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The leadership team carries the highest stakes in any organisation. Whatever works - or doesn't - there, scales throughout the organisation.

It shows up in the room as tension, discomfort, impatience, frustration. In hushed conversations on the side. In what isn't said aloud. Something is off. You might not be able to name it, but you feel it whenever you're together. The lack of trust. The misalignment. Sometimes downright contempt.

One person at a company I was a leader at named this precisely. "You're like mom and dad," he said. "You get what you want if you go to the right one."

The image stayed with me because it names the triangulation so simply and so accurately. It points to what a fractured leadership team costs - not just in the team, but throughout the whole organisation.

You are brilliant individuals - highly competent and capable. It's what got you here. But you are still loyal to your respective functions, not to each other. And the gap is felt across your organisation.

You make decisions in the room but don't truly commit. The alignment lasts only as long as your meeting. The real conversation happens in the corners.

You don't challenge each other openly. So the real challenges never get aired. You don't say the thing because you're not sure what it will cost you in this room. So it gets said somewhere else.

Someone new joins and the trust foundation resets. Again.

You are caught in managing operations instead of setting direction and building culture. Your calendars are a nightmare.

You know you need to change. You're just waiting for someone else to say it first.

You've met the edge of what your current culture can hold, and you know it. This is not only a structural shift - it's a shift in relationship, meaning, and identity.

I work with leadership teams in these moments of change - listening to where the energy is pointing and building momentum from that.

You are at the threshold of something new. Walking across it will determine the kind of team you become. I meet you here.

Where you may find yourselves

Somewhere between

not anymore

and

not yet.

I grew up in the forest. I loved climbing trees - and mountains. I still do. It's where I feel most at peace.

I am Slovenian and carry our folklore and Slavic myths with me. I have moved countries three times, become a mother twice, and crossed more thresholds than I can count - personal, professional, ancestral.

Twenty years in design and innovation - as a doer, leader and design educator - across industries, companies and cultures - I’ve worked on hundreds of projects, large and small. I’ve been pathfinding through technological and relational shifts - the kinds that challenge what you think you know. This is the experience I bring into the work: bridging the abstraction of a vision and specific details down to a pixel - and everything in between. I know what work looks like at different heights.

I feel most alive in some of the most intense moments of the process. Moments where the collective field needs the most holding to stay with the trouble - just before turning it into something wildly creative and unconventional.

I hold the fire steady as we venture into the unknown. Together we shape the space between not anymore and not yet into now.

Learn more about me —>

I’m Martina

What happens in this space

We look deeper. We surface what is hidden, name the unnamed, shift what is stuck.
We move beyond strategies, frameworks and tools. They matter - but can't replace the relational work underneath.

We bring honesty, presence, curiosity, and creativity into the room. We uncover the stories running underneath. We build empathy and understanding across difference.

We take responsibility - each of us - for our share. For the impact we have and the outcomes we create together.

Values become relational agreements and everyday behaviours. Clear yeses and nos. Less posters on the wall, more living practice.

We stay with discomfort longer. We get present in uncertainty. We meet in friction and catalyse it into something new, something stronger.

We commit to the work that needs to be done.

The texture is different, but the pattern is similar.

Brilliant people pulling in different directions. Different worldviews, languages, and ways of working come together but fail to find common ground. Decisions get made - and then quietly reopened, because not everyone was truly behind them. Feedback doesn't get given because it might disturb the peace. Slowly eroding your creative confidence. There is a sense that the work could be so much better - if only the culture could hold it.

These can look like performance issues, but they rarely are. They go much deeper - to the level of values, beliefs and hidden power - who holds it, who gets to decide, who gets heard, who is overlooked and who sets the norm. Working at this deeper layer is where things actually shift. And from there, we can build systems, structures and processes to support you going forward.

Leading a cross-cultural, cross-functional, innovation or design team?

How I work with you

I work with what is happening in the room - not just what is being said, but what is in the space between - the relationships, the dynamics, the voices that aren't yet speaking.

I honour every voice of the system. I listen for what is said and what is not. I help you surface what is hidden and needs to be looked at.

I speak from fierce love that doesn't coddle to keep you comfortable. I build the conditions for truth-telling - not as confrontation, but as the most direct path to trust.

I help you see what's possible and invite you into it. Not as a distant vision, but as something you can already begin to practice together.

We weave different worldviews into new common ground. We shift the story of who you are as a team - and build something that is greater than the sum of its parts. The relationship itself becomes the foundation.

Your cohesion comes when you stop performing it and start building it. When you do the uncomfortable thing you've all been avoiding.

A new possible

Teams I work with stop performing cohesion and start building it.

The decisions made in the room hold outside it. The conversations that used to happen on the side start happening in the open. New people join, and the culture absorbs them, rather than fracturing around them.

You stop fearing feedback and start seeing it as the direct path to trust and to doing better work together.

The work that actually matters - direction, culture, vision - gets space again, instead of being crowded out by operational noise.

And the teams you serve feel it - you've become the change you speak of.

Who this is for

This is for leadership teams who know the problem isn't strategy. Who have tried the roadmaps, the frameworks and the consultants. Who are ready to look at what's actually happening between them.

This is not for teams sent here because someone ticked a box. This work requires the whole team to choose this work.

If you're ready - you're welcome here.

Your cohesion comes when you stop performing it and start building it. When you do the uncomfortable thing you've all been avoiding. When you become who you say you are.

What People Are Saying


“I've had the pleasure of working closely with Martina over the past six months, and she has been an absolute asset to our team. During her time with us, she consistently demonstrated the ability to take us in the right direction, offering thoughtful insights on how we progress with a level of care that's second to none.

Any organisation would be lucky to work with Martina. She brings a high level of energy, professional integrity, and technical skill to every task. I highly recommend her to any creative team looking for a leading professional to help overcome the critical barriers holding you back.

Stephen Ardern, Managing Director at Continuous


“Martina led a 1 day workshop for my EMEA leadership team, which came together in person after a long time of working virtually. Martina has been great and helped us to create our vision, design our team alliance and align on our next year's priorities. I have been particularly impressed how well the set up worked, with us being together in one room and Martina joining us virtually and how she was able to read the room. I can highly recommend Martina and look forward to hopefully more opportunities to work together.”

Franziska Ferraz, VP, Commerce Grid Activation Central and Southern Europe at Criteo


“This past year, my colleague and I have been luckier than most - we were blessed with an organizational coaching course with Martina Gobec.

Martina is an amazing human being. She is so well in touch with her intuition, and easily picks up on other people. She also has an amazing background in (design) leadership, making her a fantastic coach.”

Helle Martens, Founder and CEO of UX Copenhagen

Read the entire story, Everyone should have a Martina, from the coaching process, written by Helle on LinkedIn.

How the work often unfolds

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