I don't think "good leadership" is about fighting a battle you can't win. Energy is best spent on battles that you have a good shot at, in areas you're good at. Not setting yourself up to fail.
In this case, I didn't know I couldn't win, so I fought a losing battle and no good came of it.
On-the-ground I created an ambitious assessment program called "Assess the Past, Inspire the Future" which for the first time, connected participants from the past & present of the future and had them submit evaluations of their experiences... and "from-above", I was ultimately asked to give a report to the cabinet minister in charge of this thing. You can't go higher up than him without reaching the prime minister, and I could hardly have asked for better results and response for my survey. I believe I had the personal support every single active participant above the age of 20 (the younger ones were mainly oblivious), though none of them knew as much as I did about how deep the problems actually went. And my mentors would have supported me to run the damn thing if we'd have been able to get some change in the air.
Unfortunately, hearing the truth didn't help the organization -- they reacted by selecting young, naive people to participate in their programs, shying away from people who were old or mature enough to realize what was going on. Neither did it have the intended impact on those with the power to change things -- no politician, including the cabinet minister, would touch this with a 10 foot pole, because it would be way too risky. Much easier to let it continue as-is, and deny knowledge if anything nasty ever bubbled to the surface in the future.
In the end, the people who had the real power to make things right failed to act, so the only choices I had were to leak the story to the press, which likely would have destroyed the program in an instant, or walk away quietly. And since I believed (and still do) that our country is better off with the program than without, even when taking into account its imperfections, I took my cue and left the scene.
The whole ordeal took way more out of me than I expected. I don't even like the way I sound when describing it here, because it comes across as so negative and pessimistic! There are way better things I should be spending my time thinking about and acting on -- now, just as then.
To accept other people, that I can't change them, that I am always going to wake up and find new forms of nastiness. Then, to move on and think about better things. That's what I believe in these days.
My mistakes were misjudging my chances of making a difference, and misjudging the value of my own time. Life is short -- pick your battles accordingly. Those people are going to be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. I can either try to fight that reality or I can find something productive to do.