About the course
Built from the gap between what leaders hear and what actually happens
Fifizo Giyeki started as a set of notes for a director who kept getting surprised. Every skip-level meeting seemed to reveal something the standard reporting chain had quietly smoothed over. Those notes became a course.
Why this exists
Most directors and VPs already know skip-level meetings matter. Almost none were taught how to run them well. The typical guidance amounts to "meet with people below your direct reports sometimes," which leaves the actual mechanics up to guesswork.
That guesswork tends to produce one of two outcomes. Either the meetings turn into pleasant but forgettable check-ins where nobody says anything real, or they turn into informal audits that leave middle managers feeling surveilled and bypassed. Neither builds the trust the format is supposed to create.
This course was built to give directors a third option: a repeatable structure for hearing honest input, protecting the managers in between, and doing something visible with what surfaces.
The thinking behind the structure
Skip-level meetings sit at an odd intersection. They're informal in tone but structural in effect. Get the tone wrong and people clam up. Get the structure wrong and you either strain your relationship with middle managers or collect feedback that never turns into anything.
The course treats those two risks as equally important, which is part of why it's organized into four modules rather than one long guide on "how to ask good questions." Questions are only half the work. What you do before the meeting and after it matters just as much.
A few principles that run through every module
Respect the chain, don't bypass it
A skip-level should strengthen the relationship between an employee and their manager, not quietly compete with it.
Specifics over sentiment
"Morale is low" is a feeling, not information you can act on. The course pushes toward concrete detail.
Protect the person, not just the input
Feedback loses its value fast if the person who gave it feels exposed afterward.
Close the loop, every time
Even a short update on what changed, or didn't, keeps the next conversation honest.
Fit real calendars
None of this works if it requires hours you don't have. The habits are designed to be sustainable.
Who put this together
Fifizo Giyeki is a small, independent course project focused entirely on one narrow skill: running a good skip-level meeting. The material draws on years spent inside operations and people-management roles, watching what made those conversations land, and what made them fall flat.
Rather than expanding into a broad leadership curriculum, the course has stayed deliberately focused. Four modules, one question bank, and enough depth to actually change how a meeting goes.