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IN CONVERSATION
Andrew
Monk
Executive Director
Global Development
On learning to lead from a ventral state and what happens to a room when the person at the front finally stops filling it.
- 8 MIN READ
- 4 AUDIO CLIPS
Andrew is the Executive Director of Global Development at a UK University. He has been working with what it means to lead from a ventral state - a place of genuine calm and full presence, rather than the high energy drive that had characterised his leadership for decades. What he discovered changed not just how he leads, but how his team moves, decides and grows.
Q. You've described yourself as a "jazz hands" leader. What did that look like in practice?
I took over as director of a division on the very first day of lockdown. We grew all the way through the pandemic — which I genuinely didn't expect — and the energy that drove that growth came largely from me. I was the one pushing, inspiring, driving things forward. And it worked. But by the end of it, I was exhausted. Everything felt like it had to come from me, and I couldn't see how to change that. I knew I wanted the team's ambition to continue, but I didn't know how to unlock it without being the one constantly turning the key.
Q. How did you first start exploring the idea of a ventral state?
I came to it with no prior knowledge - I'd never heard of the nervous system used in this context. I just knew that I wanted to understand the effect I was having on my team, and I wanted my leadership to be more deliberate. What I found, quite quickly, was that recognising a ventral state came naturally when I rooted it in something physical. For me, that's water - being in a swimming pool, or the ocean. The way water slows you down. The way you can just float and be suspended in a moment. That became my anchor. And once I could feel what ventral felt like in my body, I started to notice very clearly when I was moving away from it.
Q. Can you describe what it actually feels like, in the moment, to move into that state?
In the ten or fifteen seconds before I join a call or walk into a meeting, I pause and I immerse myself — mentally and physically — in that sensation of jumping into a pool of water and floating. My shoulders drop. My chest opens. And then, as I go into the conversation, there's almost a dual voice in my head — an observing part that notices when I'm starting to veer toward that extending energy, and gently brings me back. Everything slows down. My voice, my thoughts. And that slower pace gives me time to make sure that what I'm saying is coming from what I genuinely feel, not from the noise in my head.
Finding VenTral
Ventral Experience
New thinking opens up
Q. What was the first time you tried to bring that into your leadership?
It was a one-to-one with a member of my team. They came to me with a whole list of decisions that needed making — resources, timings, whether we should be back in the office. And in that moment, instead of jumping in and solving everything, which would have been my instinct, I just held the calm. I gave them space. And what I noticed immediately was that they calmed too. The conversation shifted. There was room to think. That was when I understood that the ventral state isn't just something you feel — it's something you extend to the people around you, without having to say a word about it.
Q. You mentioned a residential away-day with the university's executive board as a turning point. What happened there?
That was remarkable. Historically, I would have arrived wanting to be heard — wanting to prove my worth by being the first to speak. Instead, I held myself in that ventral state throughout, and what I found was that I could absorb everything at once. Not just the data and the strategy, but the emotions in the room — who was retreating, who was pushing, how the dynamics between people were playing out. And rather than driving the conversation, I became a kind of punctuation to it. I'd summarise, synthesise, reflect back what the group seemed to be collectively arriving at. Afterwards, people told me something had shifted. They couldn't say exactly what. They just knew it had.
Q. How has it changed things for your team?
The biggest realisation was that I had been the barrier. My extending energy was actually containing the people around me — they assumed that my way was the way, and so they didn't step forward. When I stopped filling all the space, they moved into it. Decisions started being made faster. People felt more ownership, more confidence. One of the things I've understood is that there's a real difference between removing barriers for people — which is what I used to think my job was — and giving them the space to remove their own barriers. The first makes you everybody's problem solver. The second actually builds the team.
Q. What would you say to a leader who's sitting with this for the first time?
That it doesn't require other people to know what you're doing for it to work. You don't need to announce it. You don't need to train everyone. The effect it has — on the room, on the culture, on the quality of conversations — happens regardless. What I keep coming back to is this: so much of traditional leadership is focused on managing failure, on making sure nothing goes wrong. Leading from a ventral state flips that entirely. The energy goes into spotlighting what's possible. And that changes everything.
Listen to the interview
This interview is extracted from a full podcast with Andrew. You can listen here.
