Six Signs You Are an Intuitive Leader
And that you are ready to step into the role fully.
Intuitive leadership is a term that tends to get thrown around and can be a bit ambiguous. I’m here as a leadership expert, shaman, and divine channel to help unpack this concept and provide guidance in the process.
What is an intuitive leader and why do we need them?
Put simply: an intuitive leader is someone in a position of power or influence who tends to rely on more than facts and figures to make decisions. Data is important, and we absolutely need it in order to be effective as leaders. However, an intuitive leader is able to go beyond the data and access their inner knowing to guide their organization or community toward creating something much more impactful.
We need intuitive leaders, because the current mainstream state of business and leadership is incredibly lost, especially in the Global North. I live in the United States where it is incredibly common and generally accepted to prioritize profits over people and, in some extreme cases, to create valuations on human lives when determining business risk.
This incredibly toxic way of operating needs a counterbalance — and fast — in order to preserve our humanity and move our world forward in a holistic way. My work centers around guiding intuitive leaders to discover who they are in order to begin to repair the harm that has been caused and to shift the culture of leadership toward something that is more generative, healing, and human-centered.
The following are signs that you may, in fact, be an intuitive leader and are ready to begin to step into the work that you are meant to do here.
1. You know that there is more than what you are seeing with your two eyes.
I remember being a child and feeling the presence of other spirits around me. I couldn’t explain it, because on the surface, everything looked normal. But I knew better. I knew there was more.
I once had a brief vision that showed me the “in-between” — what was going to happen after we pass away. I was shown that at the end of our lives, we see our life in a way that is similar to a movie. Scene after scene of the most important moments of our lives. Our biggest triumphs. Our most devastating failures. And as we witness each of these moments, everything makes sense. We begin to see all of the threads and the through lines. We begin to see every lesson and why everything had to happen the way it did. I was six.
If you are intuitive, you have likely been receiving information from some unseen source your entire life. It may not have always been with such clarity, but you have always suspected that there is more that you are receiving. Perhaps you get information via your emotions, vivid dreams, through songs, or simply a knowing that you cannot describe.
This intuitive information has likely guided you as a leader. Perhaps you are known for having gut feelings that are more often than not spot on. You know who to trust or what path to take with little to no information.
Intuitive leaders are visionaries and dreamers. They are creative when crafting the path forward and unapologetic about the information they use to do so. It’s not to say that they are reckless when leading; it is actually quite the opposite. They consider more information than other leaders would by engaging their intuitive senses when making decisions and are typically thoughtful and grounded in their process.
2. You feel purposeful but perhaps not having the impact you know you can have.
I worked as an HR leader in a corporate setting for quite some time before I leaned into my Universe-given work. And for the most part, I enjoyed what I did. I worked with amazing leaders who gave me a lot of freedom to create HR leadership development programs that were innovative and groundbreaking. I pushed the boundaries often, teaching leaders to be more human-centered, equity-minded, and emotionally intelligent.
It was incredibly important work. And I still felt as though I wasn’t living up to my full potential.
The reason? I felt purposeful in the work I was doing, but I knew I was meant for more. I knew I could have a much larger impact if I was doing the work that I was quite literally put on this Earth to do. And while I learned invaluable lessons in my corporate role and met some pretty remarkable people, I knew I wasn’t doing all that I could do to make our world better.
So, with little to go on but the Universe nudging me toward my divine purpose, I quit my cushy corporate job and began focusing full-time on my divine path. And I haven’t looked back since.
3. You feel deeply troubled by the state of the world.
You may have always felt a sense of concern for our human collective, our planet, or animals. It may be something that began when you were young. Perhaps you picked up on a sense that something just isn’t right here.
It’s also possible that your concern for the state of the world stemmed from recent events. The pandemic has highlighted and amplified already existing inequities, especially for traditionally marginalized and minoritized communities. Our political landscape has become increasingly divisive and toxic, creating even less opportunity for people to come together and address our differences in healthy and sustainable ways.
As intuitive leaders, we wouldn’t feel as though we need to be doing more impactful work if we thought the world was exactly where it needs to be. We know that our world is in trouble. And we also somehow know that we have a really important role to play in getting us on track.
4. You have trouble balancing your life.
While in my corporate role, if I wasn’t working, I felt as though I was in constant recovery mode. I was in a perpetual state of energetic depletion. I had little energy to do things like exercise or eat well, let alone anything that would resemble thriving such as creative pursuits. I knew that these things would likely help me feel less depleted and yet I couldn’t seem to conjure up the energy to do them.
Most intuitive leaders are incredibly focused on others. Perhaps they put more of their focus on their families, the teams that they lead, or their community. But at the end of the day, because of the state of our world, there is so much work to do for others that we typically have little energy left for ourselves. This cycle keeps us constantly striving for balance, and it is difficult to achieve such without being tapped into our intuitive sense and understanding what we need in order to restore and recharge.
5. You feel out of alignment.
Having trouble balancing our lives is simply a symptom of something much bigger: being out of energetic alignment. What this means is that we are spending energy in places that are not where it is most efficiently or effectively utilized.
This can look like hustling and working your tail off in a job that is completely underutilizing your gifts or what you have to offer. It can look like maintaining relationships that aren’t feeling nourishing or worth the energy that they require. It can simply be an overwhelming feeling that where you are spending your time or energy just isn’t feeling right.
When I have felt most out of alignment in my life, I remember feeling incredibly victimized or resentful. I blamed the people around me for how I felt, silently cursing them for not seeing me or fully appreciating me. But the problem wasn’t them; it was the choices that I was making about where I was spending my energy.
I did things out of obligation or because they were expected of me, not because it’s what I was actually feeling called to do.
The most powerful thing I did to bring my life into alignment was begin to pay attention to my needs and feelings. Once I was able to trust my inner knowing to guide me, I began having the hard conversations (with myself and others) about where I was out of alignment and what needed to change in order to bring things into alignment.
I made massive life changes over a relatively short period of time, including quitting my corporate job to pursue more soul-nourishing work and ending my relationship with my husband. Seeking alignment in our lives is rarely easy yet always worth it.
6. You prioritize your growth and healing.
You may have already spent a good amount of time in therapy or seeking out other healing practices. Perhaps you have spent some time in meditation or studying mindfulness. Regardless of the mode, it is likely that if you have gotten this far and resonated with most (if not all) of this article, this also strikes a chord.
I wrote another Medium article addressing the correlation between trauma and accessing our higher self or intuition. As intuitive leaders, we are being called forward to heal our human collective and our planet, and we can only be effective if we commit to the difficult but necessary work of addressing our own healing first and foremost. It is the only way to do this work without causing greater harm.
I believe that if you have found your way here, you are likely an intuitive leader.
When I realized my role in bringing our world out of this current darkness, I shuffled through a multitude of emotions — from deep gratitude for understanding myself more deeply to a heavy sense of burden and responsibility for the work ahead of me.
I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. And we need you.
It’s time to step forward into who you are meant to be in this life, and you have support. My hope for you is that you begin choosing courage in making choices that bring you back home to yourself, remembering exactly who you are in order to do the work you are meant to do here.
Breathe through it all, and remember that you can always trust your intuitive knowing to guide you forward.
If you’re ready to invest in your gifts, click here to explore what it could look like to work with me.
