Matthew Borg Explores Ikigai’s Role in Empowering Educators and Students

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Ikigai and Its Profound Impact

Matthew shares how discovering ikigai has impacted his personal and professional life.

Being able to have a super ikigai

Nick: So on September 6, last year, you sent me this message through LinkedIn, and it blew me away. So I'll just quote the message.

‘Nick, your podcast is impressive and has improved my life infinitely. As a school principal, and most importantly, as a leader of humans, that have the ability to shape the future through generations, the ikigai concept is one that resonates as a powerful contribution to human improvement and empowerment. I personally use my ikigai in all aspects of personal and professional life. Finding flow in all that inspires me to be better every day in service of those I serve. Hell, I even have it plastered on the side of my boat as fishing is an ikigai of mine.’

So when I read that, I was like, wow, who is this guy? And I thought, I didn't think my podcast would have such an impact. And yeah, we connected and had a chat. And we've connected again recently. So yeah, thanks for that feedback, first of all. But how would you say ikigai has impacted your personal life? Maybe before that, you can introduce yourself if you'd like to.

Matthew: Just before I do that, what I found very interesting is that message holds true just as true, if not more true, right now and today, I just want to note that that message was written obviously, before chat-GTP even came out. So you can give any credit for putting together that message.

And it's a message I probably held on to for three or four months prior to sending just getting the right words, the profound impact that I've had on myself personally, professionally as a school principal, and also for collectively, in my own personal life as well. So it's all still rings absolutely true for the work that I have put forward through learning more about ikigai and how it resonates within my working life and my home life.

So just a quick snippet about me, I'm an educator, learning and education and educational leadership in particular is another ikigai of mine, something that I am extremely embedded in, I am currently lucky enough to be the principal of a school called Keilor Views Primary School, which is in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. And we have a hugely diverse population of students.

So we have students that speak 36 different languages across the board, and lots and lots of different nationalities within that language group. So it's a multicultural melting pot of Victoria, where we're able to influence and empower our learners to flourish in the world. So I think the actual concept has had a profound influence on my personal life.

I've been able to thread my research of ikigai, and particularly through your podcasts in particular, I've been able to utilize some of the concepts and ideas of finding purpose and meaning and real connection with both identifying what my ikigai are, being able to understand how each of those ikigai can actually be embedded within my own regime or timetable and life.

And what I found in particular, which is something I haven't heard many people actually speak about just yet, is the intersection between two ikigais coming together, and being able to have that sort of as a super ikigai.

Where, for example, I'll give you an example when my educational leadership research comes together with my family, and being able to be a little wiser in providing some sort of nurturing and empowerment to my own children, in collaboration with my wife, is been able to have better outcomes for my kids and better outcomes for me personally, because my kids are growing in a way that resonates our values as a family.

And that's something that is huge. I think the fishing piece is that is definitely one of my ikigais. It is a self care thing for me as well to be able to give back into nature, so it's not so much the action of participating in the recreation of fishing, it's more being nurtured and immersed in the environment and being able to step out of a busy life and a busy world, and actually slow down and get to appreciate the bird life, the aquatic life.

And if I can do that with a family member, it again links two ikigai together, and then creates this powerful, positive burst of energy that I can actually hold on to and use in my day-to-day living.

Three Main Principles Around Empowerment Leadership

The pandemic has emphasised the importance of social-emotional learning and emotional intelligence for educators. As a result, Matthew’s institution has established three main principles around empowerment leadership: self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and doing the right work.

Creating a positive space for students to learn and grow

Nick: This is really inspiring when you first told me that, I think you've recorded video, and you've taken photos for me, and I'm like, wow, this is someone who's really made an effort to, rather than just being inspired by the idea, you've taken this knowledge, you've tested it, you've put it into your school system, and you're getting your educators to identify their ikigai, share it.

So I guess that's also a reminder every day, they see that it might offer some comfort or inspiration every time they see it. So let's let's dive deeper into how you've integrated ikigai into your professional life as a principal and leader, do you want to go a bit deeper on how you've done all that?

Matthew: So over the past four years, and particularly through the pandemic, where social emotional learning and emotional intelligence has been a real priority for our whole community of educators across the globe, really. What we've done is tried to flip the script on learning innovation and education settings, to be able to ensure that everyone has skin in the game as a leader of learning within our environment. And that goes for our wonderful staff, and amazing students, and also our parents.

