your strategic plan says you should be—what’s true. If you’re in winter, acknowledge the darkness. Tell your team: “We’re in a dark time right now. We’re going to move through it together, and that means moving differently than we have before.”
2. Ask yourself: What am I trying to retain or regain that I need to release? An old certainty? A familiar way of operating? The belief that you should have all the answers?
3. Create space for emergence instead of imposing solutions. Ask your team what they see that you might be missing. Let a decision stay uncertain longer instead of forcing premature closure. Admit “I don’t know” and invite collaborative sense-making.
4. Practice strategic rest, as we'll be doing in the RadiantLeader.co community this month. Not just because you’ve earned a break, but because building new futures takes sustained energy, vision and focus. And because rest is one of the great gifts of darkness.

Closing Question: What is my relationship to darkness?

Am I afraid of it? Overwhelmed by it? Am I rushing through it, or resting into it? What is this season of darkness inviting me to transform? What needs to be released or reimagined for that transformation to take place?

If these questions stir something in you that deserves deeper exploration, I’d love for you to join me in the last Mini-Retreat of the year, where we’ll create space to sit with what transformation actually asks of us—including what we might need to grieve and release. 👇

December Mini-Retreat: The Gifts of Darkness

In the northern hemisphere, we’re entering the darkest time of year—short days, long nights, precious little light. It’s a season that can feel depleting. But what if, instead of resisting the darkness, we learned to embrace its gifts?

This mini-retreat invites you to make room for darkness in your leadership practice. We’ll explore the fertile territory that lies beyond what light can reach—from the murkiness of uncertain futures to the shadows hiding within ourselves.

Join us to discover what becomes possible when we stop pushing against the dark and start letting it in.

Friday, December 12, 2025​
5 - 6:30 p.m. GMT
12 - 1:30 p.m. ET
9 - 10:30 a.m. PT

Zoom link sent upon registration

Mini-Retreats are free for RadiantLeader.co members, who can RSVP here. 💛

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Looking Ahead: Lighting the Way with Intention

After December 21st, the days begin lengthening—imperceptibly at first, then undeniably. As Dolly sings, we can trust the light will return, not because we’ve slept through the darkness, but because we’ve lived through and been changed by it.

I’ll be back in your inbox that day with a link to download your 2026 Leadership Intention Workbook. Longtime subscribers know this as an annual ritual around here—the setting of a noble intention to light our way forward into the new year.

And in 2026 we’re starting a new tradition: The 31 Days of Intention challenge, featuring daily practices to help you live deeply into your intention throughout January—and setting you up to sustain your intentional practice all year long. If you don’t want to wait for your winter solstice email, you can pre-register here. (The challenge is free for RadiantLeader.co members.)

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Onward together.

Kristen Lisanti
​Radiant Change​
​Training Leaders to Transform Cultures