I began preaching and teaching at a relatively young age, and through the inevitable steep learning curve that comes with such an early start, I quickly discovered the power of metaphor when attempting to communicate complex ideas about life and faith. Metaphors have a wonderful ability to open up windows to truth and then give that truth handles, making it both memorable and portable. You may have noticed that I just did exactly what I’m talking about right there (without really thinking about it, to be honest – it just occurred to me as I write this). “Open up windows to truth” and “give that truth handles” create visual images that reinforce the ideas I’m trying to communicate by associating them with others. This is the essence of what a metaphor is and does.
In their seminal book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explain, “[t]he essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.” [1] You have likely found this to be true too, but whenever I prepare to communicate ideas about God, faith, truth, and life, I find it incredibly helpful to lean towards some sort of visualisation, either using actual images or objects or through word pictures in the form of similes and metaphors. By connecting an idea to another in this way, we can create clarity and draw out meaning that illuminates the essence of what we’re trying to convey in a fresh and accessible way. Metaphors have a unique ability to make abstract concepts concrete.
It’s often erroneously assumed that the use of metaphor is an exceptional way of communicating reserved only for writers, poets, speakers, and others for whom creative communication is a career. The truth is we all use metaphors frequently in the ordinary course of our daily lives. Metaphor, it turns out, is a fundamental building block of language and not merely ornamental. For instance, we speak about “jumping to conclusions”, “skating on thin ice”, or “melting from the heat”. When I say that I am “treading water, ” you know intuitively that I probably mean that I’m feeling somewhat stuck in a holding pattern and lack a clear sense of direction. Once you become aware of them, metaphors show up with surprising regularity in our everyday speech. This is true in the mentoring context, too.
Mentees will often instinctively use metaphors to express subconscious notions about their situation or their thoughts and feelings about their experiences.
I have found these self-disclosures to be incredibly fruitful and insightful places to explore.
A developing body of sound research supports the idea that mentee-generated solutions described using their own metaphors are much more effective at providing an in-depth understanding of a person’s world than any mentor’s expert advice. This often leads to better insights and interventions.[2]
Some, like David Groves, argue that it is imperative that a mentor not impose their own metaphoric language onto the mentee, contaminating the language of the metaphoric insights offered. Others argue for the value of sensitively co-created metaphoric language that can lead both mentor and mentee to valuable insights and understandings. Either way, the point is that exploring metaphor can be a profoundly helpful way of accessing subconscious thoughts and feelings, generating new insights, evoking emotions, clarifying actions, and facilitating transformative learning.
I have found Penny Tompkins and James Lawley’s “Symbolic Modelling” approach helpful, which employs a series of specific questions.[3] They suggest twelve questions a mentor should ask that to help guide a mentee through an exploration of the metaphoric language that emerges in a mentoring session. These help the mentee identify what they want (the goal), how they can achieve it (the process) and what obstacles or challenges might be in the way. The questions are:
To find out what the mentee wants:
∗ What would you like to have happen?
To develop awareness:
∗ Gain detail: What kind of (Mentee’s words) is that (Mentee’s words)?
∗ Locate in space: Whereabouts is (Mentee’s words)?
∗ Expand awareness: Is there anything else about (Mentee’s words)?
∗ Encourage metaphor: That’s (Mentee’s words) like what?
To understand the bigger picture:
∗ Then what happens?
∗ What happens just before?
∗ Where could (Mentee’s words) have come from?
To explore relationships and connections:
∗ And is there a relationship between (Mentee’s words ‘x’) and (Mentee’s words ‘y’)?
∗ And when (Mentee’s words) what happens to (Mentee’s words)?
To find out how the goal can be reached:
∗ What needs to happen for (Mentee’s goal)?
∗ And can (Mentee’s words)?
A brief and simple example could look something like this:[4]
Mentee: “I feel like I’m skating on thin ice.”
Mentor: “How thick is the ice?”
Mentee: “Not very thick at all.”
Mentor: “What do you think is under the ice?”
Mentee: “Failure, I guess.”
Mentor: “When did you start realising you were on the ice?”
Mentee: “Last week.”
Mentor: “What happened to make you realise this?”
Mentee: “I had a difficult conversation with my boss.”
Mentor: “Is your boss on the ice with you?”
Mentor: “No, she’s watching me from a distance.”
Mentee: “How does her distance make you feel?”
Mentee: “Afraid and insecure.”
Mentor: “What would you like to happen?”
Mentee: “I want to get off the ice as quickly as possible.”
You can play the rest of the scenario out in your own mind. If you find the set questions too rigid, you can always allow your intuition to guide your own. No doubt, you can see (and may have already experienced) how the use of questions to explore a mentee’s metaphoric language begins to draw out thoughts, feelings, connections, and insights that help catalyse actions that lead to transformative outcomes.
As fellow mentors, I want to encourage you to be on the lookout for the metaphors that mentees bring into the conversation. They are beautiful and invaluable portals to the soul.
Blessings
Tim Healy
[1] Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) The Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 5
[2] Thompson, R. (2021) ‘Coaching and Mentoring with Metaphor’, International Journal of Evidence-Based Coaching and Mentoring, (S15), pp.212-228. DOI: 10.24384/4sve-8713 (Accessed: 31 January 2024).
[3] Lawley, J., & Tompkins, P. (2005). Metaphors in Mind: Transformation Through Symbolic Modelling. Developing Company Press. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ktZanQEACAAJ
[4] For a more thorough example of the application of the model, see Angela Dunbar’s “Using Metaphors with Coaching”, at http://cleancoaching.com.
Image: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/iceberg-floating-in-arctic-sea-gm693474546-128066809 (free use with registration)