So really empowering everyone within our community to understand that they can take charge to lead learning for themselves and for others within our positive environment. So we do that by establishing three main principles around empowerment leadership, and they are self efficacy, which is the first one so it's actually understanding and realization of self and this is where ikigai can come in, and really aids in the concept of understanding self.

The second one is collective efficacy. So being able to collectively be positive and understanding that every day we come to school to make a positive impact on the lives of others, and be able to serve them and empower them to be the very best people they can be in the world moving forward, regardless of what that world looks like.

And then the third one is really about doing the right work. So you need the first two to be able to understand and actually funnel down into what is most important at that particular point in time for every single learner in our environment. So we can do the right work in supporting and scaffolding learning experiences for our students.

But also as much as as an educational leader and a system leader in education, I need to be able to do that for the adults as well in the rooms that the teachers that support staff, the administration staff, to be able to scaffold a concept of empowerment of how that actually looks within our school.

And then how do we measure that, so put in place different sort of checkpoints for measurement, both informal and formal, that can actually curate an environment of nurturing and curiosity and real positive space for students to learn and grow.

Cultivating Belonging and Connection

Matthew shares how their institution was able to create a place for their staff and students alike where they feel a sense of belonging and have a positive impact on each individual's life.

An ibasho for staff and students

Nick: This reminds me of the word ibasho, which is another word I think we both love. A very basic definition is ‘this place where you can be’, but in research is this place where you feel safe and secure. You have the tools and support to be empowered, and you self-actualize.

So it kind of sounds like your school has become an ibasho for staff and students. So does it feel like an ibasho? Because when we spoke last time, you told me that the school was in trouble, and you were asked to go to this school, and try and save it. And you've obviously done that. So has it become an ibasho of sorts?

Andrew: I totally believe so. Both with the students and the staff, which is over the space of four years, we've seen our positive endorsement in our staff opinion survey, which is put out annually by the Department of Education here in Victoria.

We've actually seen it go from about 60% positive rating to four consecutive years of over ninety, which is really above state level. So the state level of positive endorsement for education settings in the public system is around 75% annually.

And us to be over 90 is just demonstrating that whatever we are putting in place currently in our empowerment culture is forming connection and belonging to an environment where everyone is leading that learning experience.

So the ibasho idea is something where we come to a place to provide learning experiences for students in where we find ourselves experiencing states of flow, and connection, that is just as connecting and resonates just as much with people as their own home life.

So as educators, a few of us primary schools, we actually talk about how this is not a place where we come to work as such, this is just the space that we spend the daytime hours in, and actually have an impact on individuals and each other, that is beneficial for our whole society.

So it's about creating a space of belonging, connection, being able to feel safe in that environment. And establishing values that are shared values within our community, that we can actually help each and every individual connect with their own ikigai within the workspace or the school space, and also their own home space as well.

Applying Positive Psychology in Learning Environments

Matthew and his colleagues were able to incorporate Mieko Kamiya's ikigai needs into their workplace culture. They related Kamiya's needs to Seligman's PERMA Theory, and used them as tools that have helped them understand themselves better, enabling them to perform at an optimum level for their students.

Creating a space for learning and improvement

Nick: Do you want to go into how you integrated ikigai. Specifically, you mentioned to me before we started talking how you integrated Mieko Kamiya's ikigai-9 needs and how you've tied that to positive psychology, I think specifically the PERMA model.

Andrew: That's right, we've managed to look at the two areas in where Seligman’s PERMA model, but also the seven ikigai needs and how they actually relate to each other and interrelate to each other as well.

And we found some really great through lines of experience for teaching staff to link to. And the beautiful flow down waterfall effect is, and what we find in all the learning that we do around self-efficacy and self-actualization, to be able to understand ourselves better, it allows us to perform at an optimum level for the students that we serve every day, and being able to incorporate that within a school learning environment, which is so human centric, it is it is a human ecosystem—schools are.

Anywhere where humans collectively congregate for any periods of time, obviously, is a human ecosystem. But we need to get back to that idea of being able to nurture our ecosystem and cultivate the ground on which people walk on with such rich nutrient and research depth ideals, where society can actually move in a really positive direction forward, whisk children really wants to come to the school because they feel that ibasho in the school—they know that the school is a place of safety, sanctuary, and curiosity, where they can actually be themselves and their own strength and character strengths will be recognized and also celebrated in the groupings and the work that we all do together.

