Professional Development

Ikigai

Program

When I joined ASU’s Learning Innovations team, high staff turnover and limited professional development had taken a toll on morale and clarity around career growth. In response, I designed the team’s first holistic professional development experience—a six-month program embedded directly into our everyday work. This project tells the story of how it came together and what changed as a result.

The Moment
of Tension

When I joined ASU’s Learning Innovations team, people were capable and committed, but morale was low and many felt siloed in their work. While ASU broadly supports professional development, the pace and pressure of day-to-day responsibilities made it difficult for individuals to take advantage of self-directed learning or to intentionally shape their own growth. Upskilling often felt like something to do on top of work, rather than something supported within it.

As a result, professional development frequently fell to the bottom of the priority list. When it did happen, it was usually done in isolation. Without shared structures or space to grow together, momentum slowed and community suffered.

Starting with Insight

Before designing anything, I focused on listening. I met with each member of the team for brief 1:1 conversations to understand how professional development was actually experienced day to day.

A few themes came up consistently. Many people were disengaged by one-off PowerPoint presentations that passed as professional development—interesting in theory, but passive and easy to tune out. Others expressed a desire for stronger connection, noting that sub-teams often worked in silos and that being split between on-campus and remote work made community and communication harder to sustain.

What surprised me most was how little of ASU’s existing professional development support was being used. Despite meaningful offerings—including paid time for volunteer work—few people had taken advantage of them. Outside of occasional conference attendance, most hadn’t found professional development experiences they felt genuinely excited about or motivated to advocate for.

These conversations made it clear that the challenge wasn’t a lack of support, but a lack of shared structure, engagement, and opportunities to grow together.

Designing Something Different

Rather than defaulting to another workshop series, I designed a professional development experience that was reflective, personal, and motivating. I anchored the program in the Japanese concept of ikigai—the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid to do—offering a holistic way to think about growth beyond skills alone.

The program began with shared learning on the history and cultural context of ikigai, followed by guided reflection and brainstorming. Each month focused on one dimension—passion, profession, vocation, or mission—giving team members time to explore their interests, strengths, and sense of purpose using structured prompts.

After clarifying that month’s focus, each person selected a self-directed professional development experience aligned to their ikigai. They could choose from a flexible menu—ranging from courses, books, and podcasts to informational interviews, volunteer work, certifications, conferences, or hands-on projects. Over six months, each team member completed four intentionally chosen learning experiences.

Self-directed learning was only one part of the experience. Bi-weekly sessions served as the connective tissue of the program—bringing the team together to reflect, share progress, and engage in robust upskilling workshops and presentations from ASU professionals across the university. These sessions reinforced learning while strengthening connection and collaboration across the team.

What the Experience Became

Over the six-month arc, the program grew into something far more communal than I initially imagined. As team members moved through their self-directed learning, they began cheering one another on—sharing progress, holding each other accountable, and offering support when momentum dipped. Growth stopped feeling solitary and started to feel shared.

One of the most grounding elements of the experience was a simple ritual: a team playlist we co-created together. Knowing the team spanned geographies, backgrounds, and lived experiences, I invited everyone to contribute a song that reminded them of home. I turned these into a shared playlist—No Place Like Home—and each week we opened our professional development sessions by playing one song. The person who submitted it would introduce the artist and share why it represented home to them. Over time, this became a powerful way to build connection, curiosity, and trust—one story at a time.

Alongside the Ikigai-driven learning, we brought in guest speakers from across the university to lead workshops on topics like executive communications, learning science at ASU, systems thinking, marketing, data analysis and assessment, and AI-driven “vibe coding.” These sessions expanded the team’s exposure to expertise beyond our department while reinforcing the idea that learning already existed all around us.

Together, these elements created a true cohort learning experience. Team members had autonomy in how they grew, but they also shared rhythms, rituals, and collective moments of learning. The result was strong peer-to-peer engagement, renewed energy, and a sense that we were genuinely upskilling together—not just individually, but as a team.

Over six months, professional growth became something team members actively owned. People gained confidence in naming their interests and strengths, advocating for learning experiences that mattered to them, and supporting one another’s progress.

At the team level, community strengthened and silos softened. Shared reflection, rituals, and learning created a common language around growth and normalized peer accountability. Professional development shifted from one-off moments to an ongoing part of how the team worked together.

These shifts directly supported the team’s goals. The program fully achieved its OKR to “establish Learning Innovations as a high-impact team—with 100% of team members reporting high satisfaction with their professional growth”. Beyond the metric, the experience established a repeatable, scalable model for team development rooted in autonomy, connection, and shared learning.

What Changed

  • In the final Ikigai reflection session staff members gave feedback on my professional development program...

  • "Daniel leading by example inspired the rest of the team. I liked how he gave people visibility into his journey as the leader of this thing."

    -Elizabeth V.

  • "The whole-person element of ikigai was a nice way to recognize that we don’t “turn off” our personal selves at work and vice versa."

    Seth J.

  • "It was SO helpful to intentionally set aside time for learning."

    -Javier L.

  • "The 'No Place Like Home' music playlist was a fun way of learning about where everyone is from and also great at getting everyone’s buy-in early on."

    -Nicole C.

  • "It's valuable to pause and reflect on your own strengths and passions. I now have a better understanding of my teammates' strengths."

    -Carrie B.

  • "The intentional space for deep thinking on the topics made them more real and inspirational. The overall Ikigai theme was really well thought out."

    -Michael V.

  • "I loved doing the gallery walks for every session's reflection activity--was fun!"

    - Juanito O.

  • "It really was an aesthetically pleasing and interactive virtual experience. Daniel has great slide deck design and makes things feel a lot more elevated.

    -Natasha W.

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