Uncovering Your Team’s Ikigai with Sarah Gruneisen

Unlock the secrets to leading with purpose and fulfillment as Sarah Gruneisen, a seasoned leadership coach and former software engineer, joins us to break down the ancient Japanese concept of Ikigai. Discover how aligning what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs can transform your approach to leadership and team dynamics. Learn how these intersections—passion, mission, vocation, and profession—can help you create a more meaningful professional and personal life. We discuss actionable insights on empowering diverse teams, including introverts and those focused on technical tasks, by fostering environments that encourage understanding and creative problem-solving.

Engineers at various career stages face unique challenges, from midlife crises to imposter syndrome. Sarah and I tackle these issues head-on, offering strategies to help leaders understand and support their teams' unique motivations and backgrounds. Learn how meaningful conversations and trust-building can unlock true passions, leading to increased productivity and job satisfaction. We delve into overcoming fear and taking risks, with practical tips for managing failure and encouraging team members to pursue authentic goals. If you’re looking to inspire your team and yourself, this episode is packed with the wisdom you need to make a real impact.

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sgruneisen/

Check out Sarah's Coaching Offerings:
https://www.avagasso.com/

What is Ikigai?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai

Join the Alliance! 👇

Transcript

Mark: 0:06

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, Mark Metze. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking. The Agile Within starts now. Welcome back everybody. This is Mark Metze with the Agile Within Today. I have as a guest is Sarah G runeisen. Sarah, nice to have you.

Sarah: 0:50

Yes, hello, you said my name, right, that's awesome, great.

Mark: 0:53

So Sarah is from Amersfoort, N netherlands, which I have never been to. The Netherlands I would like to go, my wife and I would like to visit someday. It's on our bucket list. But, S sarah, if I were coming to for a day and I've never been before what's one thing you would say that I couldn't miss doing?

Sarah: 1:11

Let's say I'm going to mention two. One is like for when you're bringing your family. So I would say, take a boat ride in a canal. There's really great canals and you have like the old city wall and castle and stuff. That's pretty awesome. If you decide to go only there with your wife, you've got to go to coffee shop. Coffee shops here are where people smoke weed and it's allowed, so it's not a cafe you have to go to a cafe if you want coffee?

Mark: 1:43

You know, someone reminded me of that. To be careful when I said coffee shop, that it had a different meaning in the U? S than it did in.

Sarah: 1:49

Yes, yes, I think that was me. I think that was the last time we talked, was it? You actually mentioned coffee shop and I was like coffee shop.

Mark: 1:58

All right. Well, Sarah, why don't you give us a little update on your background?

Sarah: 2:07

So I am, let's say, leadership trainer, leadership coach. I'm a certified one and I have an own company, alvagasa Coaching, and I guess what sets me apart from other coaches is I was for 20 plus years a software engineer and also a engineering leader, so engineering manager, director of engineering, so I've done the real life stuff. I know what I'm talking about.

Mark: 2:27

So the title for our episode today is Navigating the Skies of Ikigai a Leadership Journey Through Passion, talent and Purpose. So, before we get too deep into our topic, sarah, why don't you tell our listeners what is Ikigai, sarah, why don't you?

Sarah: 2:44

tell our listeners what is Ikigai? Well, ikigai is a Japanese word and it's referring to a reason for living or a reason for being. That's where the term is coming from.

Mark: 2:56

And so how does that relate to leadership and teams?

Sarah: 3:08

Well, it relates quite a lot. So if you would break down the icky guy, it's like four circles which are like connected with each other, and within those four circles you have what you love doing. So this is something that ignites fire in you when you do it, what you're good at. So these are your skills, your superpowers. It doesn't necessarily need to be technical. For example, if you're a software engineer, it could also be that you have, let's say, people skills, or you have an ability to have good conversations or things like that. Then you have another circle which is connected, which is what you can be paid for. So you can't be paid for everything.

Sarah: 3:42

So it could be you love doing something and you're good at it. Let's say you love I don't know picking up garbage off the street and you're good at picking up garbage off the street, but you can't find anywhere that will pay you for picking up garbage off the street. So what you are paid for is what you can get money for from different industries, et cetera. The other circle is what the real needs. So it could be that you are working in something where you get a lot of money for it, but does the real need more of that.