Now, every single human in that environment is feeling that way. It is a space of positive reflection, being able to link learning to improvement, and be able to understand that the privilege just doesn't, and the learning doesn't start inside that school environment.

You can just have as much nurture and rich learning experiences outside of that environment, and actually bring them back to share with others to amplify learning for all. So for us, ikigai, and Seligman’s PERMA model, principles of positive psychology in the Western world has actually all come together to produce an environment in which everyone has sort of major skin in the game.

Where every brick that has been laid in the foundation actually has the DNA of every single educated student and parents who are part of that environment. And we're not perfect, we're always working on being better than we were yesterday. And that's the beauty of being a fallible human.

A lot of the time I self reflected, I could have done better, I should have done better, and I have to let myself off the hook a lot of the time by saying, look, I'm human, I’m fallible, this happens, let's move forward instead of just reflecting and becoming sort of really despondent about what's happened in the past or the what may be served up to me from the department perspective, to be able to utilize and maneuver that to create something that serves our vision each and every day for our students.

Ikigai in Learning: Nurturing Passion in Schools

Matthew understands how essential it is to blend ikigai into teaching methods. He thinks it's valuable to do action research in schools, encouraging everyone to keep learning. As schools change, they let students control their learning based on what they're passionate about, which might shape their future.

Nurturing students to grow into the adults our society needs

Nick: It's interesting you mentioned pedagogy, and probably a lot of people don't really understand what that means. But I'd like to pull a quote from Professor Hasegawa, who was actually the first podcast guest, and he has this quote, as ikigai can be a guideline for the individual's way of life. It is a topic for interdisciplinary research in psychology, pedagogy, and philosophy.

And so pedagogy obviously refers to education and how you educate. Do you think there should be more research into perhaps tying ikigai to pedagogy for teachers and school leaders, such as yourself?

Andrew: I think, more importantly, more action research on the ground is so imperative within our schooling environment, because we're such a fluid community at the moment. Things are just essentially, the rate of change and improvement has just been gradually getting greater and greater.

It's really important that we're doing action research on the ground, and that's something that I hold quite strong—the idea of educators, teachers, principals, school leaders, being educational researchers from the day they walk into a classroom, and being able to apply that educational research and learning they've done on the job to improve student outcomes across the board.

And being able to do that is adjusting a pedagogy. The way we teach, pedagogy is just a fancy word, I think, for the way that we actually teach students and children. And part of that key to some real progressive ideals around innovative pedagogy is around letting go a little bit more and being able to let the students lead their own learning to be able to have that sense that we're all learners in this space, including the principal of the school all the way to the canteen manager, we are all continuous learners.

It is something that actually makes us innately human is that we do not stop learning. And humans have this profound capacity to continue learning all the way up until the very last day. And I think being able to embrace that and understand that, is a way forward for every educator to influence their own teaching practice, it's really difficult to be innovative in a very restricted world of particularly government schooling.

And sometimes it takes a disrupter or innovator to be able to provide something different with some real evidence and data backed performance measures that can actually indicate there is a better way, and just being able to be brave enough to for our community to take those steps forward, in thinking, there is an alternative to traditional pedagogy, which we've been offered, and being able to demonstrate the outcomes in which that we can produce which are happier students, students who are engaged, students who come to school every single day, knowing and wanting to learn, and more importantly, parents that are really happy and have the trust in us to nurture their most precious commodities in the world, each and every day within our school environments.

And that's something that I think the COVID pandemic taught us—that schools aren't just this vessel of traditional academic learning, we're actually places of connection with places where we can actually nurture students to grow into the humans and adults in which our society needs to improve the future.

And a lot of the time, there's some alarmist theories around kids these days, you know, not as great as the next generation or not as great as the generation before, I can tell you with absolute confidence, it's giving me goosebumps now that the children of tomorrow are ready and raring.

These individuals come innately and profoundly knowledgeable compared to us in the past, they do their own research, at home, they are constantly being able to research what they're most interested in, where their curiosity leads them. And it's about actually embracing those learning concepts that they want to do for themselves relating to their own ikigai, and then being able to actually put those into practice that same sort of framework and concept to something which will help them for the future, but they just don't know it yet.

So it's an energizing space to work in when you’re working with young people. When you see the future is so bright with these young people ready to take on whatever the future holds.

For the full podcast conversation, go to: Ikigai’s Influence on Educators and Students