Using metaphors to make sense of the world

Metaphors are at the heart of how we think and act

Metaphors are at the heart of how we think and act.

Why use Metaphors?

In my earlier post, I described how we all engage in active sensemaking when faced with change or an interruption. And when we must make choices.

Should I take up a new job? Invest in a house? Move to a new city or a country? Should I change track altogether?

Inherent to all big choices is a dilemma-the dilemma of giving up something to gain something else.

We agonise over our choices. Many questions bedevil us.

What are we giving up? What are the trade-offs?

What are we gaining? Will we suffer from buyer's remorse?

Our beliefs, fixed mindsets and prejudices bind us as if to the mast like invisible chains.

Metaphors are powerful as they illuminate these invisible bonds, which loosen when we see them for what they are.

Speed-Breakers

The essence of a metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. George Lakoff.

B.had joined a large consulting firm in Denmark based on his ability to close deals and was keen to get more exposure to larger and more complex contracts. He was very dynamic, and he was used to taking the initiative and doing things his way. His primary source of frustration was his boss's 'bizarre' behaviour- who recommended his name for an advanced leadership course and yet wanted to know every little detail of his client engagement. He also insisted on being informed of every critical meeting.

His boss would also impede the pace of engagement by raising questions that B knew were unnecessary and petty. B. was conflicted, puzzled that his boss didn't want him to succeed. His boss was very good at building business cases, and he wanted to learn from him, but he felt that his only recourse was to leave, like others before him.

During our coaching session, I asked him if he could inverse the situation. Imagine instead that his boss was insecure and that his boss was more afraid of him succeeding and moving so fast that he would not catch up.

To that end, the boss was trying to slow him down by building speed breakers on an otherwise smooth road. The metaphor immediately made sense to B., and he understood that his boss's seemingly random actions were clumsy speed-breakers in a flash of insight.

This metaphor helped him change his perspective, and he deliberately slowed down at times to allow his boss to catch up. His boss's behaviour changed, there were no 'speed-breakers after that.

Rather than making an 'either' 'or' choice, B made a wise 'and' decision.

Dark labyrinth Metaphor

We live by Metaphors.

Most of us have been in B.'shoes at some point in our lives.

And what often looks like 'unexplainable' behaviour is a form of disguised resistance as there is a lack of clarity on all sides. B was dynamic, and B's boss felt threatened and uncertain.

A path to clarity is to learn to think in terms of metaphors.

As George Laker explains in his brilliant book Metaphors, We Live by:

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of the way we perceive, how we get along in the world and how we relate to people - in short, how we define our everyday realities is very much a matter of metaphor.

For example, 'Argument is War'. Though an argument and a war are different kinds of things- we conceive and talk about arguments in terms of war in a very ordinary and natural way because that is how we think.

'Your claims are indefensible.

'I demolished his argument'.

His criticisms were right on target,

He attacked every weak point in my argument and so on.

One can soften one's stance, be more flexible by changing one's frame of reference or metaphorical concept.

When we change our metaphors, we change our language and the way we perceive our reality.

Antelope Canyon

Empty vs Full Drums

I was working closely with the CEO of a company manufacturing industrial boilers. As a part of their growth strategy, the company was shifting track to manufacturing a more profitable suite of products and services; the change was a couple of years in the making, and the sales team was excited. They felt they had a winning suite of products and were tired of servicing their demanding and less profitable customers.

The CEO deeply felt that their existing customers also needed to be taken care of even if they would not be the company's focus in the future.

The CEO's dilemma was communicating the perils of ignoring existing customers while executing their growth strategy to his team.

I shared Whorf's anecdote of the empty drums with the CEO during my coaching session.

Whorf was a chemical engineer and a linguist and believed that our use of language and metaphor affect habitual behaviour. He described a workplace where full gasoline drums were stored in one room and empty ones in another. The empty drums were more dangerous because of the flammable vapour, and yet the workers handled these drums less carefully to the point that they even smoked in the room with empty drums but not in the room with full drums. Whorf argued that by habitually speaking of the vapour-filled drums as empty and by extension as inert, the workers were oblivious to the risk posed by smoking near the empty drums.

The CEO immediately struck with this metaphor linking his 'old' customers to empty drums and new customers to the full ones. He shared this metaphor with the team with great success, who quickly connected old customers with empty drums and new customers with the full drums.

This metaphor changed his team’s behaviour towards old customers, and they called these customers empty to remind them of the danger of taking old customers for granted.

The more we deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, the more we have to make choices that challenge us; metaphors help us avoid making black and white, either or decisions early on, as B. and the CEO discovered.

We are the sum of our choices—all the forks on the road that has led us to where we are today. Let’s use the power of metaphors to make better choices at every fork in our journey.