Sarah: 4:13

You enter these four circles together and it's really focusing on the overlaps of these circles. So where you would overlap what you are good at together with what you can be paid for, that's profession. When you overlap what you are good at together with what you can be paid for, that's profession. When you overlap what you are good at and what you love, you have passion and what you love and what the world needs. That's where you get your mission from and where you can be paid for something and the world needs it. You have vocation, and when you can have a mixture of these elements, you have what forms the ikigai. So you have equal elements of passion, mission, vocation and profession.

Mark: 4:56

So how does a leader fit into that? And when I say a leader, a manager isn't necessarily a leader, or they should be, but how does a leader fit into this? How do they help their team through this? And you know, I'm thinking so. I came from a similar background as you, so I was in the trenches and engineering for almost two decades. I was also an engineering manager for about a decade, so I get it. And you have some individuals that are very introverted and just like I just want to code, and that's really all that you get from this is I just want to code.

Sarah: 5:34

Well, we have a couple of different questions here, so I'm first going to address the first question. What does the icky guy have to do with leadership? And, like you said, leadership does not necessarily mean management. Leadership is quite a complex word. It's really being able to self-actualize, differentiate and ultimately serve others, empower others to raise up and do better.

Sarah: 6:00

Whenever you're talking about empowerment, you need to have elements of passion, of something else other than just getting paid for something. I have a term which I use with teams when we are talking about personal development plans or something like that. It's called worthy goals, not, let's say, smart goals. Worthy goals are equally significant. So it's something that the world needs. If you imagine, or your organization needs, you will create impact when you're doing it. But it's also stimulating. It ignites a fire in you. It's something that you love to do. It could be something that you're just really good at. It's having that passion side of it. And then, of course, you have the stretching, because it's a goal. Does it stretch you? Does it expand you? Is it a bit challenging? So, with regards to why the icky guy is important for leadership is if you do not have the ability to see passion within the people you're working, you will miss out on being able to ignite that empowerment so that they do more than what you would expect, because it doesn't feel like work anymore, it feels fun, it feels like play, and that's where you get the most productivity out of your individuals and your teams.

Sarah: 7:14

Now you asked another question about the engineer that is just happy with coding. What do I do there? That's a full other question. I would say even that is not necessarily related to icky guy. It's I personally. When I'm working with individuals and teams, I don't think that everybody is ready to stretch right now. So it could be that you are working with an individual which is maybe overloaded in life. Maybe they're dealing with a divorce, or they just moved houses, or they have just stretched the last couple of years and they're happy with being stagnant or being in place. That's okay. You know they don't need to always expand. You really need to have, on top of the icky guy, that desire to move forward if you want to take, let's say, the power of icky guy and move it towards a worthy goal or some kind of personal development challenge.

Sarah: 8:18

Now, what does the icky guy have to do with engineering teams? It's quite interesting what I found that's typical of engineers versus other fields. There's a couple of reasons that people become an engineer. You have, of course, the ones that were obsessed with technology since they were young. They're quite passionate about it, they love to do it, they've been playing and tinkering since they can remember and they're good at it, so they have an actual passion for software development and they got a job which they can be paid for, so they have it easy when it comes to passion and profession.

Sarah: 9:00

It could be that these ones, when they get to their midlife crisis, or, let's say, around their 30s, getting into 40s, they start to feel not as happy in what they're doing. If it's this particular type of engineer, usually it's on the side of the ikigai that they are missing mission, vocation. That's where you start focusing on, as a leader, what the world needs, because if they are, for example, working only in fintech, or they, you know, like they're just making other companies money, or even maybe they're working on software that's destroying the world in the process, they will feel some kind of like emptiness, something that feels like OK, I'm doing what I love and I'm good at it, and I'm even getting paid for it, but something's wrong here. This does not feel like my life is purposeful. There's something that is shifted wrong. That's one type of engineer.

