Jose Ucar
International leaders are routinely promoted on the strength of domestic performance, then asked to influence teams, clients, and partners across half a dozen cultures with no playbook. The result is well-intentioned communication that lands as confusing, transactional, or tone-deaf in the rooms that matter most. Boards keep losing deals and senior talent to a problem they can name but rarely solve.
Jose Ucar is an international communication and influence specialist who helps senior leaders make themselves understood, trusted, and followed across cultures, languages, and markets.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jose Ucar
- A structured methodology for cross-cultural influence, set out in Global Influence, shortlisted by The Institute of Leadership for its 2024 Leadership Book of the Year.
- Direct experience operating across four continents and two working languages, with delivery for Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, and Chiesi Pharmaceuticals.
- A practical lens on the gap between what senior leaders intend to communicate and what their international counterparts actually receive.
- Material that travels: the same frameworks land with a UK board, a Spanish-speaking sales team, and a multinational engineering function.
Biography highlights
- Author of Global Influence: How business leaders can simplify, improve, and amplify their international impact, shortlisted for The Institute of Leadership’s Leadership Book of the Year 2024.
- TEDx speaker and host, including talks at TEDxSheffieldHallamUniversity and TEDxUniversityofSalford.
- Founder of Jose Ucar Ltd and the World-Class Communicator online programme.
- Delivered to Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, Oral-B, UK Research and Innovation, the NHS, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
- Featured in LA Weekly, Yahoo Finance, Thrive Global, and Authority Magazine.
- Works fluently in English and Spanish; has lived, studied, and worked across Venezuela, Sweden, the UK, and beyond.
Biography
Most senior leaders are competent communicators in their home market and surprisingly ineffective the moment the room shifts language, culture, or hierarchy. Global Influence, Ucar’s book, is built around that gap. The Institute of Leadership shortlisted it for its 2024 Leadership Book of the Year, a recognition specifically tied to leadership practice rather than communications craft.
His starting point is that international influence is a learnable discipline, not a personality trait. The frameworks set out in the book and on stage are designed to be portable across countries and functions, so a UK executive can use the same approach with a Spanish sales team, a German engineering function, and a US investor without re-engineering their style each time.
That portability shows up in the client list. Procter & Gamble, Amazon, SEAT-CUPRA, DAF Trucks, Hyundai, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, UK Research and Innovation, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have all booked him to work with leaders who carry international remits. The common brief is consistent: senior people whose technical authority is established and whose cross-border influence is not yet where it needs to be.
His own background sits behind the work. Born in Venezuela, schooled in Sweden from sixteen, based in the UK, fluent in English and Spanish, with delivery experience across four continents. He uses that lived experience as evidence rather than ornament, which is what separates the material from generic communication training.
Key speaking topics
- Cross-cultural communication and influence
- International leadership and global business
- Executive presence across cultures
- Communication and storytelling for senior leaders
- Personal brand and authentic leadership
- Resilience and mindset in international roles
Ideal for
- CEOs, MDs, and country leaders with multi-market remits
- Senior commercial, sales, and partnership leaders working across borders
- HR, talent, and L&D leaders investing in international leadership capability
- Global teams in regulated, technical, or engineering-led industries where communication failure carries commercial cost
Audience outcomes
- A clearer reading of how their current communication style lands in unfamiliar cultural contexts
- A working framework for adapting message, delivery, and presence without losing authenticity
- Specific language for the cross-cultural moments that most often derail senior conversations
- Renewed confidence to lead difficult conversations across markets, languages, and hierarchies
Talks
A practical session on the behaviours and language choices that build trust across cultural lines in senior business relationships.
Key takeaways:
- The specific moments where cross-cultural trust is won and lost
- How to read cultural signals senior leaders routinely miss
- A repeatable approach to building cross-border relationships at executive level
A keynote arguing that international leaders too often default to a neutral, generic style, and a route back to a more distinctive and credible presence.
Key takeaways:
- Why over-corrected, culturally neutral leadership underperforms
- How to lead with personality without losing credibility across cultures
- Practical changes to delivery, language, and presence
A session on the mechanics of influence when audiences span languages, time zones, and cultural assumptions.
Key takeaways:
- The components of influence that hold across cultures and the ones that do not
- How to construct a message that survives translation and cultural reframing
- Specific tools for motivating distributed and multinational teams
A live, deconstructed walk-through of how a high-impact business talk is built and delivered.
Key takeaways:
- The structural choices behind a memorable senior keynote
- How to design content for international audiences from the first slide
- Practical adjustments senior leaders can apply immediately