In the numerous leadership assessments I have done in the past, we used to count the individual’s use of analogies as evidence that they were a strong conceptual thinker – that they could rapidly make sense of complex information and create a simple story or image to represent the concept that others could easily understand. I vividly remember an ex-army officer turned COO use the analogy of a car to describe to me the workings of a large global bank and its future strategy. It was extremely impressive. Good analogies stick with us and paint powerful pictures that help us to simplify the complexity of the world we live in. And the best analogies speak directly to the listener. It’s no use using an airport analogy if the individual you are speaking to has never left the village they grew up in. The more relevant it is to the listener’s experience, the more meaning they will take from it and the stronger it will stick.
I’ve come across analogies a lot over the past few years, not just in my work, but in my personal development activities and coaching experience. I’ve seen them used in different ways, and this has led me to ask the question - What if we consider ourselves as the listeners and use analogies for our own benefit?
Similar to the concept of learning to look at our own thought processes through techniques like mindfulness and meditation, when we lift ourselves up and look at ourselves from the third person we can see different angles to our own thoughts, feelings and motivations. We become the subject of our own analysis. In a similar way, we can become the subject of our own analogies to better make sense of ourselves and the complexity that lies within each of us.
I believe that many of us want to understand ourselves better, so that we can grow as individuals. I’ve found interventions like therapy and coaching to be extremely valuable to my own personal development, and I want to share with you a couple of examples of using analogies for personal growth that I hope you will also find valuable.
Example 1: Values as an analogy
A big part of understanding ourselves is understanding what drives us. A lot of coaching practices involve uncovering people’s underlying motivations, in order to use these to drive positive future behaviour. I saw this taken a step further by Denise Gosnell on the Science of Success podcast, where she outlined the following steps:
Step 1: Identify your top three values – the things you love doing that drive your behaviour. If you don’t know what they are, watch yourself and how you act in different situations, and ask why. What made you act like that? What do you get excited by? What makes you feel alive?
Step 2: Come up with an analogy (she used the phrase ‘power word’) that speaks to you, and represents all three of those values together.
Example: Denise’s three values on the podcast were learning new things, problem solving, and helping others. The analogy that spoke to her was ‘amplifier’ – a piece of equipment that takes in the noise (learning new things), outputs something beautiful (simplifying and problem solving), and provides enjoyment to others (helping others). Whilst my values are similar to hers (personal growth and learning, improving health and wellbeing, and helping others – although they may change in the future!), I’m still in the process of finding an analogy that speaks to me. You may not be able to think of it immediately, but ask your mind the question and it will come up with an answer.
Example 2: Analogies for your current and future self
When I first experienced coaching from the position of a coachee, this exercise stuck with me and really helped me to both understand my current behaviour and what I wanted to do differently. It’s a technique closely aligned to Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory.
Step 1: Identify behaviours that you want to change. When are you not at your best, or acting as you would want to? When do you get in your own way?
Step 2: Identify how you want your behaviour to change. What in your mind would make you better, stronger? Who do you want to be and how do you want to act? What does your ideal future self look like, and what do they do differently from your current self?
Step 3: Create two analogies, one to represent your current self and the behaviours you’d like to change, and another to represent your desired future self. Use an adjective at the start to make it more descriptive and powerful.
Example: When I went through this process, I used the analogy of the ‘good soldier’ to describe my current self – following what others expected of me. Classic people pleaser motivation, which is not bad in of itself, but I found it was limiting my freedom. I wanted to be the master of my own destiny and set my own path. For this I used the analogy of the ‘Focused pioneer’. I was then set the task to watch myself over the next month and observe when I was acting as the ‘good soldier’ vs. the ‘focused pioneer’. To look at what triggered each behaviour and what the outcome was. It’s amazing how quickly something starts to change through mere observation.
Both of these analogies help you to understand yourself better and give you a clear path forwards. If I do xyz, am I being an amplifier? Will this make me a ‘good soldier’… or a ‘focused pioneer’…? They help you to make rapid decisions in line with your values and who you want to become. They simplify the complex and provide a north star to guide your choices. This is the true power of analogies.
What personal analogies speak to you? And how else could we use analogies to better ourselves and our society?