Boutique Leadership Development Office

Peergroups | Executive Coaching | Search & Placement

What some of our leaders say about us

Jeroen Brouwers Head of Product @ Vesper

Being part of the Group Effort peer group is incredibly valuable. It provides a platform for exchanging ideas, best practices and learnings with people in the same position.

Gijs Hendrix VP of Product @ Convious

As the most senior product person in my organisation, it's very hard to get useful feedback. This is what the Group Effort peer group provides me, as well as opportunities to get challenged and grow. It's been incredibly valuable.

Miranda Ippel Head of Product @ Twelve

In the peer group sessions, Martyn listens attentively, intervenes when the conversation veers off course, and frequently employs metaphors for clarification. He remembers the main themes from previous sessions for each individual, which deepens the conversations and advice. This is not only impressive but also extremely valuable for the participants.

Arco Westbroek CPO @ Carerix

It's very useful to share knowledge and be challenged by people in the same role within other companies. It's also fun to only need half a sentence to understand each other and have a relevant conversation.

Tom van der Woude Head of Product

The peergroups give me the opportunity to learn from the experiences of Heads of Products. I notice that more and more often I find myself in situations where I can apply what my peers have already experienced and learned and I can apply that knowledge to make judgment calls or prevent making mistakes that I would have probably made otherwise.

Jelle Kamsma Head of Product @ ANP

Martijn is an excellent facilitator who always has a metaphor or story at hand to help you reframe your thinking.

Sjoerd van den Biggelaar Product Owner @ Eurofiber

Every day, distractions come by that you can use as an excuse to neglect or postpone less enjoyable but more important matters. Martijn made me aware of the distractions of the day and the choices I was making unconsciously. He didn't do this by telling me what to do, but by skillfully coaching me in the right direction with questions and tools to help me understand the situation myself.

Peter Deumer Director of Software Development

As a coach, Martyn managed to provide a mirror instead of advice. Based on what I saw in that mirror I managed to identify certain aspects of myself, both personal and business, that I wanted to work on. I very much liked his approach towards sustainable improvement.

The Value of Perspective

If you want to improve your leadership, we are here to help. Our expertise is helping top level management get most out of themselves and their teams.

How does it work?

Depending on your needs, we offer 3 different services for improving leadership:

Peer Groups

Imagine the insights you could gain from 7 experienced leaders in your field.

We form peer groups of 7 leaders with the comparable roles from similarly sized companies. These groups meet 7 times a year to structurally learn from each other to become (even) more effective leaders.

Segmentation is based on role and company size. Think “COOs of companies sized 200-500 people in London” or “CPO’s of SaaS companies sized 50-200 in Berlin”.

**Peer groups are on a invite only basis**

Product Mastery Conference (with Marty Cagan)

The product mastery conference was born from our personal network of about 200 product and tech leaders. In our own continuous discovery we’ve found that many of you are hungry for high quality in-person interactions with real product people. No window-dressing, no boring panels, no overwhelming size. Just quality sessions that you can immediately apply.

* Max 200 people

* Authentic speakers

* No Sponsors

Custom work

Martijn works over 200+ leaders across Europe.

This yielded a very specific expertise making it very easy for us to help companies further grow either their executive teams or their product & tech departments. We take on a select amount of clients for custom work.

If you need your executive team or product & tech department to level up, do not hesitate to reach out. The best way to do this is to reach out to Martijn directly using LinkedIn.

What does it look like?

Coaching is always tailor made. The intake is always on location in either Hilversum or Berlin.

After forming a solid coaching question, it is determined how many sessions are needed to achieve this. We have a 100% success guarantee.

Over the course of a year you meet up with your group of experts under the guidance of an experienced coach.

Together you break bread, tackle challenging cases and discuss developments in your industry that affect you all.

Over the course of a year you meet up with your group of experts under the guidance of an experienced coach.

Together you break bread, tackle challenging cases and discuss developments in your industry that affect you all.

Current OPEN peer groups

CEOs

To keep the company growing, you have to keep growing yourself. One of the biggest dangers is that you might develop blind-spots on the way. These groups give you perspective.

COOs

Being a COO is a very special role. Your company grows, and as it does it requires you to grow with it. The different growth stages require different things from you. We match you with COOs that are in comparable growth stages.

Product Leadership

It is lonely at the top of product. Whether you're a CPO, VP of Product, Director of Product or a Heads of Product. We have a group that can add new perspectives to your challenges.

Technical Leadership

We Provide different groups for CTO, VPs of Engineering, Directors of Engineering etc. We separate physical product, physical&software and software groups to make context more alike.

CFOs

Being end responsible for the financials brings specific sets of challenges. From deciding when it is time for cut-backs, to working with that controller that has a black box of excel hell, to your role in the leadership team. There is always opportunity to grow.

And many more!

We are currently growing rapidly. We added partner coaches and they are reaching out to people close to their expertise. Aside from the ones showcased here, you might be approached by one of our partner coaches for a group that serves your specific niche. Have fun!

About Us

Martijn Versteeg

With over 16 years of (sports)coaching experience under his belt, Martijn noticed that often leaders can easily improve by exchanging insights.

Martijn has founded and sold a digital education company, worked as CP(T)O, Agile Coach & Head of Product.

Now, he uses these experiences to connect the right people running peer groups and doing executive search.

Martijn is known for using metaphors to help people reframe their thinking, a technique he learned from studying Milton Erickson.

Jaimie Lloyd

Jaimie loves making things that work for people. With her background in industrial design and her two masters she is focussed on bringing our clients a great experience.

With her background in product management she both helps build communities for Product Leaders, but also works on what we can do to provide more and more value to our clients.

She brings enthusiasm and an amazing work-ethic to the table and makes sure we also have fun while working hard.

Raymond Huisman

Raymond is our tech savvy automation hero. We get more done than you would expect from a team our size. This is mail due to Raymond thinking about smart solution to make everything easier.

Raymond has been working with Martijn since he was 17, so the two often need just a few words to get to understanding.

Oh and fun entrepreneurial fact, in the summer Raymond rents out his family island in Loosdrecht, little commercial: eilandloosdrecht.nl

Joeri Geelhoed

Joeri’s role in the Group Effort Team is to reach out to specific groups of executives. He hopes one day to become a financial executive himself, and is using his time at Group Effort to get as much knowledge and skills as he can to prepare him.

Aside from outreach Joeri is always ready to help wherever he can. He combines his job with rowing at a national level.

Maaike Hillen

Our own personal creative digital nomad. When she isn’t shining in a musical theatre production, Maaike makes sure all the groups run as smooth as possible.

She makes sure that communication is overseen and things go from being in Martijns head to running smoothly in an organised system

You?

Group Effort is rapidly growing. We are often looking for new talent to support us.

Do you feel the message of our company resonates and do you see an opportunity for working together? You are always welcome to send us a message using the form below.

Our Story

After years of combined experience working in various settings ranging from the smallest start-ups to the biggest corporates we drew one conclusion: Better Leadership makes for better companies.
We help improve top level management in the Netherlands, Berlin & London to become their absolute best.

We do this using tools like executive search & recruitment, structured peer groups, and specialised leadership coaching. To do this well we leverage our network and experience.