From the Coach's Notebook: The Power of Metaphors, Analogies & Stories
There are times when words just don't seem to work...
Particularly when you’re having a difficult conversation, giving challenging feedback or trying to help someone see a situation differently.
Sometimes, a metaphor, analogy or story can do what a hundred carefully chosen words can’t.
In Brené Brown’s book Strong Ground, she tells the story of someone needing to give feedback to a team member who was disruptive, with outbursts that were critical and upset others.
She asked whether he had given tough feedback before. He remembered working in eSports where he had.
“Oh, yes, I led an e-sports team and one of the coaches was a maniac. He yelled and screamed at our players, and they all go on tilt.”
Brown asked him, “What did ‘on tilt’ mean?”
He explained that it is a gaming term for when players get too emotional, can’t get out of their heads and “lose it”.
His homework was to find out where the term “tilt” had come from.
The term originated from pinball, when people would literally tilt the machine to manipulate the ball. “On tilt” then became a term in poker for when a player became overwhelmed or angry, made bad choices and couldn’t recover.
He used “on tilt” to explain the effect of the individual’s behaviour on the team. It went down really well — and now the whole team uses the terminology of “on tilt”.
What I love about this example is that he didn’t tell the person “you are disruptive”. Instead, he gave him a picture of what his behaviour was doing to the team.
It created a shared language that the whole team could understand.
I was coaching a client who was lacking confidence and had been challenged to share something they had done differently in each team meeting.
One week, he had created a new structure for a client meeting. I suggested he think about it as a new recipe.
The old meeting was the tried-and-tested shopping list. This time, he had changed the ingredients, tried a different method and created a fresh recipe.
It gave him a much easier way to talk about what he’d done differently — and helped him recognise that he hadexperimented and tried something new.
I often ask leaders to suggest how they visualise their team by using a metaphor. Often, modes of transport come up, but here are some of my favourites:
☕ A shiny coffee machine – always busy, everyone relies on it, but what happens when one small part stops working?
🎂 The most elaborate wedding cake you’ve ever seen – lots of different layers, each with a different purpose, but they need to work together to create one visual treat.
🏎️ A Formula One racing car – high performing, fast and finely tuned, but dependent on every part, and the pit crew, working together.
There is also a reason metaphors, analogies and stories can be so powerful. They don't just give us information — they give us something we can see, feel and relate to.
They can make an abstract idea tangible, take the heat out of a difficult conversation and create language that people remember.
So next time you’re struggling to explain something, don't just search for better words. Search for a better picture.
