In this interview, Sensei Victoria Whitfield and I talk about Visionary Leadership. Going deeper, we discussed “Healing Leadership” and “Your Energy is Everything” as animal lovers and in the rest of our relationships.
Animal lovers are leaders, whether you acknowledge it or not. When you’re your best self, you lead yourselves and your animals into a better life. To broaden the thought, we’re leaders for our animals, our families, and our kids. In our business, we bring our leadership abilities to whatever we do for the business.
At our core, I believe we desire good communication and good relationships that result in something beautiful for ourselves and for those around us, whatever our passion. For me, it’s people, and animals, and Gaia.
Feel free to translate this discussion for your situation. The Family Visionary – which includes humans and non-humans. Or The Visionary for the Charitable Organization that is going to keep the [insert animal name] from going extinct. Maybe you’re The Visionary for your community. Or The Visionary for your religious community.
Here’s a shortened version of our discussion. The italics are my (Maribeth’s) part in the discussion.
Watch the whole interview here. It’s good!
You are a leader if you care about caring for others. That’s it. The more that we show up in service to the greater good, we’re leaders. “Others” can be anything or anyone, as in the greater good of Mother Gaia, right? Our earth, the greater good of our fur family, the greater good of our partners, the greater good of our coworkers, the greater good of our customers, our clients, our vendors, our community.
If you care about caring for others, if you care about creating more good in the world, you are a leader. Because there’s a force within you that moves you towards contribution, contributing positive energy, positive insight, positive inspiration in the world. And we need you now! “Come out, come out, where you are.”
The feminine half of being visionary is intuitive. We communicate on higher planes, we get, let’s say inspirations, insights, downloads, if you call them. From spirit, from our higher selves, from our loved ones, our fur family that are more than alive. The psychic, the prophetess, the priestess, the one who communicates on the spiritual plane is the visionary.
Maribeth, you teach intuition to those who want to communicate with their animals. So we’re on the same team, we’re just serving the people who we’re called to by divine guidance.
We’ve got the feminine half of being visionary down, of communicating on the visioning plane, on the psychic plane, if you will. Intuitive communication is the feminine half of being visionary.
When we think of being visionary, we sometimes think only of the feminine sense. However, there’s another half to being visionary, which is when it’s paired with the feminine half, increases the potency of all things. I want to introduce everyone to this concept, because it hit me like a ton of bricks earlier this year.
The masculine half of being visionary is a very defined and structure role. It’s essentially, “Who holds the role of the compass for where we’re going next?”
It’s an energy in the business structure that one person holds. Usually someone who is either the founder or tied to the essence of determining what a company stands for and what it does. That’s the role is being in the masculine half, being visionary. You have the emotion, you have the connection, and yes, the intuition, right?
When we combine communicating intuitively with spirit (feminine) with the compass-guiding leadership (masculine), that’s when we become highly impactful as leaders.
(Maribeth) I teach my students about not being visionary by jusy getting information, but by being the emotional leader in the family.
Once you have the vision, you have the responsibility to learn how to harness the energy and the vision to bring people or animals with you. That’s where the leadership comes in. You don’t just listen to your animals, you consider, “How do I create the best life for those beings in my family?”
There’s a branch of business called biomimicry, which takes structures for organization from nature, such as like how a beehive is run, or how geese fly so far. How do we apply this perpetual productivity and high-performance to business?
Take geese flying a V for migration. There’s an old African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Geese exemplify this. There is one navigating goose in the front, aligning with north.
Now every time a goose flaps his wings though, he doesn’t flap up and down, it’s a rotation which creates wind shear behind him. Like catching and coasting on a wave. They all use less effort. Once the navigator’s at the end of his shift, they rotate. That’s how they’re able to fly for hundreds, even thousands of miles as a group.
They’re in the presence of someone who is moving forward and actively doing something. They could both be just heading in their own directions. But when they’re around someone who’s getting things done, they get things done too from that resonance.
