Soul-Centered CEOs: The Antidote to Our Crumbling Institutions

🌿 Spiritual Leader vs. Trained Leader: What’s the Real Difference? 🌿

Leadership isn’t just about what you know—it’s about how you show up. In this powerful episode, we explore the key differences between a trained leader and a spiritual leader—and why this distinction could be the missing piece in your leadership journey. 💫

A trained leader masters strategies, skills, and systems—often leading from the mind, driven by results and performance. But a spiritual leader? She leads from alignment, presence, and purpose—rooted in emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and connection to something greater than herself. 🌸

🔥 You can have all the qualifications in the world… yet still feel disconnected, exhausted, and unfulfilled. True leadership is not just about managing others—it’s about mastering yourself.

💖 If you’re ready to lead from wholeness, not hustle—if you want to inspire, not just instruct—this conversation is for you.

🎯 Watch now and discover how to embody leadership that transforms, heals, and uplifts.

Welcome to "The Heart of Success," where we redefine success with Larisa Vakulina – a multi-awarded entrepreneur, healer, and mentor.

Feeling unfulfilled despite your achievements? Larisa knows your journey. Each week, she shares powerful insights to help you blend professional success with personal fulfillment. Through her unique blend of business strategies and spiritual principles, you'll discover your true self and build a heart-aligned life.

Ready to transform your life?

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For more tips and resources, join my newsletter at LarisaVakulina.com. Stay connected, stay inspired, and remember, your success starts from the heart. Until next time, keep thriving and shining!

Chapters

• 1:06 Welcome to Heart of Success
• 2:01 Global Uncertainty and Collapsing Structures
• 3:33 Two Types of Leadership Explained
• 7:45 The Essence of Spiritual Leadership
• 13:02 Personal Leadership Reflection
• 15:44 Invitation to Subscribe and Share

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hello, welcome. You are on the Heart of Success show and I'm your host, larisa Vakulina. Go live every Wednesday at 2 pm. South Australian time zone. Principles, different experiences and tips and tools so that you can develop more of your personal awareness of yourself and also the awareness of the social happen consciousness a little bit, to the level where you start to understand the nature of things, the nature of what's happening.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Today I decided to touch on a very, very interesting topic because it's such a confusion happening, such a trembling, that inner sense of instability, the inner fear, the inner anxiety, that bubbling in each and every one of us right now, because we don't know the nature of things that are happening around us. All the structures collapsing, everything is kind of tearing into little pieces there, firm, stable institutions, big companies that have functioned for a number of years, like 30, 35, 40 years. They are closing doors and we just feel it is in the air that we kind of don't know what is in the future. We cannot perceive and have the vision of where are we all going, where are we all heading, because unprecedentedly strange things happening around us. Strange things happening around us.

Speaker 1: 3:01

But today I wanted to share some of my contemplation on the topic of how the leadership right now in our reality, in our modern life, is playing out, and I've found that there is, of course, a lot of different leadership styles, but to me, the two major and main category that I found and observed are spiritual leaders and trained leaders. Are spiritual leaders and trained leaders? So I mean trained leaders mean conventional, conservative view on the leader that basically acquired a lot of knowledge and a lot of knowledge from the institutions about leadership styles and strategies and all of the way that how these leaders can lead, and this type of leaders. They have this really great set of the personal traits and also the formal knowledge and education and all of the supportive guidances that are developed through the societal lens of performance, productivity, efficiency, competition and competitive advantage. So this is the leaders that are so skilled in terms of tweaking the systems and transforming the impulses of creativity into something that doesn't really have that alive sparkle. It is more of almost the leaders that have a lot of strengths. They have ambition, they have this confidence, they have the presence that make other people follow them because they feel this strength in them. They feel this strength in them, they feel this confidence, they feel this level of knowledge where followers think that this leader knows better that this leader have an above-average expertise in certain areas, and the followers kind of follow these leaders almost from the place of I'm not saying fear, but from the place of not being enough by themselves and from the place of taking benefit of being led by this person, by this leader, because the leader has its own intention to benefit from leading the company or production line or whatever, and the followers also have intention to be under that leadership and have some benefits of being led.

