Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi
The key ingredient to success? Passion.
Finding your kokorozashi will unify your passions and skills to create positive change in society. This GLOBIS Unlimited course will help you develop the values and lifelong goals you need to become a strong, passion-driven leader.
Does your career have a narrative? I suppose that many people will say, “No.” Some might even ask what you’re talking about.
Ms. Kimberly Cockrell is not one of those people. While working at Toyota, she took part in the 2022 Toyota Leadership Program in Japan. There, she authored her career story, entitled “Reinvigorating Employee Experience at Toyota.”
She later shared that story at a GLOBIS USA Kokorozashi Seminar. During the seminar, she had a dialogue with GLOBIS USA President Tomoya Nakamura, who served as the main facilitator for Toyota’s Leadership Program. Below is a transcript of their dialogue.
Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi
The key ingredient to success? Passion.
Finding your kokorozashi will unify your passions and skills to create positive change in society. This GLOBIS Unlimited course will help you develop the values and lifelong goals you need to become a strong, passion-driven leader.
Studying Global Leadership with Toyota
Tomoya Nakamura: If I may ask, how was the Toyota Leadership Program?
Kimberly Cockrell: The pandemic put a bit of a wrench in some of our plans, but the training was excellent.
The combination of digging deep into Toyota, overall management leadership principles, and hearing from different internal and external voices was great.
Above all, interacting with leaders from around the Toyota entities from around the globe was great. Because while we’re global, we’re more of a multinational company; so you primarily focus on your own geography. This was a great opportunity to hear about the challenges and opportunities in the other regions.
Discovering and Embodying your Kokorozashi
Nakamura: Today’s seminar is about your kokorozashi or personal mission. Can you elaborate on how you found your kokorozashi and how you incorporated it into your work with Toyota?
Cockrell: Before even becoming a part of the Leadership Program, I went through a program with my church that dug deep into defining your purpose. Through that, I recognized that it’s important for me to have an impact on relationships.
Cultivating opportunities for connection and relationships is core to who I am. Over my life, it’s been important. In developing my Toyota story, I started thinking on a functional basis. I thought about what I needed to do as an HR leader.
Then it shifted to finding out how I wanted to do that. And who I am within the context of that. And then it took more of a turn of, well, what’s the higher purpose for doing the work that I do?
Thinking about the transition that Toyota is making and the 100-year shift that’s happening in our industry, this is a critical moment to have a lasting impact on the future of this company around the things that are important to me: connection and relationships.
Regardless of how fantastic our cars, products, and services are, at the end of the day, it’s the human beings that show up day in and day out that make all of this happen. If I could have a part in making them the star and a highlight of our business approach, our operating model, and our culture, then that could have a lasting impact.
So that for me, became the driver behind my story. Not divorced from the reality that have to get stuff done, but bringing those two things together.
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Nakamura: What were the reactions from others when you presented your Toyota Story? Was there any resistance?
Cockrell: For most of my story I received positive feedback and support, but on a few concepts I got pushback from almost every stakeholder. But I did find an ally in IT.
Nakamura: Can you tell me about the organizational structure that you are trying to change?
Cockrell: We moved to One Toyota in 2017. Then, with the once-in-a-hundred-year structural changes in the automotive industry, we proposed to move the hierarchic structure to career pathing from an employee’s perspective. But this was too much and probably I need to change one step at a time.
Nakamura: How does one of your proposed initiatives, say the gig work system, function in Toyota?
Cockrell: At Toyota, we have introduced Workday as the Human Capital workplace software. In Workday, managers can post the gig work, the required skills, and time allocation. Team members can apply and if they do, the immediate managers must sign off. IT company has put a lots of gig work and they have been successful.
Nakamura: Last year at the Leadership Development of Toyota, I felt that a new type of leadership was emerging. It is the leaders who are willing to take the risk and quickly change directions if they think that they made a mistake. Did these leaders come out from the New Leadership Programs that you developed at Toyota North America?
Cockrell: I think it is a combination of the New Leadership Program, consistency in the words we use to show our management direction, and tying it into evaluation and reward system.
How to Succeed as an HR Leader
Nakamura: Today, I believe that we have many HR professionals in attendance, what would be your piece of advice to the HR people?
Cockrell: First, take care of yourself. HR is a grind and the balance of the management. You cannot do a good job unless you keep yourself balanced. Second, acknowledge that your role is the steward of people. The CFO is the steward of capital/finance. The CHRO is the steward of the people. Third is to set priorities among your four HR hats which are strategist, catalyst, steward, and operator. You need to ask yourself, what is the right amount of time to spend on the four hats? Am I putting my energy in the right balance?
Nakamura: Thank you, Kimberely-san. They are wonderful advice to the HR professionals attending today.
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