The visionary not only sees what’s going on in the higher plane, but the practical masculine side brings it into happening.
(Maribeth)In my work, I don’t want to just find out what your dog wants to tell you. I want to say, “You’re a family. What information can we provide to make the family unit work better, enjoy each other more?” First the feminine intuition comes out. Then the masculine intuition says, “Where are we headed here? What are we accomplishing here?” That guides me.
If it’s just the feminine side, it almost becomes entertainment, I hate to say. It’s like, oh, that’s interesting, okay. But we add the direction and purpose and then stuff happens.
There’s got to be a clear outcome, a clear vision, a clear purpose to why we’re doing this, otherwise this is entertainment.
If we stop at “I saw the color blue and that was nice,” it loses its transformational power. As the guidance to know you’re headed in the right direction.
Am I receiving entertaining guidance or entertaining experiences communicating with my animals? Or am I receiving explicit information how to save my cat’s life? Let’s get down to work and do something with all of this insight we’re receiving.
What you’re doing, Maribeth, especially what you’re teaching people, to access to a whole other level, because now they’re becoming informed Alphas of their pack.
(Maribeth) When we mean Alpha, we don’t mean forcing. It’s leadership by affirmation, by agreement. Like, “She knows what she’s talking about and I trust her.” Trust isn’t a forced “my way or the highway baby, because I’m the Alpha.” Trust includes a loving or at least respectful relationship. That’s the kind of Alpha that we’re talking about here. I want to be clear that we’re not talking about forcing them down and making them do it our way, “because that’s the way it is in this household.”
I needed you to jump in on that one because we need healing on what is a healing Alpha versus a toxic Alpha. This is so powerful. Being a healing person to follow versus being a toxic person to follow. That’s being a healing leader.
Radiating positive energy makes it a joy and a pleasure to be part of your pack, to be part of your family, your community. For entrepreneurs, it’s a joy and a pleasure to follow you and be part of your business or on your team. It is because of our healing force.
There is another concept of master – slave relationship, having an owner. I don’t want to be in a master – slave paradigm. Human or non-human. Whether we had it from this lifetime, saw it from friends in this lifetime, or remember master – slave paradigms from previous lifetimes, none of us want to be slaves.
It’s time for a healing. For leadership by those who care about caring for others. There’s toxic caring for others where you’re serving yourself for others. Versus healing leadership. Showing up because you are remaining sensitive to what others need. That takes you and everyone higher.
Read Maribeth’s blog, From Animal Master to Animal Mentor.
Heal yourself first. At its core, these insights start with yourself.
We could take all this insight and hot potato it on somebody else. “I just learned about these concepts, and now I see how messed up my parents are, or how messed up the kennel is or, how messed up you are over there. There’s nothing going on in me.”
With that mindset, there’s no leadership, and no healing. And there’s no chance for getting it right as a group. If you’re going to be a hermit, that’s great, go. But for the rest of us, pointing towards ourselves is more effective.
Remember to enjoy this journey in life. You don’t have to lose your glow as you grow.
Because when more good people make good money, more good happens in the world. I wish that for you, Maribeth, and for all those who are watching, listening in, so be it.
Sensei Victoria is a published author, a successful six figure energy healer, and has toured the world showing heart-centered and growth minded leaders how to get connected to their natural intuition and truly be visionary so they can work less and increase their impact. Visit Sensei Victoria’s website at https://victoriawhitfield.com/.
This is for you if you want to clear your own energy first, so you can lead well, follow well, communicate well, right, and be in deep, loving, and conscious relationship.
In this five-day challenge, we look for the different barriers to being in that visionary role, where we are balanced in the feminine and the masculine. So we’re getting the insight and all of the spiritual, energetic infusion, and we’re also bringing that back to our people, back to our family, back to our communities, back to our businesses.
If you feel the call of the adventure to take this challenge, to be visionary for yourself, for your family, for your community, for your business, join us there at bevisionarychallenge.com.
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