Speaker 1: 6:43

When we look at spiritual leader here, which I am observing right now, that these leaders are popping up not so many of them yet, but they are started to be, they started to be seen, they started to be known, they started to be showing a different type of leadership. So in our society, for some reason, when we tell or speak the word spirituality or something is spiritual, we perceive something like a woo-woo thing, like people don't really connect to this word spiritual. It's type of something that we don't know. We have that separated perception of spirituality. It's something up there that we cannot obtain and experience and feel and this is a big, big diversion, it's a big trap, it's a big mistake, because spirituality is actually real. It is the reality. That implies a lot of responsibility. So for me, spirituality means total, full responsibility for everything that comes into your life, everything that you create, and spiritual leaders are the ones that have that. They know the difference between unconscious acts and thoughts and feelings, and conscious creation and conscious creation. They know this gap between being unconscious and being consciously active, and this gap is called awareness. So these leaders are aware leaders that they notice within themselves what's happening within themselves, but most of what they notice and have the understanding of, yes, they have knowledge, but mostly they have that inner, personal understanding of that there is much more within us. There's a big, big, huge potential within ourselves, and these leaders are the ones that not only can feel their own potential, but they also can see great, unlimited potential in the others.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Well, this is, this is the two big differences between spiritual leader and the trained leader. So the spiritual leader is not, that is leading from the place of limitation. This leader is just so certain that there is always a solution. There is always solution outside of the trained skills, outside of the strategies, outside of the systems that we learn externally. This leader knows that he or she possesses this power of seeing himself or herself as a divine creator. As a divine creator and also, if he or she does that, perceive themselves in that light. They also automatically perceive others in the same light. So these leaders see and they would like to help others to reach the full potential, not because they want to have benefit from these followers, but because they serve.

Speaker 1: 11:13

There is a difference between doing the job and serving. And serving means that when we go into the space of true serving, we feel the impulse of divine creativity in us. We follow that impulse, we allow the feelings to guide us through the situations. It helps us to navigate not only our own lives as leaders, but also you can see and feel and perceive the other as a divine creator and you want to help that person to express that and reach that full potential for the benefit of the whole project, for the whole collective result that this leader is taking people towards, that common outcome that will benefit the whole. So I would like you to contemplate on what I just said and kind of sit with this information and just maybe have a few minutes within yourself and see where that leadership quality sits in you, where your own personal leadership within your own family, within your own circle of relatives and friends, how your personal leadership is planned and from what place it plays, and are you willing to consider and perceive others as friends, the unique expression of this divine plan? Are you willing to support that which is in the level and the space of the unity, united, collaborative and supported environment, rather than just following the formal KPIs criterias and ignoring that light and unique expression, because everyone and each of us are unique expression of that divine plan?

Speaker 1: 14:10

I would like to ask your opinion about the leadership and what's happening right now in our countries and in our world, that we see all sorts of leadership. We see all sorts of leadership and at the highest level we observe started to be popping up everywhere, developing and growing and building companies from that soul space, from that spirit, the human spirit that we've been experiencing been suppressed for so long. So, spiritual leader versus trained leader or the ambitious leader and I'm not saying that spiritual leader cannot be ambitious, but this ambition in that lead leader is is humble and it stems from that different space within themselves. It stems from that um, that intention of giving the hand to the follower to lift them up and from the view and from the point of view that leader sees the light in the follower to do the greater job, to achieve the potential to be seen also as a leader within themselves and also spiritual. Leaders are not the ones who knows everything. They have great knowledge, but they also have personal experiences that they're implementing and they're blending the knowledge with the sense of that emotional and spiritual intelligence that are melted together in that very wisdomed and very grounded and very responsible and very responsive way of leading people. So, thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 17:01

I hope you've been enjoying what I said. Please subscribe and sign up to my YouTube channel. There on my channel there is a shorts that you can actually see the little snippets of the essence, a little bit of that wisdom saying. So, if you don't have time to listen the whole episode it's almost 20 minutes well then, go and check up my YouTube channel where you can find shorts. So I would like you to start to chat to yourself about what I was saying, but also maybe you share it with me.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Possibly you have very different approach and view and perception of the leadership, of your personal leadership and also leadership that you see in the front of you. I really would like and welcome your opinion about it and so that we can start discussing it. Thank you so much. I love you all and I would like to say thank you so much. I love you all and I would like to say thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for support. I'm not the new uh in my live show and speaking to you, uh, on a camera. Uh, it's almost four years I'm doing it, but I'm really grateful for each person that tuned in and possibly find something for themselves to think about, contemplate about and possibly to do.