Why You Need Emotions (Not Just Logic) to Guide Your Career Decisions
We are often led to believe that emotions don’t belong in our careers. But with kokorozashi as your guide, here’s how you can make your emotions a valuable decision-making tool.
Picture this: You’re sitting in a meeting about a new overseas project that will be a major push for your company’s global competitiveness. You’re feeling calm and confident about the direction until suddenly you hear someone suggest you have a hands-on role. Others speak up in support of this idea, and suddenly there seems to be a consensus that you should relocate to the overseas office for three years.
Depending on who you are—your background, your career goals, your family situation—this may hit you any number of ways. This could be a dream come true. Perhaps you’ve been fantasizing about heading an overseas office, you love working with cross-cultural teams, and you’re eager to be on the frontlines of global expansion. On the other hand, you may have mixed emotions. Maybe you love your current role and feel you’re a more valuable resource right where you are, it’s difficult to move away from your support network of family and friends, or the very idea of being overseas for more than a week’s vacation feels like a career pause, rather than a step forward.
So what do you do?
Start with Your Kokorozashi
Many of us entered the workforce with the notion that the point of having a job was to climb (and climb and climb) the ladder, leveling up our titles, power, and salaries as we go. It didn’t really matter what the next promotion was, as long as it was a promotion. Those of us who make it onto the leadership track find it especially hard to let go of this conception, since turning down an offer to chase the next big initiative can feel like quitting—or worse, losing—the career game. But the dogged pursuit of title, salary advancement, or limelight project leads to less career satisfaction than it seems.
True career satisfaction comes from having a kokorozashi. Loosely translated from Japanese, kokorozashi is a personal mission or aspiration. But by the GLOBIS definition, a kokorozashi is a personal mission that unifies the passions and skills of a professional to create positive change in society. Crafting your unique kokorozashi involves self-reflection, consultation with people who know you (in and outside of work), putting the vision for your career and impact into words, iteration of that statement, and networking.
A kokorozashi isn’t a snap “I want to do this!” decision, but an evolving purpose for your career. And it can become an invaluable guide for decisions big and small with your emotions as a secret ingredient.
Emotions, Logic, and Kokorozashi
It is often considered good advice to leave emotions out of decision-making and follow the most logical path. But your kokorozashi is about you, and your emotions are an integral part of who you are. Acknowledging your emotions is critical to ensuring you stay a meaningful course.
Does this mean that if your knee-jerk reaction to an overseas assignment is NO, you should jump out of your chair and scream that you’ll resign if they try to transfer you? Of course not. But it does mean that if your knee-jerk reaction to the news is fear or anger, it would be wise to ask for some time to think about the offer.
Here are three simple steps to decision-making that balance logic and emotion with your kokorozashi.
Step 1: Boil down your kokorozashi into concrete steps.
Regularly reflecting on your kokorozashi is an important part of having one, and there’s no better time to sit down and do that than when you’re faced with a big decision. So take some time to verbalize your kokorozashi. Write it out in basic terms. What do you want to accomplish? Where do you want to be in three, five, or ten years? Working backward, what are the most logical or obvious steps forward? What have you done so far to make progress toward your kokorozashi? Include the strides you’ve made already, as they can provide helpful insight into how you’ve made decisions in the past.
You should try to do this step as logically as possible, but emotions will almost certainly wheedle their way in—and that’s all right. If you feel yourself getting worked up when you hit a certain fork in the road (past or present), don’t let it distract you from the task at hand. Instead, make a note—maybe change to a red pen or highlight the words that cause that flare of emotion. Then take a deep breath and move on, reassuring yourself that you will revisit your emotions in the next step.
Once you have the simple, bare bones path that makes objective sense, you’re ready for Step 2.
Step 2: Get emotional.
Bottling up your feelings about any decision will lead to frustration and anxiety, so once you have your concrete, logical path in front of you, it’s time to check in with your softer side. Reflect on each step in your kokorozashi so far, starting from the past, moving into the present, and finally the work that lies ahead. Make a list of the emotions you felt or feel about those steps—the stronger the emotion, the more relevant it probably is. Be sure to write down the emotion and identify the reason behind it.
For example, when you took on your current position, were you nervous or happy about the responsibility? Excited to prove yourself or drowning in imposter syndrome? Maybe you were proud to pass on management of your previous team to a subordinate who was getting their own promotion, or envious that someone else got another position you’d been gunning for.
All of your emotions are valid and relevant to this exercise. You may feel embarrassed about the more negative ones, but it’s critical to be honest with yourself at this step.
Step 3: Compare the logical steps with the emotions you feel.
Now that you have your logical career map and the emotions associated with various milestones, it’s time to look for correlations.
Compare your emotions to the logical path forward. In the past, did any big emotions sway your decision-making? How did things turn out? How do you feel about that decision now: grateful or regretful? Did the decision you ended up making impact your kokorozashi—that is, did you make any adjustments to your bigger goals based on positive or negative outcomes?
Remember, above all, that your kokorozashi is supposed to evolve.
Perhaps your logical kokorozashi path says that an overseas transfer is ideal for achieving your vision. It’s objectively the only realistic way to expand your perspective of the target market or the quickest way to access a new or necessary skillset. But if that transfer fills you with dread and preemptive regret, those emotions may be telling you that it’s time to reassess your kokorozashi. Something else may have become more important to you since your last reflection.
Emotions in the Lead
We often hear that today’s business environment is “fast paced” or “volatile.” But it’s also evolving, in many ways for the better. Societal pressure and new generations of workers are reforming job values to include better work-life balance, stronger diversity, and meaningful impact over salary. Along with these, the healthy acknowledgement of emotions is a vital component of realizing your kokorozashi.
Leaders, in particular, have an obligation to embrace these new ways of work. After all, your team is looking to you as an example of what it takes to succeed. If they see you blindly accepting every new post without a second thought or stepping on all the little people to get ahead, it probably won’t paint you as someone they want to follow. Acknowledging emotions at work and showing how they can be used as tools encourages critical thinking, psychological safety, self-awareness, and well-rounded decision-making.
