Ten Years of Coaching, Connection and Ikigai | Jennifer Shinkai

Community and Business
05 November 2026

The British Chamber in Commerce in Japan sat down with BCCJ member Jennifer Shinkai about the evolution of her Tokyo-based practice, the importance of emotional intelligence and psychological safety, and why organisations should invest in distinctly human capabilities as AI reshapes the workplace.

 

In June 2026, BCCJ member Jennifer Shinkai marked ten years since launching her independent coaching and facilitation practice in Tokyo. Over the past decade, she has worked with executives, managers and leadership teams across Japan and the wider Asia-Pacific region, helping people find clarity, strengthen relationships and create more meaningful and inclusive working environments.

 

Jennifer's work today spans executive coaching, group and systems coaching, corporate workshops, community-building, podcasting and art. While the formats have expanded, the central question has remained consistent: how can people experience more moments of ikigai in their day-to-day lives, and how can organisations create the conditions in which people feel able to contribute?

 

To celebrate the milestone, the BCCJ sat down with Jennifer to discuss how her practice has evolved, what she has learned from working with leaders and teams, and what organisations should be considering as they enter a period of rapid technological and cultural change.

 

 

From business communication to the whole human

When Jennifer began working independently in 2016, much of her work centred on business communication training. Her first training company client was Canning & Associates, and her early sessions covered presentation skills, negotiation, meeting participation and cross-cultural communication.

 

Those foundations remain visible in her practice. Jennifer is still interested in how people choose to show up at work, how they engage with different stakeholders and how they communicate across cultures. The focus, however, has moved beyond individual skills towards the wider systems in which people work and live.

 

Today, Jennifer works primarily with mid-career and senior professionals, both individually and as part of leadership teams. A conversation may begin with a business challenge, but it rarely remains separate from the rest of a client's life.

 

That whole-human perspective is central to Jennifer's approach. A change in family life may alter the way somebody thinks about ambition. A difficult relationship at work may occupy their thoughts long after a meeting has ended. A role that once felt meaningful may no longer suit the person they have become.

 

Jennifer also applies this thinking to her own life. As the parent of teenage children, she has had to reconsider what her role as a mother requires at each stage. The same process applies to friendships, partnerships and professional identities: roles evolve, and people need space to ask whether the way they are currently participating in a relationship or system is still appropriate.

 

 

A more practical understanding of ikigai

Jennifer's name has become closely associated with ikigai, but she is careful to distinguish the Japanese concept from the widely circulated four-circle Venn diagram. The diagram can be useful as a coaching prompt, she says, but it can also create the impression that everybody should discover one perfect point where passion, skill, social need and income meet.

 

For some people, that framing becomes another source of pressure. If they cannot identify a single purpose or career that occupies the centre of the diagram, they may feel that they have failed.

 

One tool Jennifer uses is the Ikigai-9, a nine-statement scale developed by Japanese researchers to explore three broad areas: positive feelings about the present, a positive and active orientation towards the future, and a sense that one's life or existence has meaning.

 

This framing allows people to notice ikigai in ordinary experience rather than searching for a single life-defining answer. Interest in learning, anticipation of a future activity, connection to a community or the knowledge that another person values one's presence can all contribute to a meaningful life.

 

Jennifer recalls an experienced business leader attending one of her workshops and concluding that she did not have - and did not need - a single ikigai. She knew that her life contained meaning and that particular things mattered to her; she simply did not need to compress them into one phrase. For Jennifer, this was not a failure of the process, but an example of the freedom the concept can offer when it is not treated as a rigid formula.

 

Creating 'room in the mind'

Among the Ikigai-9 statements, one consistently produces a strong response in Jennifer's work: 'I have room in my mind.' Across countries and seniority levels, participants often identify mental space as an area of dissatisfaction.

 

The issue is not limited to workload. People spend significant time preparing emotionally for meetings, replaying conversations, second-guessing decisions and worrying about situations that may sit outside their control. Jennifer does not present a single productivity solution; instead, she encourages clients to examine the work and responsibilities occupying that space.

 

Does the task need to be done? Does it need to be completed to the same level of rigour? Are you the right person to do it? Could somebody else take responsibility? Would the organisation notice if the activity stopped?

 

These questions can be particularly useful for experienced professionals. People often continue doing work they perform easily because it provides a reassuring sense of competence. Yet the familiar task may no longer represent their highest-value contribution. The work most important to their growth may be the work they postpone because it is less comfortable and they are not yet as skilled at it.

 

Jennifer sometimes uses a systems-coaching exercise known as a paper constellation. A client places themselves at the centre and maps the responsibilities, relationships and events surrounding them according to their perceived distance and importance. Seeing the arrangement from above can make an overloaded or unbalanced system immediately visible.

 

The next step is to redraw it: what needs to move, what needs greater space, and what might need to end? Jennifer has used the exercise herself and recognises that stepping away from a valued role can be difficult. It can also create a profound sense of release.

 

 

What organisations can learn beyond engagement data

Organisations often measure engagement through surveys, retention figures and performance data. Jennifer believes these indicators are useful, but incomplete. Employers should also consider whether people feel that their contribution matters and whether they have opportunities to be known as more than a professional function.

 

She recalls facilitating an #IAmRemarkable workshop for a geographically dispersed Asia-Pacific team whose members had worked together for approximately two and a half years. The programme, originally founded at Google, helps people recognise and communicate their achievements while challenging social and cultural discomfort around self-promotion.

 

During the session, one participant shared a deeply personal challenge they had survived. The disclosure opened the way for others to speak about experiences and accomplishments that had never appeared in a routine business update. At the end, one participant told the group: 'It is so nice to finally meet you.'

