The Secret to Being a Motivational Leader: Ikigai vs. Kokorozashi

Are you a supportive leader struggling to motivate your team? Understanding the difference between ikigai and kokorozashi may be the answer.

The toughest part of leadership is often understanding your team. You may know their skills and backgrounds on paper, but how do you provide guidance without micromanaging? How do you solve conflicts among conflicting personalities? Or ensure everyone is upskilling at a meaningful pace?

Much of the time, the issues leaders face come down to motivation. After all, if the individuals on your team are motivated in the right way, they’ll become master problem solvers—they’ll take the initiative to upskill, or they’ll look for ways to work with people they may not especially like. Whether you’re managing a small team on a short-term basis or overseeing an entire company, motivation is part of your job. And as any smart leader knows, you can’t inject motivation into people—you need to find what matters to each individual and work from there.

There are two concepts out of Japan that can help shed light on personalized motivation: ikigai and kokorozashi. One you’ve probably heard of; the other, perhaps not. Both can provide a treasure trove of insights, but understanding the difference is critical.

What is ikigai?

You may have heard of ikigai. It gained some buzz in Japan back in the sixties with a book (still only available in Japanese) by psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya. Much more recently, ikigai made its way to the United States through self-help books that promise everything from “a long and happy life” to “finding purpose and professional success.”

Ikigai, written as 生きがい in Japanese, roughly translates to “reason to live.” It’s often colloquially referred to as the “reason to get up in the morning.” It famously brings together what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can earn money from. You may have seen some variation of this mandala-esque Venn diagram:

Essentially, ikigai is a broad concept that brings together what you enjoy and some kind of benefit beyond enjoyment. It is also deeply personal, self-determined, and relatively small scale.

What is kokorozashi?

Kokorozashi has yet to make waves in the West the way ikigai has, but leaders who understand it will quickly find it can bring massive benefits to them and their teams.

Written as 志 in Japanese, it is composed of a single Chinese character with two components: “scholar” or “warrior” on top and “heart” or “spirit” on the bottom. Roughly speaking, the character brings together the head and heart for a kind of personal mission.

Kokorozashi has many similar elements to ikigai. Both bring together passions and skills, and both suggest finding ways to earn a living that is meaningful to you. But kokorozashi stands out in two key ways: scale and impact.

Kokorozashi begins with self-reflection: Where do you want to be in a year, three years, ten years? What do you want your legacy to be? It’s a mission that’s meant to be shared with those around you for feedback, iteration, and social impact. In other words, a kokorozashi may start small, but it grows into something huge.

Why should ikigai and kokorozashi matter to leaders?

So ikigai and kokorozashi are different, but what does that mean for leaders? How does understanding them help with challenges on your team?

1. Know who your people are

It’s always a good idea to know what your people care about.

Let’s imagine one team member (we’ll call him Henry) has an air of laziness. He generally comes to work and meetings on time, but his deliverables are often late, and he doesn’t volunteer many new ideas. He’ll do the things you ask (slowly), but no more. And he spends a lot of time chatting about non-work-related things in the office.

Before you write off Henry as a lost cause, take some time to observe and get to know him a little. Sit down to have a candid conversation with him and see if he has any goals, where he sees himself in the next few years. And pay attention during the day to day—what is he actually chatting about with those coworkers? When does he seem most animated? Does his energy drop right away when he goes back to his computer, or does it stay up for a while, pushing him to finish a task or two?

Perhaps through all of this you discover that Henry hasn’t ever really thought about his long-term career. He doesn’t have many goals, but he is a music lover. He chats with his coworker friends about concerts and clubs, but when he goes back to his desk, the no-headphones-in-the-office rule quickly degrades his mood. He’s a social butterfly and needs more opportunities to interact with people face-to-face, rather than just staring at a screen all day.

The key to empowering Henry to reach his potential is ikigai. If you can find out what motivates him to get up in the morning, you might find ways to change the office environment or his assigned tasks to keep him productive and happy. Over time, this will help him think about work differently, and he may surprise you with a few new ideas.

2. Know who your people want to be

Knowing who your people are today is only half of the puzzle. As they say, tomorrow is another day.

Imagine another team member—this time, Juanita. She’s very capable, but also very negative. It seems like she’s constantly complaining about one thing or another: your company’s file organization, the way people communicate by email, or how there are or aren’t enough meetings for this or that project. Naturally, you’re worried about her motivation, but there’s also concern that all this negativity will bring down the rest of the team.

But before you sit Juanita down and just tell her to be more positive, try having a conversation with her about her goals. Is she frustrated by your organization’s outdated or convoluted systems because she feels like they’re getting in the way of real progress? Can she put together a proposal for how to fix some of these issues? Why does she care about these things so much more than everyone else?

Perhaps Juanita has been taking night classes to study coding, and that study has opened her eyes to all the ways mundane tasks can be automated. Or maybe she’s seen that everyone (inside and outside your team) is frustrated by these issues, and she’s the only one bold enough to speak out about it.

The key to understanding Juanita on a deeper level is kokorozashi. If you dig into how Juanita is trying to advance her career or better the lives of people around her, it will uncover vast opportunities to leverage her and others as a resource. Not only will she find fulfillment, but your organization will benefit, too.

Motivating People in Big and Small Ways

Ikigai can uncover what your team members need as individuals to find day-to-day meaning in their work. For the long term, helping your people develop their kokorozashi can bring benefits on a huge scale for them, you, your team, your organization, and beyond.

At GLOBIS, we teach that leadership begins with knowing who you are now and who you aspire to be, then leading yourself—all before taking on the role of leadership in a team or organization. A similar process can be applied to the people you eventually take leadership of. First understand who they are (what is their ikigai?) and who they aspire to be (what is their kokorozashi?). Assigning tasks and goals with this information in mind will provide immeasurable value and support overall team work ethic.

Check out our website if you’re curious to learn more about kokorozashi, leadership development, or team management.

Author: Melissa McIvor.