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Government Leader home > November 2005 issue
November 2005; Vol. 1 No. 4
READING LIST: How to talk the talk? with Metaphors
By Richard W. Walker
If you want to win the hearts and minds of your colleagues and workforce, bring your words to life with a metaphor.
Metaphors help illuminate the nature of leadership, Thomas Oberlechner and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger argue in Through Their Own Words: Towards a New Understanding of Leadership Through Metaphors, a paper published by Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership.
“Effective leaders ... may be characterized by their rich metaphorical vocabulary, which enables them to use the metaphors appropriate to different leadership situations,” the authors say.
But leaders must choose their metaphors carefully. The authors argue that leadership metaphors directly address the ethics of leadership, containing messages, for example, about what’s good and what’s bad. But the choice of metaphors can be critical. Metaphors can carry unintended ethical messages that may be divisive. A leader who conducts “a crusade” implies the defeat of disbelievers, the authors contend.
Leadership literature abounds in met-aphors, Oberlechner and Mayer-Schonberger find. References to war are perhaps the most common, with “battle plans” and “revolutions” turning up frequently.
But leaders have also found fodder in sports, art, music, religion and machinery. The authors cite, for example, Tom and Bill Wentz’ book Leadership and Golf (Corporate Performance Systems, 2002), which argues that leaders must “trust their swing” and that some “remain handicapped by the muscle memory of their old game.”
The type of metaphor a leader uses can convey an underlying message, the authors say. For example, metaphorical expressions relating to war and the military, such as “iron rule,” convey a hierarchy of leadership that may not work in all situations. In stark contrast are sports metaphors with an emphasis on “team spirit” or “team play.”
“While members of sports teams enter the game with a certain strategy and often have such predefined roles as goalie or offensive player, sports allow more readily autonomous decisions so as to further the team’s overall goal,” Oberlechner and Mayer-Schonberger state. “Information flows are much less hierarchical; facts, suggestions and demands are regularly mixed. Unlike in the military, team members often determine who acts as their leader.”
Metaphors can serve as “underlying, organizing structures of leadership thinking and experience, and they can be mobilized in order to accomplish interpersonal goals,” according to Oberlechner and Mayer-Schonerger.
The paper is available at http://www.innovations.harvard.edu .
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