Managing the Moment

A close-up, first-person perspective of a person holding a white tablet, displaying a digital monthly planner and calendar on the screen. The date "17" is circled in red on a Thursday. In the background, four people sit in a semi-circle during a meeting or group discussion, softly blurred to keep the focus on the tablet.

A phrase we’ve been hearing in leadership circles that deserves some attention is that the storm is the new norm. Change or volatility should now be seen as a permanent feature of the landscape, which means the leaders who thrive are the ones who stop waiting for calmer conditions and start building capacity for perpetual uncertainty. That was at the core of a recent LinkedIn Live conversation between Angelina Darrisaw, founder and CEO of C-Suite Coach, and Analiza Quiroz Wolf, a former U.S. Air Force captain, Fortune 200 brand manager, nonprofit CEO, and executive coach with over 25 years of experience. Analiza recently published The Myths of Success: A Woman of Color's Guide to Leadership, and what she brought to the conversation was something rarer than a to-do list: a genuine reckoning with what leadership requires when the playbook runs out.

The book jacket for The Myths of Success: A Woman of Color's Guide to Leadership by Analiza Quiroz Wolf, set against a mustard-yellow background.

Wholeness Is a Leadership Strategy

When Angelina asked which of C-Suite Coach's five core values was resonating most for her right now, Analiza's answer was immediate: live fully. In high-pressure environments, the instinct is to contract, to sacrifice everything else at the altar of the work. Analiza pushes back on that instinct directly.

"Live fully is really resonating with me because often there is so much to focus on that's not going well, so much out of our control," she said. "But if we can actually remember that there's still choice, we can appreciate who we are, our unique gifts, our unique talents, that we're whole people beyond our job title. It allows us then to show up and actually be more effective, right? More effective as coaches, more effective as leaders, more effective as parents."

Wholeness, in Analiza's framing, is a performance asset. The leaders who show up most powerfully during a crisis are the ones who have preserved something essential about themselves outside of it. Joy is an act of resistance, as Angelina noted, and living fully is as much a part of the work as anything else on the calendar.

When Faith Becomes a Leadership Tool

Across a career that has included deployment to the Philippines after 9/11 and steering a nonprofit through COVID, Analiza has navigated genuine crises. But when asked where leadership, faith, and burnout have most acutely collided, she pointed to the present moment, specifically to her coaching work with leaders whose funding has been stripped away, whose organizations have been destabilized, and who are searching for a playbook that does not exist.

"I find that because this moment especially calls for so much outside of our skill set, it's a matter of believing that there is actually much out of our control. We can do what we can. We can focus on doing the best we can in the moment, focusing on love. And how might we trust that, lean into that, and might even surrender to it."

Faith, as she describes it, is not denominational and carries no requirement of certainty. It is simply the recognition that there are conditions under which doing your best and letting go are the same act. When clients are open to that conversation, she says, something unlocks that strategy alone cannot reach.

Rest Is Not a Reward. It Is a Requirement.

The most persistent myth Analiza has encountered across her coaching practice and her interviews for The Myths of Success is the belief that grinding is the price of admission for serious leadership. Across more than a hundred conversations with women of color CEOs and C-suite leaders, she heard the same story: sacrifice is commitment, and rest is weakness.

"What I heard countless times over and over again was that it is a myth. We are worthy of rest. In fact, it is a must. It's the fourth commandment, right? To rest. And it's actually part of the leadership strength toolkit."

She is careful to name what burnout actually looks like at its most serious, because the word is often used too lightly. "When I talk about burnout, it's actually healthy. People are sick, like headed to the ER, fully incapacitated." Resilience, she argues, is a daily practice built through the quality of your sleep, your relationships, your movement, your play, and your spiritual life, whatever form that takes. It cannot be outsourced to an occasional spa day. And leaders who model that practice openly give their teams permission to do the same.

Analiza practices this herself. Prone to saying yes to everything she loves, she made a deliberate shift this year. "2026 has been my year of nos," she said. "My default has been nos. No to a reunion, no to a conference, no to a speaking event." The nos are not permanent but they create the space that makes the yeses sustainable.

The One Truth to Hold Onto

Angelina closed by asking for the single truth Analiza would want a leader to carry into a difficult season. The answer was unexpected: surrender. Not passivity, and not defeat. Surrender as the decision to lead with love, stay open, and trust that a path forward exists even when you cannot yet see it.

"How might we lean into this moment knowing it's for us, as horrible as it is? If we can lead with love and stay open and share our gifts with others, and also make sure we take care of ourselves, we can surrender to the moment and know that there's a path forward but we don't know what that is yet."

It runs counter to everything grind culture teaches. That, she suggests, is exactly why it works.

Analiza Quiroz Wolf is an executive coach and author of The Myths of Success: A Woman of Color's Guide to Leadership and host of the podcast Women of Color Rise. She is a coach in the C-Suite Coach network. To learn more about working with a C-Suite Coach, visit csuitecoach.com

C-Suite Coach helps organizations develop exceptional leaders through targeted coaching and learning programs. To explore how we can support your team, schedule a consultation today.