 

For Jennifer, the moment illustrated the difference between knowing what colleagues do and knowing enough about who they are to build trust, empathy and connection.

 

This does not mean that employees should be expected to disclose every aspect of their private lives. Jennifer is cautious about the instruction to 'bring your whole self to work'. People are entitled to boundaries. The more useful aim is to create enough psychological safety for somebody to admit uncertainty, raise a concern or share a perspective that does not fit neatly into a formal business update.

 

 

The emotional reality of business decisions

Jennifer frequently hears clients describe business as a domain of logic and data. Data matters, but she argues that it is rarely the only force shaping a decision. Fear, pride, hope, defensiveness, intuition and previous experience are already present in the room, whether or not the organisation has language for them.

 

Recognising emotion does not require organisations to abandon evidence. It requires leaders to accept that different forms of intelligence can contribute useful information. A sense that something is not right may identify a risk that has not yet appeared in the numbers. Excitement may reveal an opportunity that a cautious process is suppressing.

 

The challenge becomes more pronounced around senior leaders. A chief executive or functional head may invite ideas and disagreement but react defensively when an objection is raised. The formal invitation to contribute is undermined by the experience of what happens when somebody actually does.

 

In her work on psychological safety, Jennifer asks leaders to look for the 'two per cent truth' in a challenge. They do not need to accept every element of another person's argument. They do need enough humility to ask what small part may be valid: a risk they have overlooked, an impact they did not anticipate or a perspective their position prevented them from seeing.

 

For globally minded organisations in Japan, these conversations also need to account for context. Hierarchy, professional expertise and concern about overstepping a role can make challenge difficult. Jennifer therefore works with the particular culture of each team rather than applying one fixed national explanation.

 

A leadership team may be composed of highly capable specialists who operate well within their own silos but hesitate to question colleagues outside them. Jennifer encourages leaders to distinguish between the functional hat they wear - as a marketing, finance or operations specialist - and their shared responsibility as members of the leadership team. A board member does not need to be the technical expert in every discipline to ask for clarification or flag that something feels incomplete.

 

Working with the team as a system

Collaboration has become increasingly important to Jennifer's practice. For team and systems coaching, she often works with trusted co-coaches and facilitators who bring different backgrounds, skills and perspectives into the room.

 

While one coach guides the process, another may observe the wider emotional field: who becomes quiet, who leans back, when the energy changes, and which perspectives are repeatedly amplified or lost. Jennifer's practical description is simple: 'What are the vibes?'

 

Teams develop habitual states and informal roles. One person becomes the colleague who always raises the difficult question. Another uses humour to release tension. A group may default to risk and caution, or move so quickly towards optimism that legitimate concerns are not explored.

 

These roles can help a team, but they can also prevent other members from developing the same capabilities. If one person is always cast as the devil's advocate, nobody else practises critical challenge. If one colleague is responsible for restoring levity, the group may rely on them to regulate every difficult moment.

 

Systems coaching helps the group notice these patterns and make more intentional choices. Sometimes a team needs to remain with positive energy and explore what could be possible. At other times, it needs to slow down and ask what might go wrong. Conflict is not automatically evidence that a team is failing; it may be information that a different way of working is trying to emerge.

 

 

Human capability in the age of AI

As Jennifer enters her second decade in business, organisations are also entering a period of rapid change shaped by artificial intelligence. Jennifer is not opposed to AI. As a small-business owner, she uses it as a practical tool to structure ideas, consolidate material and support the editing process.

 

Her concern is that businesses may approach AI primarily as a route to reducing headcount rather than as an opportunity to reconsider human contribution.

 

Employees whose tasks are automated may be able to work across silos, strengthen client relationships, pursue neglected innovation projects or develop skills that were previously crowded out by repetitive work. In Jennifer's view, organisations should spend more time exploring their list of 'wouldn't it be great if...' ideas before assuming that efficiency must end in subtraction.

 

Human oversight also remains essential. AI can produce plausible outputs quickly, but people still need to understand the context, decide what should be done, check whether all relevant information is present and consider the impact of a decision on others.

 

Jennifer draws inspiration from SAORI, a Japanese approach to handweaving that values freedom, individuality and the characteristics of work made by a human hand. Machines can produce consistency, but the peculiarities of human experience can create something different: judgement, imagination, connection and meaning.

 

For leaders, the future of work is therefore not only a technology question. It is also a leadership, inclusion and organisational-design question. Businesses will need to decide what they want people to do with the capacity technology creates, and whether their cultures are strong enough to hear the ideas, concerns and possibilities those people bring.

 

The next decade: coaching, community and creative practice

Jennifer's work continues to evolve beyond one-to-one coaching. Alongside her corporate practice, she hosts the Ikigai with Jennifer Shinkai podcast, now in its fourth season, bringing together guests with different perspectives on meaning and purpose. She also runs community and creative initiatives through Atelier Shinkai, including spaces for analogue connection, reflection and shared artistic practice.

 

These projects are not separate from her work with organisations. They reflect the same interest in belonging, curiosity and the conditions people need in order to think clearly and connect with one another.

 

After ten years, Jennifer's practice has expanded considerably from its business-communication origins, but its core remains recognisable. She helps people examine how they are showing up, understand the systems around them and create more room for meaningful contribution.

 

Her message to organisations preparing for the next decade is similarly direct: invest in the human side of work. Make space for perspectives that are not yet supported by perfect data. Develop leaders who can listen without immediately defending. Use technology to expand what people can contribute, not only to remove what they currently do.

 

Or, as Jennifer puts it: 'Now that we are freed from this, what is possible?'

 

About Jennifer Shinkai

BCCJ member Jennifer Shinkai is a Tokyo-based executive coach, facilitator, podcaster and artist specialising in ikigai, inclusion, cross-cultural leadership and team development.

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