About
Marjana Laibacher Rogelj
Developmental guide, author & practitioner
25+ years in the field
"Development is not self-improvement. It is the slow, honest work of becoming more fully yourself β so that everything around you has a chance to change too."Book a free 45-min call β
My clients are intelligent, driven, and deeply committed to what they do. They find me at a moment of transition β a new role, a shift in what is being asked of them, or a quiet sense that something that used to work no longer does. They are ready to stretch into a new version of themselves. They just need someone who knows the terrain.
What people tell me about our work together, again and again: they felt safe enough to be honest β and challenged enough to actually move. That they met parts of themselves they didn't know were there. That something became possible they hadn't even imagined.
I just love people. And I love this journey β being present to the moment when something shifts, when someone meets themselves more fully.
My partners
A conversation with Marjana
It usually begins with a dilemma, a challenge, or a bigger vision β at the individual, team, or organisational level. Most often, it starts with the person carrying the most responsibility β a CEO, a senior leader, or a leadership team.
Sometimes it begins small β a single coaching engagement, a keynote, a one-day workshop. What matters is the experience. Once people see the depth of change that is actually possible, the work grows. We become partners and co-creators.
We always bring real business challenges to the table β not only as problems to solve, but as material for development. We don't build only psychological safety. We build psychological maturity β the capacity to address what was previously only felt, never named.
And that became the problem.
In unknown terrain, the warmth had turned into something else. Difficult conversations were avoided. Important issues stayed unspoken. The team waited for him to move first β every time.
We didn't work on communication. We went to the root. Somewhere in his history, harmony had become a survival strategy. He had learned β deeply, not consciously β that keeping the peace kept things together. It had served him well. Until now.
Over six months, we worked with that pattern. Not to fix it β to understand where it came from, what it had protected, and what it was costing him now. He experimented with a new way of leading his leadership team. Challenging them. Naming what was unspoken. Inviting real friction.
He described the shift himself: "I moved my team from a warm jacuzzi to an Olympic pool β where you actually have to swim."
Important issues started surfacing. People stopped waiting. Changes that used to take quarters happened in weeks. WeQ emerged β not as a method, but as a result.
She was described as brilliant β but struggling. With delegation, with morale, with holding everything together. The brief looked familiar. But when I sat down with her, I didn't just see her. I saw the system around her.
The company was moving from two decades of decentralised autonomy into a newly centralised structure. Different departments, different histories, different loyalties β all suddenly expected to operate as one. Nobody had named what that actually required. Tensions were real but unspoken. People were protecting their corners. She was holding pressure that belonged to the whole system.
We expanded the lens.
Over three months, we brought the whole leadership team into the room β regularly. Key internal stakeholders joined. Not to report. To think together. We explored what the company actually existed to do β beyond departmental targets. We named the external pressures nobody had said out loud. We surfaced the tensions between teams that had been politely avoided for years.
A small internal leadership group co-navigated the process with us β so this was never something done to the organisation. It grew from inside it. Where individuals needed deeper support, we worked with them one-to-one, at the moments when the system needed them to shift.
By the end, the relational field had changed. People were no longer waiting. Departments were talking across their old boundaries. The leader was no longer the only one carrying the weight.
The person you think is the problem is often just the one holding all the pressure no one else is naming.
This is where the real shift happens β when individual and team development move together.
Most organisations work on individuals, teams, or systems β separately. Very few develop all three at the same time.
This is where the real shift happens. Individual maturity without team development leaves people isolated in systems that pull them back. Team development without individual growth stays on the surface. And both without systemic awareness miss the context that shapes everything.
What I bring is the capacity to hold all three at once β and to connect inner development with real-world complexity. Development is not separate from real challenges. The complexity of the environment is the material.
A deep curiosity for people β and how we actually grow. I have always been drawn to what sits beneath the surface. Willing to stay longer, go deeper, ask the question after the question.
Along the way, I met remarkable mentors who shaped my thinking β and showed me that the most important development is always the one happening in the person doing the developing.
My own path has never been separate from this work. It has been part of it.
Co-creation is my way of working. I don't see clients across a table. I see people β and I want them to meet me as a human being, not a role.
My aim is simple: that people no longer need me. That they become the carriers of development in their own teams, their own organisations, their own systems. That is the only measure of success that truly matters to me.
That we are only at the beginning of understanding what human intelligence truly is. And what our potential actually is.
Wholeness is not a concept or a destination. It is a lived reality β available to anyone willing to do the real work. Not the work of adding more skills or frameworks. The work of becoming more fully themselves.
The leadership crisis is not a skills gap. It is a wholeness gap. And until we take that seriously β in individuals, in teams, in organisations β we will keep building competent systems with hollow foundations.
Someone who needs nature the way others need coffee. Long walks. Wind on water. The quiet of early morning.
I windsurf. I bake bread. I cook for the people I love. I travel with my husband in a camper β just us and our dog Gina, a Lagotto Romagnolo who takes the work of sniffing very seriously.
I value long, unhurried conversations that go somewhere real. I believe in living life, not managing it. The work I do and the life I live are not separate. They are the same practice.
Qualifications & expertise
- Leadership Maturity Coach, VEDA β Vertical Development Academy (Beena Sharma, Susanne Cook-Greuter)
- ICF ACC β Associate Certified Coach
- Systemic Team Coach (Peter Hawkins)
- Leadership Circle Profile
- Culture Transformation Tools, Barrett Values Centre
- Immunity to Change, Minds at Work
- Working with Polarities, Beena Sharma
- Collective Trauma Healing, Thomas HΓΌbl
- Developmental coaching for leaders
- Systemic team coaching
- Culture & organisational transformation
- Vertical development
- Trauma-informed coaching
- Navigating complexity
- Working with polarities
- MAP & Shifting Horizons assessments
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