Frequently Asked Questions

Informal leadership skills are the behaviors and capabilities that determine how effectively you can lead and influence in situations where you have no formal authority. They include things like how you build trust with peers, how you frame ideas to gain support, how you navigate organizational politics without becoming cynical or ineffective, and how you communicate in ways that give others confidence in your judgment.

These skills are called "informal" not because they are less important, but because they are not part of any formal curriculum. You will not find them in a job description or a performance review framework, yet they are often the primary factor in whether a technically capable professional advances into leadership.

The individual sessions are coaching. The webinar programs are structured learning that includes elements of both training and coaching.

In individual coaching, the focus is on your specific situation, your specific challenges, and your specific goals. The coach provides frameworks and perspectives, but the work is entirely oriented around what you are dealing with in your actual professional life.

In the webinar programs, there is more structured content, but the sessions are interactive and participants are expected to bring real situations from their own careers to work through together.

Most leadership training focuses on formal leadership skills: how to set goals, how to run performance reviews, how to delegate, how to communicate a vision. These are useful. They are also not what most professionals struggle with when they transition into leadership.

The Xucavi approach focuses on the layer underneath: the informal dynamics that determine whether formal leadership actions land or fail. It is possible to have excellent goal-setting skills and still be ineffective as a leader if you cannot build the informal trust and alignment that makes those formal processes work.

No. Many participants are individual contributors who are preparing for a leadership transition, or who are in roles that require them to influence colleagues and stakeholders without having formal authority over them.

The skills covered are relevant to anyone who needs to move things forward through people, regardless of their title. In many ways, it is easier to develop these skills before taking on a formal leadership role, when there is more space to experiment and reflect.

Each session follows a consistent structure. The first part introduces a framework or concept with enough precision to be immediately useful. The second part applies that framework to real situations brought by participants. The third part addresses questions and identifies specific actions each participant will take before the next session.

This structure is deliberate. The goal is not for participants to understand the material in the abstract, but to be able to use it in specific situations they are currently navigating.

Groups are kept small to allow genuine discussion and individual attention. The specific size varies by program, but the aim is to have enough participants to generate diverse perspectives while keeping the group small enough for everyone to contribute meaningfully in each session.

Sessions are not recorded by default, because the interactive nature of the sessions depends on participants being willing to discuss their real professional situations. Recording would change that dynamic. If you miss a session, the expectation is that you engage with a summary and catch up with the group at the next session.

For webinar programs, the commitment is the session time plus a modest amount of reflection and application between sessions. The between-session work is not additional reading or assignments. It is applying what you discussed in the session to your actual work, which you are doing anyway.

For individual coaching, sessions are typically 60 to 90 minutes. The frequency depends on what you are working on and what pace is useful for you.

The program descriptions on the webinars page give a sense of the focus and level of each program. If you are not sure which is most relevant to your situation, the straightforward approach is to contact us with a brief description of where you are in your career and what you are trying to develop. We can suggest the most appropriate starting point.

Yes, all webinar sessions and individual coaching at Xucavi are conducted in English. This reflects both the international nature of the professional environments many participants work in, and the fact that much of the conceptual material in this field is developed and discussed in English.

When you contact Xucavi, you will receive a response within two business days. The initial response will either answer your question directly or propose a brief conversation to understand your situation better before suggesting a direction.

There is no sales process. The goal of the initial contact is to understand whether the coaching or programs are a relevant fit for where you are and what you need.

In individual coaching, everything discussed is strictly confidential. Nothing is shared with employers, colleagues, or any third party.

In group webinar sessions, confidentiality works differently. Participants share situations from their professional lives, and the expectation is that everyone in the group treats those situations with discretion. This is established explicitly at the beginning of each program.