Sarah: 9:57

The other type of engineer that I see probably more often, to be honest, are the ones coming from economically challenged families growing up, so most likely they had not as much money growing up. This is also probably one of the reasons you have a lot of software engineers coming from first or second third world countries, and they have this drive to make sure that they are economically prepared when they get older, that their families will not suffer in the way that they felt they suffered as a child, that they will have some kind of stability. And so they got an engineering job. They studied hard and they got the degree, but in their core they don't really love it, or they're maybe not even that great out of it. There's some kind of thing in their head. They realize when they're in those rooms that there's some kind of imposter feeling, there's something that feels off. They feel a little bit like I don't feel, like I'm like those wizards that I just talked about before. You know that there's something different.

Sarah: 11:03

Now, those engineers, when they get to that and I would say they usually get to this point before the midlifers. Then these start to struggle late 20s, early 30s and they will also exist in your teams. You can ignite them too, but you're going to ignite them in a different way. You're not going to ignite them by giving them what the world needs, because what they're missing is passion. So this is where you have to look deeper within. There is something inside of this engineer that they're really good at and it could be outside of code. Maybe they are a great team connector, maybe they have a great business sense and they're really good at seeing what customers' needs are. Maybe they're really good at coaching or bringing knowledge to other members of the team. Maybe they're very passionate about something. Maybe they're very creative or artistic, or they have a passion for helping people, or you know something like this.

Sarah: 12:07

So, as a leader, you need to be able to see these little, let's say, embers that are deep within them and ignite them and bring it to the work that they're doing.

Sarah: 12:20

They will bring likely to your teams as much productivity as those wizards will, because it's a different kind of productivity If you take a person that is great at gelling teams together and you get that person ignited and you give them roles like being a scrum master or they are in charge of, let's say, doing the reviews for customers, or they get to add some of their creativity by giving them some front-end tasks or something like this, they will bring the entire team forward in productivity and they will be happy.

Sarah: 12:56

They will feel their reason for being so. This is where, as a leader, it's not a one-size-fits-all, it's about figuring out what is going on with this person, and usually it has a lot to do with their early start, what brought them into engineering. And you have evidence in this when you start asking them questions like. When you start asking them questions like when in your life just give me a moment in your life when you didn't feel heard, seen and respected. When you ask a person this and they tell you that story, you hear the evidence of what their values are, what they need to thrive. From this you have evidence as to where they are lying and the sicky guy, what is missing and where they need help in order to ignite and be empowered and bring that super productivity to the team.

Mark: 13:56

How do you set the stage to be able to ask that question? So I'll bring this engineer in just off the top. Say, tell me a time when you haven't been seen, heard or respected. That could be off-putting and there's some ulterior motive to why they're. Who are they talking about? They're trying to get me to admit something on somebody. So how do you set the stage to be able to effectively ask that question and, like you say, ignite that flame?

Sarah: 14:24

It's so funny because I've been a new leader in several teams throughout the years and I never had a problem when I asked this question, but I think it's how I approach leadership and how I set the stage before that I will be starting actually, a new job, starting in a couple of weeks.

Sarah: 14:44

So, what I do. When I start a new job, when I start working with a new team, I first have that, let's say, get to know each other, like, hi, I'm Sarah and who are you? You know, it's very superficial, it's very surface level. And in that meeting, in that first meeting, I already say, this first month is all about me discovering you, because I want to be able to serve you in the best way possible as your future leader. And so I have, in a way, we're going to have a few deep sessions and it follows a kind of like template, if you imagine, and it's how I discover you, it's how I discover what you need from me. It will start with figuring out what your values are. I will be asking some questions to be able to dig into that deeper. In the end, I'm going to figure out what your mission is, what your vision is for yourself and how we can map that ultimately to the team and to the company purpose. Are you with me on this? Are you excited for me to get to know you at this deep level?

Sarah: 15:50

I have never had an engineer that said, no, I'm not interested in this. I've even had them go. Oh, my goodness, where have you been my whole career. You're interested in me. You're actually interested in what I need to thrive. This must be a joke. Then, when they work with me for a while, they're like, oh my gosh, this is not a joke. She's not only interested, she is helping me remove those boulders that are blocking me from getting to that place where I need to go.

Mark: 16:19

Can you give us an example of a time where you did interview somebody and that light bulb did come on? You did ignite that flame within somebody. Give us a feeling for what that was like.

