The year was 1983, and it was starting to look like Apple would lose the personal computer battle with IBM. Experts decreed: “The shooting isn’t over yet, but it’s clear how the war will come out” (Greenwald, 1983). The Apple employee meeting began in a somber mood, but then Steve Jobs said: “It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.” His troops rallied around the pirate metaphor, embracing nonconformism, audacity, and the occasional plundering of competitors’ ideas.
A one-line metaphor can change behaviors faster than an elaborate corporate values statement. Still, the average business leader rarely uses metaphors in communication. To be crystal clear, I mean thinking-outside-the-box metaphors that take you out of your comfort zone, not stay-in-your-lane, low-hanging-fruit ones. See what I did there? The irony is that business speak is hardly short of metaphors, but most are of the dreaded cliché kind.
A leader who communicates without metaphors is like my Eastern European grandmother who firmly believed that overfeeding her five visiting grandchildren was her mission but cooked us the blandest meals. Had she learned how to use spices and colorful veggies, we would have asked for seconds, instead of having to be chased around the kitchen with a plateful of beige food.
1. Free associate. Say that you want to explain to your employees why it’s better to do layoffs now than later, when the market will turn and new jobs will be harder to find, plus the company will be in worse shape so even bigger layoffs would be needed. Look around for something completely disconnected. Why is this situation like, say, eating a can of sardines? Maybe because if you don’t eat it right after you open it you’ll find it much less appetizing later? Repeat the process with various random objects. Even if none ends up as your final metaphor, they will help release those creative juices.
2. Make them relatable. Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, often used family metaphors to bring to her team her vision for healthier product lines. For most people, family, daily life routines, and maybe pets, are easy to relate to. Maseratis are not, as Howard Pien, former CEO of Chiron, may have realized only after he compared the company’s restructuring to “breaking in a new Maserati. The first thousand miles you are not going to step on the gas too hard” (Konig et al., 2018). If thinking of a sports analogy, keep your audience in mind. Leaders have been harvesting their metaphors from this field extensively, but it appears that with newer and more diverse generations of employees, you might not always hit it out of the park with a sports metaphor (Ottati & Renstrom, 2010).
3. Bring them up early. According to research, a metaphor that illustrates a topic just introduced is much more effective because your audience hasn’t yet had the time to shape their own mental images about the subject (Thibodeau et al., 2019). During a target-setting meeting, Jack Welch, General Electric’s legendary CEO, lost patience with the incremental goals being proposed. He said, “Guys, we are gently nudging the peanut uphill here.” The metaphor framed as unacceptable any subsequent attempt to defend the old ways, and General Electric became one of the first companies to adopt BHAGs instead (big, hairy, audacious goals).
1. Chuck the clichés. I recently heard a manager affectionately complain about a project team she was coordinating. Instead of "herding cats," she described herself as that mama bear in a popular video who is trying to carry her five cubs one by one across a highway, while one or two of them are always trotting back. Be vigilant about the cliché slinking toward the tip of your tongue and replace it with something uniquely yours.
2. Don’t mix your metaphors. “Our company is a groundbreaking lion” is a rather heartbreaking turkey. Make it specific and visualize it while you’re saying it, and this won’t happen.
3. Don't misread your audience and context. For example, an intriguing study shows that CEO metaphorical speech during earnings calls impresses journalists positively, but analysts negatively (König et al., 2018).
4. Don't forget the substance. Ted Lasso, the hero of the eponymous TV series and much cited as a model of leadership, says to an annoying football player, “You remind me of my grandma with the remote; you push all the wrong buttons.” It’s funny, but it neither simplifies nor illustrates, nor does it inspire. This is because the player and the grandma have in common nothing of substance, only wordplay. As a leader, you want your metaphors to surprise, but also to make a lot of sense once you’ve put them out there. Warren Buffet said about how falling markets expose investors who took excessive risk: “Only when the tide goes down do you see who’s been swimming naked.” It was a surprising analogy, but in retrospect so apt that one cannot stop picturing it, sadly.
Metaphors in leadership are like dynamite: They can instantly open a passage where there was none, but if you don't know how to handle them, they can also blow up in your face, or sometimes, after building up expectations, turn out to be a dud. But they are also like sardines…
References
Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2012). Learning charisma. Harvard Business Review, 90(6), 127–130.
Ernst, B. A., et al. (2022). Virtual charismatic leadership and signaling theory: A prospective meta-analysis in five countries. Leadership Quarterly, 33(5)
Greenwald, J. 1983. The colossus that works. Time.
Konig, A., Mammen, J., Luger, J., Fehn, A., & Enders, A. (2018). Silver bullet or ricochet? CEOs' use of metaphorical communication and infomediaries' evaluations. Academy of Management Journal, 61(4),
Mon, S. K., Nencheva, M., Citron, F. M. M., Lew-Williams, C., & Goldberg, A. E. (2021). Conventional metaphors elicit greater real-time engagement than literal paraphrases or concrete sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 121.
Ottati, V. C., & Renstrom, R. A. (2010). Metaphor and persuasive communication: A multifunctional approach. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(9), 783–794.
Sopory, P., & Dillard, J. P. (2002). The persuasive effects of metaphor: A meta-analysis. Human Communication Research, 28(3).
Thibodeau, P. H., Matlock, T., & Flusberg, S. J. (2019). The role of metaphor in communication and thought. Language and Linguistics Compass, 13(5).
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Rami G Khouri
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
