Remixed metaphors
As I sit at my keyboard, trembling like a leaf, I rummage around my mind to uncover some illuminating ideas for you to digest.
Welcome to this post about metaphor. You may have noticed that I used a handful of them in that first contrived sentence. Try counting them and ask yourself if you even realised some of them were metaphors. I count five.
There’s the more conspicuous ‘trembling like a leaf’ similie but also the idea of ‘uncovering’ an idea is a metaphor, as is ‘illuminating’. Unless you plan to take a yard brush or an electric torch to your laptop to this post, none of its ideas will be actually uncovered, or had an actual light shone on them as in ‘illuminating’. They are metaphors - language taken from context A to transfer patterns of thought from that context onto context B.
I wouldn’t recommend trying to literally digest this post. I would recommend figuratively chewing on it, enjoying the flavours and textures, before swallowing and digesting it (and I guess also excreting it when you’ve extracted all the nutrients? This is where metaphors can be perilous).
I wont be so painfully self-conscious to point out every metaphor I use in this post, because there will be too many of them. Metaphors are all around us and are not only a fundamental part of our language, but our entire comprehension of the world. If this is true in our day to day cognition, it is definitely the case at work and when we try to build Intelligent Teams.
This post will be the last in a micro-cluster of thoughts about linguistics (check out previous posts about giving better feedback and generally being a more communicative team with Speech Acts theory). I’ll present some light theory about how metaphors work, and spend lots of time exploring different metaphors that might come up among your teams so you can start to pay attention to the metaphors in your life.
In Metaphors We Live By (1980), Cognitive Scientists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explore the ways in which our understanding of the world is richly interwoven with the metaphors we use. As an example they bring the metaphor of ‘argument is combat’. In this familiar metaphor, we imagine that an argument has a victor and a loser and the purpose is to win like in a physical fight.
In order to do so you must ‘defend’ your ‘position’ or try to ‘attack’ your opponent by finding ‘holes’ or ‘weaknesses’ in their argument.
Metaphors are not just literary devices to make our language prettier, they are an inherent part of our meaning making. So if we unconsciously rely on a metaphor like war for our arguments, it means our arguments will become more adversarial, zero-sum and combative. Maybe that’s the right approach in some contexts, but it doesn’t have to be like this.
Lakoff and Johnson suggest that as an alternative metaphor for argument we could use a dance. I could refer to the person with whom I am engaged in an argument as my partner rather than my adversary or opponent. We follow certain steps in how we argue, and my role is to give my partner the space and the support to look and feel good.
My partner makes an argumentative move, and I give them space to shine by asking them to clarify a point. I step back and help them by steel-manning one of their points (the opposite of straw-manning - where you try to create the strongest version of an argument you disagree with). As the argument-dance progresses my partner hands over the limelight and I make some moves complete with certain flourishes and embellishments.
By the end of an argument-dance maybe we have a conclusion, maybe we don’t. The two of us leave the argument with greater respect, having enjoyed ourselves and put on a good show for the onlookers who are able to make their own mind up about whose arguments were more interesting or persuasive, or even just more fun and beautiful.
In the argument-war on the other hand, we may have a winner and a loser or a deadlock or stalemate. A victor and a loser. Defences will have been overrun, positions crumbled, attacks penetrating and incisive. These two outcomes have a very different feel to one another.
I’m by no means claiming that argument-dance is better than argument war. It depends on the context. Some situations might call for an argument-war, argument-dance, argument-theatre, or argument-game. I am claiming that being aware of the way in which metaphors influence how we experience the world can afford us opportunities to choose how to construct reality in a way more consistent with our goals.
Our organisational language is rife with unconscious metaphor. We refer to the ‘head’ of an organisation or department making the people doing the actual work what, the feet? Something a spacial metaphor as basic as ‘up is good’ plays out in our organisational language. When we place the CEO and management at the ‘top’ of a hierarchy it implies that those people are potentially better or more important, and potentially even the cleverest or most valued. It flows from that premise therefore that what they say goes and that they can wield power however they like.
Little wonder that it’s so difficult to help our teams feel empowered and take agency when they are sitting at the bottom of an ‘up is good, down is bad’ hierarchy. Imagine instead a world in which the CEO sits at the bottom of the org chart and the team members doing the day to day work are at the top. Former nuclear submarine commander turned organisational theorist L David Marquet is fond of the guidance to ‘push authority to the information’ and allow the people with the information (the team) to make the decisions about how to do their work.
Even better than that would be a world in which you don’t need to push authority to the information because it’s there by design and expressed unconsciously through all our organisational metaphors. Or even leadership at the figurative centre of the organisation rather than the top. Play with it.
Changing the org chart alone to reflect more inclusive power dynamics, or starting to say ‘I’m just going to run this idea down to the CEO’ aren’t sufficient change an organisational wholescale. Using metaphors more intentionally however is one more (free!) lever you can pull as an organisational change maker to create Intelligent Teams.
Pay attention to the metaphors around you in your organisation. What do they imply? What are the alternatives?
Thanks for reading this week’s post about using metaphor. If you’re enjoying this Substack, please subscribe to receive a free podcast or blogpost straight to your inbox.