Have you heard of Ikigai? This powerful Japanese concept only crossed my path recently and I could immediately see how it might be very helpful to many of my clients in leadership roles. It surely is not limited to that demographic, but could likely be an enlightening model for anyone possibly feeling stuck in terms of their greater purpose, their job at hand or how they might like to navigate their next development journey.

When we go into the deeper meaning of the expression itself, it combines “iki” (life) and “gai” (worth), essentially meaning “reason for being.” We all need that, right!?

It is really growing on me that ikigai can offer a powerful framework for finding meaningful direction by exploring the intersection of four key elements:

What you love – Your passions and what energizes you as a leader. This might include mentoring others, solving complex problems, or building teams.

What you’re good at – Your natural talents and developed skills. Perhaps you excel at strategic thinking, communication, or creating clarity in chaos.

What the world needs – The problems you’re positioned to solve and the impact you can make. This could be innovation in your industry, developing future leaders, or driving organizational transformation.

What you can be valued for – What others will recognize and reward, whether through career advancement, influence, or tangible contributions to your organization.

The visual adds even more layers and can help clarify how we might feel at certain intersections where we experience overlap across some of the critical elements for our “reason for being,” but lack key others in our lives. We have all been there.

When you look at it with a leadership lens on, ikigai can help you move beyond conventional success metrics to find work that is both sustainable and deeply fulfilling. Leaders who operate from their ikigai can show up with more authenticity, feel more resilient during challenges, and can be more effective at inspiring others because they’re connected to genuine purpose rather than just pursuing status or achievement.

The challenge is that finding what we might call leadership ikigai requires honest self-reflection and often evolves over time only. Early in a career, the focus for most tends to center around building expertise. Later, it will likely shift toward developing others or creating lasting impact. Yet, how often do we pause to assess how connected we truly are to all four elements described above? Or, how we have possibly shifted in terms of what gives us deeper joy and meaning and how aligned a new purpose might be with the other elements in our lives or our professional roles? Are we maybe even operating with contradictory impulses, such as getting well paid and feeling very sought after and praised, while compromising what would give us significantly more and deeply nourishing passion? Expressed in the above language, there might be strong compatibility in our lives when it comes to our profession and even vocation, so we can feel very comfortable, savvy, and successful by many standards, yet, we might also feel left with a sense of emptiness and lack true fulfillment.

If we want to be effective and deeply satisfied in our roles, especially as leaders, I propose to regularly revisit the four Ikigai questions to ensure our path remains aligned with our evolving sense of purpose. And that any compromises we might (choose to) make across the concept, that we do so with a conscious mind.

Given that the new year has only just begun, I also thought it could be a powerful way to explore early on how much reason we currently find in our—professional—being, whether we want to tweak our 2026 goals a bit and what early adjustments might be helpful to make.
I surely already jotted down a couple of my own misalignments to explore further …