Sarah: 16:29

Yeah, actually I have quite a few stories like this. I used to work for a company and they had a small nickname for me, which is kind of funny. They called me the incubator. So what is the incubator? So there would be sometimes an engineer that would be working for another engineering leader within the organization which was struggling in that team, and you know how sometimes companies have the HR path to try to get them out or like there's something broken with this engineer or they're not. So they would contact me and they would be like I've heard that you're good at like figuring out people and that kind of thing. So is it okay if I let you lead my engineer for a couple of months and you can maybe point out what it is that's broken with them? Yeah, sure, I'll figure it out. So what they don't realize is I don't believe any engineer is broken.

Mark: 17:28

So that's Right right.

Sarah: 17:30

I go in with a different mindset, so I had a real beyond just engineers too.

Mark: 17:35

Right, Seriously, we're talking people, right?

Sarah: 17:38

We're not broken. You know it's it's it's about. Of course, I do fully agree. There are a very few percentage of people in the world something around 5% Don't quote me on this that they're really having narcissistic personality disorder. They're really having narcissistic personality disorder, they're psychopaths or something, but it's actually a very small percentage. It's not as much as what people think. The majority of people have childhood traumas, they have schemas, they have things that they're working with, but in the end, they want to do good work and they want to do well, and a great leader is able to, let's say, get through the muck of that and figure out where those sparks are and empower them to take self-ownership and be able to take those right steps forward.

Sarah: 18:22

So we're going back to the situation where there was a young lady and she was part of this incubation process and she was from another country. So there was already a misunderstanding between cultures. She was just not seen. It's very easy to miss see somebody when they don't have the same communication style, they don't have the same way of approaching things, you know. So I did exactly this like okay, we're going to start with figuring out what your values are. When have you not been heard, seen, respected and, in the end, figuring out what her mission is, what her vision is really deep, what are the monsters in the room? These are the dragons. You know, these are your schemas and what mantras can we get you to start saying to them so that you know? So this entire process. She seriously. I kept her on my team after the incubation period.

Sarah: 19:27

I didn't want to give her back because she was one of the most brilliant engineers. She was deeply introverted, very introspective, very deep, I would say. She was a bit slow and mythological in the way that she like solved things. So of course she wasn't the one that was going to like yell things out in the room or something. But seriously, she was such an addition for the team that I did not want her to leave my team. She stayed on my team.

Sarah: 19:48

So that's just an example of taking the time to figure out what that person needs in order to thrive. Then, what's that passion you have? How can we bring that into impact? She was talking about how her previous managers told her that she needed to speak up more. She needed to be more vocal. That's not the way an introvert that is shy is going to make impact. There's other ways to make impact.

Sarah: 20:16

So what are you good at? What excites you? And let's figure out how we can map those skills to what the company needs. That's where you get the icky guy, you get the reason for being she lit up as a person. I mean I don't want to pat myself on the back and say I changed her life or whatever, but her life was changed from that moment forward, I think. Well, I do know, because I had conversations with her before I was leading her. She was even considering leaving engineering altogether. She thought I'm not good at this, this is not the field for me. Now she's still an engineer and she's doing great. She loves it. So you can really switch on an individual by I don't know digging into that core. What makes them sparkle?

Mark: 21:03

Great story. I love that story. Thank you for sharing, sarah. No problem, I want to get your take on this because, I'll be honest with you. This is something that I'm learning. This is a way that I can improve and do better.

Mark: 21:15

What I have had success with is seeing those people that don't have a lot of confidence. And because they don't have a lot of confidence, many people on the team and in the company just disregard them. It's because they seem like they're very meek, like they just don't speak up a lot, just the simple affirmation of telling someone I believe in you, I think you are very valuable to this team, you're on an upward trajectory because I truly believe that you can be a rock star for this team and this company. Because I truly believe that you can be a rock star for this team and this company, how can I help you to get there? And I've seen people really react very positively and you almost see like this breath of you, almost see the finally someone, someone. Have you had any experiences with that, with somebody with low confidence that just needed?

Sarah: 22:11

somebody to believe in them. Oh my gosh, when you're looking at me, would you think of somebody with low confidence? I haven't. You know. We've'm creating content. I'm confident enough to put my voice out there and to make a statement of these are my thoughts. That takes confidence.

