Monika Navandar on leadership, opportunity, and creating room for others to rise
One of the most common conversations in executive coaching begins with a paradox.
The leader across the table looks successful by every conventional measure. They’ve earned the title, built the reputation, and reached the role they spent years pursuing.
Yet many ask the same question:
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“I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve. So why does it feel like something is missing?”
After coaching hundreds of senior leaders across industries and countries, Monika Navandar has heard some version of that question countless times.
Success gets people to a certain point.
Beyond that, leadership demands something different.
Not more achievement.
More perspective.
More responsibility.
More awareness of what your influence makes possible for others.
It’s a lesson Monika understands not because she studied it, but because she lived it.
At sixteen, she lost her father.
While many teenagers were focused on exams and college applications, Monika was balancing work, education, and family responsibilities. Giving up on her ambitions was never an option.
A high-achieving student with interests spanning sports, performance, and the arts, she saw education not simply as a goal, but as a pathway forward.
Looking back, one realization would shape much of what followed.
“I learned early that potential and opportunity don’t always arrive together. Sometimes, what changes your future is someone giving you the chance to go further.”
“Talent opens doors. Opportunity determines how many remain open.”
Over the next two decades, Monika explored two questions through leadership, culture, and organizational development roles across 16 countries.
What helps people grow?
What happens when potential finally meets opportunity?
Across industries and cultures, she observed a common reality: people rarely fail because they lack potential. More often, they lack the opportunity, environment, or support needed to unlock it.
Her work in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Johnson & Johnson reinforced that belief. Representation mattered, but inclusion required more than a seat at the table. People needed to feel heard, trusted, and empowered to contribute.
That insight later shaped both her leadership philosophy and entrepreneurial journey.
In 2017, alongside Mahesh Vakare, she co-founded NeoSeven, helping organizations strengthen leadership, culture, and organizational effectiveness. The business grew to support more than 100 companies across 45 countries.
As Monika’s work expanded into Executive Coaching, she began noticing a challenge that cut across industries and leadership levels.
Many leaders were highly capable. They delivered results, mastered their functions, and became trusted experts.
Yet the skills that made them successful often became the very skills that limited their next stage of growth.
“Being exceptional at your function gets you far. But enterprise leadership asks you to look beyond your own team and understand how the whole organization succeeds.”
A leader managing five people suddenly finds themselves leading forty across countries, cultures, and time zones. A functional expert becomes responsible for enterprise-wide decisions. Leaders known for solving today’s problems are expected to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges.
At the same time, the environment around them has become more complex. Hybrid work, technological disruption, changing customer expectations, talent shifts, market volatility, and geopolitical uncertainty require a different kind of leadership.
“The challenge is no longer expertise alone. It is perspective.”
Many executives become trapped in the whirlwind of execution, leaving little time to think strategically or shape the future. Yet the higher leaders rise, the less success depends on what they know and the more it depends on how they help others succeed.
The question evolves from:
How do I perform?
to
How do I help others perform?
and ultimately,
What does my leadership make possible?
After coaching more than 650 leaders, including C-suite executives, Vice Presidents, and Senior Directors, one conviction became impossible for Monika to ignore:
Leadership growth cannot happen in isolation.
Leaders need broader perspectives, stronger networks, and exposure to people and experiences beyond their own.
It is also why she believes deeply in the idea of the Rooted Leader.
In a world defined by constant change,
“Rooted leadership is not about resisting change. It is about remaining grounded enough to navigate it.”
Grounded in purpose, values, and self-awareness, while developing the adaptability, perspective, and strategic judgment required to lead through increasing complexity.
That conviction led to ULeadSpace and programs such as The Rooted Leader, designed to help leaders expand how they think, lead, and contribute in a rapidly changing world.
Underlying all this work is a belief deeply connected to Monika’s own journey.
“Success shouldn’t stop with your own progress. As your influence grows, so does your ability to create opportunities for other people.”
For Monika, leadership ultimately comes back to a simple conviction: potential deserves the opportunity to develop.
It is the thread connecting a teenager navigating loss, an executive working across continents, a coach guiding senior leaders, a founder building communities of growth, and a champion of educational access through NavDeepam.
Opportunity changed her trajectory.
Now she is helping leaders create it for others.
Because in the end, the leaders we remember are rarely the ones who rose the highest.
They are the ones who made room for others to rise with them.
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Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
