What a Martial Arts Master Taught 20 Global CEOs About Leadership

BOULDER, Colo. - July 30, 2026 - PRLog -- International Business Circle (IBCircle), the Colorado-based Think Tank and executive group twice named Business Networking Organisation of the Year by the Global Innovation and Excellence Awards (2025 and 2026), today releases its Q2 Think Tank Report: The Aikido Executive — Leading Through Alignment, Not Collision — available free of charge at www.ibcircle.com/event-reports.

The report emerges from a June 25 event at One Dojo in Boulder, Colorado, where twenty globally active CEOs, founders, and investors from twelve countries gathered with Kei Izawa — Aikikai 7th Dan Black Belt, former Chairman of the International Aikido Federation (2016–2021), former senior executive at GM/Opel, and author of The Aikido Executive and The Victory Paradox — for an evening that deliberately crossed the line between physical practice and executive strategy.

The evening's central argument was direct: the leadership models that served the industrial era — force, rigidity, collision — are precisely what is exhausting organisations in a volatile, uncertain, and rapidly shifting global environment. Aikido, Izawa demonstrated, offers something more durable: a discipline built on redirection, alignment, and the capacity to absorb and transform incoming force rather than meet it head-on.

Participants did not merely discuss these principles. They practised them — on the mat, in Japanese training uniforms, under the instruction of a 7th Dan master who has spent decades applying Aikido philosophy to executive leadership across Europe, Japan, and the Americas. The evening also featured special guest Sanae Kanno, Japanese Consul for PR and Public Affairs at the Consulate General of Japan in Denver, One Dojo Founder, Abel Villacorta, and Aikido-inspired catering by One Dojo member Nia Harianto.

The report distils the evening's core teachings into a practical leadership framework: five Aikido principles with direct applications for CEOs, founders, and management teams operating in high-pressure, fast-changing environments.

Five principles. Five executive applications. One of the most distinctive leadership events in IBCircle's 22-year history.

Download free at http://ww.ibcircle.com/event-reports.