Sarah: 22:39

Now, I was a woman in engineering for 20 something years. I often was in a space where my voice was not heard, where I was told by managers that I lacked confidence. I didn't speak up enough in the right way. If I did speak up, then I spoke up too much. You know like it was very much focused on how I bring myself out. You know like I even was asked by one leader to speak at a conference and I was awful. When I got on stage, like I think I said um about a thousand times. I felt very uncomfortable. It was not, it was definitely not empowering, because after that I decided I would never stand on the stage again. Well, now I'm doing it, but it's because something else happened in the meantime.

Sarah: 23:28

If you want to ignite an individual, you do not tell them that they have a confidence problem. You do not tell them that you know you're quiet and you're shy and you're not confident and you just need to speak up and you just need to be. If you imagine people are projecting themselves onto other individuals, so maybe you, as an individual, speak up in order to portray more confidence, because that's how you would do it. If you want to ignite an individual, you need to get into their psych. What is it about them? Like you said, that's special, and what is that special thing that you see that you feel they're bringing to the team and get them to come up with how they could stretch that impact further? You're not telling them how to do it because you don't know. I mean, the only thing I could do is, let's say, right now, if I would try to project myself on you and you were like I want to make more impacts, like, oh well, what you need to do is you need to go and, like, start posting every day on LinkedIn, because that's what I'm doing. That's not how you ignite somebody else.

Sarah: 24:39

If you want to ignite somebody else, you really need to take the time to learn what that individual is and, like I said, that question that I brought at the beginning, where you haven't been heard, seen, respected, it reveals a lot. What would your family and friends say if you wouldn't do that thing that you're passionate about? Another question which really gets people thinking is so what is it that you want with your life in the next years, or what is your big goal? And then ask them what if you don't do it? What would be good about that?

Sarah: 25:16

Often people think that their goal is their goal, but it's not theirs, it belongs to somebody else. And by asking them that question, what would be great about not doing that goal? You get to that place which, oh well, I would have the freedom to do this, and that's actually the goal that they have. So if you really want to ignite somebody, you have to get into that person and not project yourself on it. And please don't ever tell somebody that they're not confident. You might see it. But instead, how do we raise your impact? How do we bring that mission vision? What gives you energy when you do it? Those are the kind of questions that makes a person feel seen and makes a person feel respected and gets them energized about doing more of that thing.

Mark: 26:04

How do you help people be willing to take chances, be able to take a risk and not just play it safe because it's comfortable?

Sarah: 26:14

Yeah, this is something which I even do with my own children. It's something that took me quite a long time to figure out how to bring a, let's say, an innate skill that I have to others. I had quite a lot of childhood trauma, and from that trauma I became this individual which is massively resilient and massively capable of stepping it up when things happen. I have this innate belief that things will be better, because I have seen in my whole life, no matter how shitty things are, things get better, you know. So I have this inside of me, and I remember, even when I was very young, when I was like 13, 14, 15, like, and now I'm in my late forties people would ask me so what is it that gets you to keep trying, Like? These things happen to you and you always get up and you keep going, you keep trying, you keep doing. You know it seems like nothing stops you, you know, from moving forward. And so I had to think about it for a long time, because at first I didn't know it's like well, I don't know, it's just natural, it's just you do it. Well, having children and trying to bring these answers to your children at least for myself, it helped me analyze. What is it exactly that I have that keeps me moving forward, taking those risks, taking those chances? A lot of the time people say don't be afraid to fail Again. When you say that, too often it has this negative connotation to it, like failure sounds stressful. So I try to think of it a little bit differently and it takes some kind of creative practice. And when people are not used to it, they need to practice this skill because, like I said, it takes real imagination.

Sarah: 28:06

But I always start with the worst case scenario that and I have a mortgage that I'm fully responsible for, I have kids at home I have to pay for. If I lose my job, or I lose at least the income that I'm getting from that job, I'm going to lose my ability to pay my mortgage. My kids won't be able to be fed. You know, like all of these fears that are coming up in my head, like all of these things could happen. So, worst case scenario practice. I think okay. So let's say I lose my job. So let's say I do this thing, or I go and I try to get a job and it's less paid and I'm not able to pay my mortgage. Then what? And I force myself to think of that scenario.

