Metaphorically speaking
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it - Aristotle
As part of a english class writing activity, my 9 year old daughter wrote a message on a postcard and posted it back to our home address. Here is the message below:
Your support has been my sturdy oak tree, sheltering me from life's storms. Your words of encouragement are sunshine on my gloomy days, warming my soul. Your care has been a gentle stream, guiding me along life's meandering path. As you embark on your journey to Sweden, may your travels be a smooth sailing ship, navigating through the vast ocean of adventures.
With love, Leanne.
Imagine how dumbstruck I was standing there with one hand holding the postcard and the other hand pinching the letterbox key, frozen in the basement carpark of our apartment home.
When I finally managed to shake off my reverie, with bated breath I reached with my hand towards the door of our home in anticipation of the exuberant cries of youthful voices sounding like triumphant trumpets beating against my exulting eardrums. Unable to bear any longer the pride bursting like ripe wineskin from my heart, I responded in kind to Leanne’s doting prose.
An acorn does not fall far from the tree, this aging oak tree yearns to shed its crown to allow nourishing rays of the sun to shine through; encouraging the bud to sprout and blossom into majestic poise. As I disembarked from this ship that took me from your tender hugs, my adventures promise to endow upon us a treasure trove of priceless memories that will last us endless days of joyful reminiscence.
Below is the actual postcard I received. How it reads and how I read it are both real.
My intention was to take you on a meandering journey to elicit your own unique imagery. Your journey down the corridor of your mind would be different from mine.
What does an oak tree look like to you?
How meandrous was your stream?
When is the time for an oak tree shed its crown?
What did the majestic poise of the blossoming tree look represent?
Articulating our mental picture gives us signposts to convey meaning in a conversation. These are metaphors.
Metaphors are powerful tools in communication and can have several benefits:
Enhanced Understanding: Metaphors help simplify complex ideas by comparing them to something familiar, making it easier for others to grasp abstract concepts.
Improved Memory Retention: Metaphors create vivid mental images, which can aid in memory recall and retention of information.
Emotional Engagement: Metaphors often evoke emotions, making the message more impactful and memorable.
Increased Creativity: Using metaphors encourages creative thinking and problem-solving by prompting individuals to look at situations from different perspectives.
Effective Communication: Metaphors can bridge cultural or linguistic gaps, enabling effective communication across diverse audiences.
Persuasion and Influence: Metaphors can be persuasive, influencing others' perceptions and attitudes by framing ideas in a compelling manner.
Storytelling: Metaphors are integral to storytelling, adding depth and richness to narratives, which can captivate and inspire audiences.
Quoting my trainer that coaching is a form of ‘conversational technology’; that would make metaphors akin to an algorithm with the function to facilitate dialectic thinking. You might hear it said that the value of coaching lies with its ability to hold space and by using metaphors it can aid a person to delineate emotion from triggering events. What was before visceral or a ‘hot button topic’, is transformed into something more playful enabling examination at ‘arm’s length’. This paragraph is a metaphor about metaphors.
a metaphor about metaphors.
Kang Lee in his Ted Talk: Can you tell if your kid lying speaks of two key ingredients necessary when we lie. Both these ingredients require some cognitive athleticism and as Kang Lee mentions, are crucial skills to function well in society. By the age of 4 most children would be adept at lying and more shockingly that their own parents commonly overestimate their lie detection abilities. You would think that professionals who have had training in lie detection would fare better. Adults with occupations such as judges, policeman or child protection lawyers must develop a keen eye and ear to call out a cheeky fib in children, right? They do not.
Ingredient 1: Theory of mind
This is the understanding that different people have different knowledge about a situation and to differentiate what I know, what you know, and what they know. In the metaphor supposedly written by my daughter depicting a sturdy oak tree, might not land well with someone unfamiliar with that kind of tree nor that the acorn is the oak tree’s seed. Inviting the person gently into your world or asking permission to roam their imagination to establish familiarity of the elements within is good practice.
Ingredient 2: Self-control
Daniel Kahneman’s describes in his bestselling book, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ that ‘Slow Thinking’ happens when you focus, pay attention, monitor and control your behaviour, formulate an argument, solve a problem, or do anything that causes your brain to exert itself. Conjuring a metaphor, keeping the moving elements in memory, applying personal flourishes to the imagery, contextualising to the goal sought is no walk in the park. Spending time exercising our metaphorical muscles is to build on the same movement of sinews against tendons when we lie.
The attributes of being deceitful lend well to the use of metaphors. A good coaching conversation involving metaphors could benefit from some lying skills. As Kang Lee discovers, children from the age of 2 start to lie and instead of being alarmed, we can celebrate the beginning times for verbal swashbuckling with those in our care.
“The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offence.”
―Friedrich Nietzsche
Meandrousity
Applying metaphors is giving permission to stretch our lying skills. Realising that we are sociologically less evolved to detect lies could mean that taking less offense at someone passionately practicing the mental muscles associated with lying; seems, a more constructive mindset to have. Making use of metaphors in coaching provides an entertaining platform to practice a guileful conversation.