Zana Goić Petričević
Senior leaders often know what bolder, more purposeful leadership looks like. The harder problem is that under pressure, most default to the behaviours that block it; self-protection, managed risk, and emotional distance. Standard leadership development addresses skill gaps. It rarely addresses the identity assumptions and internal patterns that prevent leaders from acting on what they already know. The gap between the leadership organisations articulate and the leadership they actually practise is not a training problem.
Founder of Bold Leadership Culture and author of the SOUL Framework®, Zana Goić Petričević works with senior leaders and leadership teams to close the gap between the leadership they intend and the self-protective habits that prevent it.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Zana Goić Petričević
- Her SOUL Framework® is a registered trademark with a published book at its centre, not a proprietary slide deck but a structured, repeatable model that organisations can keep using through her books long after the engagement ends.
- She holds faculty standing inside the institutions that credential the field itself: faculty member at CRR Global, Leadership Circle Ambassador in Europe, and a contributor to PwC’s coaching and leadership development programmes across EMEA. That places her inside the leadership-development industry’s credentialing infrastructure, a position most keynote speakers on leadership do not hold.
- She works as a coach and programme contributor within PwC’s EMEA leadership development network, meaning her frameworks have been tested inside one of the most scrutinised professional development environments in the world.
- Her corporate background in the oil and gas and pharmaceutical sectors gives her a specific kind of credibility with executives who are impatient with leadership development that hasn’t been tested under commercial pressure.
- Named clients include TikTok, UniCredit, PwC, Sandoz, Zalando, and Capgemini, whose University she has opened the Game Changers leadership programme for in two consecutive years, a spread that shows she works across sectors and leadership cultures rather than a single industry vertical.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Bold Leadership Culture, an EU and UK-based leadership development and coaching consultancy
- Author of Bold Reinvented (built around the trademarked SOUL Framework®) and Leading on the Edge
- Faculty member of CRR Global; Leadership Circle Ambassador in Europe; Leadership Circle Profile certification coach
- Coach, tutor, and mentor within PwC’s EMEA coaching and leadership development programmes
- Named client engagements include PwC, Capgemini University, TikTok, UniCredit Bank, and EU institutions
- Certified CPCC, ICF-PCC, and ORSCC; trained Immunity to Change facilitator
- Holds degrees from the University of Zagreb and Leeds Beckett University; corporate background in oil and gas and pharmaceutical sectors
Biography
Most organisations treat change as something to survive. The harder truth is that the same conditions of volatility that expose weak leadership are also where the strongest leadership is built, and most teams never learn to use them that way. Zana Goić Petričević’s work starts at that gap: between the leadership organisations articulate under pressure and the leadership they actually practise.
Her approach is anchored in the SOUL Framework®, a trademarked model for leadership development introduced in Bold Reinvented: Next Level Leading with Courage, Consciousness, and Conviction. Her second book, Leading on the Edge, extends the argument, mapping the specific self-protective patterns, passivity, over-control, emotional distance, that cause high-capability leaders to default to safety over impact. Together, they form a coherent body of published work on why capable leaders underperform under pressure.
Before founding Bold Leadership Culture, she held senior corporate communications and marketing roles in the oil and gas and pharmaceutical sectors – industries where the distance between stated and actual leadership behaviour carries a direct commercial cost. As a faculty member of CRR Global and Leadership Circle Ambassador in Europe, she operates inside the credentialing infrastructure of the leadership development field, not simply adjacent to it. She also works as a coach and programme contributor within PwC’s EMEA leadership network.
Her client base spans technology, banking, pharmaceuticals, retail, and professional services: TikTok, UniCredit, Sandoz, Zalando, PwC, and Capgemini University, alongside EU institutional programmes. The consistent thread is leadership teams with strong technical or commercial capability whose default behaviours, individual or collective, are quietly limiting what the organisation around them can achieve.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership capability in complexity and change
- Self-protective leadership patterns and how to shift them
- Bold leadership culture
- Change management and organisational transformation
- Relationship-centred and conscious leadership
- Executive development and coaching frameworks
- Scaling leadership capacity across teams
Ideal for
- C-suite executives and senior leadership teams facing significant cultural or strategic transition
- CHROs and L&D leads designing or commissioning executive development programmes
- Leadership teams in professional services, banking, technology, and pharmaceuticals where risk-aversion or protective behaviours are limiting performance
- Organisations seeking a leadership development speaker whose work can be extended through structured frameworks and published material
Audience outcomes
- A working command of the SOUL Framework® and how it maps onto their own leadership context
- The specific self-protective patterns, control, distance, and pleasing, that cause capable leaders to retreat under pressure instead of stepping up, and how to interrupt them
- Why an organisation’s performance tends to track the consciousness of its leaders, and what that implies for how they develop their teams
- Language and models for the bolder leadership conversations that teams typically avoid
- A reframe of change from an obstacle to be managed into a position to lead from
Talks
Challenges leaders to transform how their organisations approach change, replacing resistance and reactive management with deliberate, strategic adaptation.
Key takeaways:
- How to shift the internal conversation about change so that teams lead transitions rather than manage them
- A proactive mindset that repositions change as competitive opportunity rather than organisational crisis
- Practical behaviours and frameworks for leading effectively when the outcome is not yet clear
Examines how a culture of boldness drives innovation and leadership depth, and what leaders must change in themselves before they can change the culture around them.
Key takeaways:
- The specific leadership demands that differentiate complex, high-stakes environments from stable ones
- How to integrate awareness, authenticity, and accountability into everyday leadership practice
- Actionable strategies for shifting organisational culture from protective thinking to game-changing leadership
Challenges leaders to act on their boldest thinking rather than waiting for conditions, confidence, or consensus that never fully arrive.
Key takeaways:
- A stronger sense of personal agency for seizing meaningful ideas and driving change
- Models for moving from hesitation into courage: learning to risk, trust, and act in pursuit of real impact
- Clarity on how the everyday decisions leaders make either shrink or expand what is possible for their organisations
Makes the case that relationship-centred leadership is the only sustainable route to scaling leadership capacity without burning out the people at the top.
Key takeaways:
- Why relational leadership is not soft management but a structural requirement in fast-moving, complex organisations
- Techniques for identifying and removing the barriers – internal and interpersonal – that block authentic leadership growth
- Practical steps for developing others and distributing leadership capacity rather than hoarding it