Sarah: 28:56

Okay, so let's say I lose my house, that's that someone, that that's the worst case like the bank comes and takes it. I don't have a house. Okay, what would I do in that situation? Well, I think, okay, I'm going to have to find some place to live. I've got my three kids. You know, maybe I have to, like, call a parent, move in with a friend, Maybe I have to get unemployment from the government that I'm working in depends on which country you're in. You know, say, okay, so now I've lost my house, what if I'm unable to? You know, like, and you go through those steps like when you can figure it out. Like I've been in that situation, by the way, when I left my ex-husband years ago, I had no income, I had no house and I lost all my things.

Mark: 29:40

Wow.

Sarah: 29:40

You know, I was okay. What I had was the ability to still enjoy the simple things. My kids and I lived in this really crappy place for a couple of years. I didn't have anything. It was like you know, like I remember even taping up the curtains on the walls. We were sleeping on the floors. We didn't have beds. You know and this is someone which was an engineer before that had, you know, quite an income. I couldn't go out with my friends because I didn't have any money. But my friends, they would come to my house and they would bring, you know, food that they made and I had, like it was. Even my kids. You might think that they struggled in this time. They didn't. They remember this time as a great time that they had with me and telling stories and having this creative phase, and we would go to the park and we would do all of these other things.

Sarah: 30:27

What I realized in that scenario is the worst case scenario. You don't have a house, you don't have money, you don't have things, but what I do have I have friends that are going to be there for me. I've got my ability to be creative and fun and I can love and I don't need a lot of things to be happy. When you can handle that scenario, then you can take every risk that could take away those things that you do have, because now you can handle the worst case scenario. So let's say you lost a limb, you lost your legs Okay. So let's say I lost my legs Wow. Okay, I can't walk anymore, I can't run, but what I could do is maybe I could have like a wheelchair. You know like I might find I might have more experiences where I'm rolling around, but then I can find more enjoyment in these other experiences.

Sarah: 31:17

When I start to get okay with that worst case scenario, then whatever would block me from that fear is gone. And that is the skill I got when I was a child, because I had those worst case scenarios hit me over and over again and no matter what hit me, I was a creative child which always believed in magic. I could dissociate. In a way, I could bring myself to the place of happiness and because of that it didn't matter what that worst case scenario was. I still had hopes and dreams and I could still move forward. I just like okay, this is my new place of being and this is how I'm moving forward, start practicing that muscle, and you will find that a lot of those fears just melt away. Because, yeah, so you try to have a company and let's say your company doesn't make any money, then what? When you're okay with it, then what? You know that you still have that core, you still have that ability to live, you still have friends. You still and let's say, you don't. Then there's something else you need to work on.

Mark: 32:22

That is a very inspiring story, Sarah. Thank you so much for sharing that with me no problem and with our listeners. That was great. That was great.

Sarah: 32:30

I felt like I went on and on, but Fantastic story.

Mark: 32:35

I am very inspired myself and actually I think that that is a good point for us to end on that inspiration. So, Sarah, for our listeners out there who want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Sarah: 32:48

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn, sarah Grunaisen. You can connect with me there, but you can also go to avagasocom, my company page, and there you have many ways to contact me. You can ask me any question and I'll record a small, candid answer, or you can just send me a contact request and I will write to you as some kind of answer at some point. So those are two great ways to contact me.

Mark: 33:12

We'll put those links in the show notes so that we can make it easy for everyone. So that's great. What closing advice would you give to our listeners here for discovering their ikigai and maybe for leaders to helping others find their ikigai?

Sarah: 33:27

I think that, in order to ignite other people's passions, the one thing a leader needs to discover is that others are different than themselves. So what success looks like is going to be different. What happiness looks like is going to be different. What they need to thrive is going to look different. So be open to the differences and be curious to discover those, and that's where you will find the path to igniting empowerment.

Mark: 34:04

Very well said, sarah. Thank you again for being a guest. Until next time we'll see you then. Thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Agile Within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the agile within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues until next time. This has been your host, mark Betts.