Self Leadership Coaching Blog

Imagine, if you will, long ago in a distant time at the dawn of civilisation, a group of people huddled around a fire, resting from the day and warming themselves from the night. The group is made up of several families, the young, the fit and the old all grouped together for mutual survival in a harsh environment.

 The evening meal had finished and a man stands, the group falls silent but with excited curiosity about what the man might say. The man, who was not old by our standards but had an appearance that communicated his wisdom and authority, starts to speak. He commences by taking his audience back in time to events that anchored them to deeds of courage, endurance and sacrifice. His words entrance each listener and carry them on a journey inside themselves so that they relive each story; even if they had not been present.

 Sometimes the storyteller would just recount passed events but other times when the group was facing a new challenge he would draw analogies from nature to prepare the group for ordeals to come. After the stories the group would sleep and dream and wake the next morning renewed, refreshed and ready to face the day.

 The storyteller has a special magic that allows the listener to travel in time and space and access states and resources from their unconsciousness. Storytellers have been with us from since man first learned to speak and have survived the printing press and the advent of electronic entertainment. Today, a leader, speaker or trainer who wishes to bypass resistance, prepare hearts and minds and facilitate lasting changes for his or her audience will be wise to study and practice the structure and delivery of story and metaphor.

 Neuro Linguistic Programming and Metaphor

 The early developers of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) modelled a great storyteller, the founder of modern hypnosis, Milton Erickson. Erickson’s stories are ingenious, enchanting and extraordinary examples of the art of persuasion. According to Sidney Rosen MD, a student of Erickson’s, anybody who listned to Erickson was likely to experience varying levels of hypnotic trance. In trance we are most open to the messages, suggestions and influences embedded in the stories. Erickson also believed that if the listener “forgot” a story – developed amnesia for it – its effect could be even more potent. To this end, Erickson and subsequent NLP trainers would create story loops, by nesting one story inside another, inside another taking the listener deeper into trance and increasing the chance of amnesia.

 Stories and metaphors can be used to:

•  Induce emotional states
• Cause the listener to access mental resources
• Reframe a situation
• Reduce resistance to change or new ideas
• Build rapport
• Entertain
• Break negative states
• Punctuate speeches or trainings

What is a Metaphor?

The world ‘metaphor’ comes from Meta, meaning above or about and Phorine, which means meaning, it can also be translated as ‘to transfer’ or ‘carry over’. When we use a metaphor we cause the listener to go meta to meaning which creates awareness which creates choice and choice allows change.

We meta state when we use metaphors by putting one thing in hierarchy to another. The philosopher Aristotle (circa 300BC), knew this when he said, “Metaphor is the application to one thing of the name belonging to another.”

 In linguistics, a metaphor is the act or process of denoting one concept (the tenor) with a sign conventionally tied to another (the vehicle), with the purpose of (i) emphasising certain associations of the tenor over others (my dentist is a butcher); (ii) enriching the conceptual structure of the tenor by analogy with another domain (the CPU is the brain of the computer); (iii) conveying some aspect of the tenor which defies conventional lexicalization (the leg of the chair, the neck of the bottle).

 The dictionary defines a metaphor as, “A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another by way of suggesting a likeness or analogy between them”

 One of the exercises I ask my NLP students to do is to write five metaphors that can be used for a specific purpose such as a training. If you were put in this position your first reaction might be to run out and buy a book on metaphors – I know, that was my first reaction when given the same task. It’s not necessary, the best metaphors are staring you right in the face, you are living them, and they are everywhere. It’s like the fish asking, “Where is the water?” In fact it is more difficult to find something that is not a metaphor.

 Just prior to writing this I was coaching a client on the phone who was berating himself for personalising someone else’s anger. “Can you imagine someone learning to shoot basketball hoops”, I said, “Some shots they get in and some they miss. Eventually they get more in than they miss. You have only just learned about Self-leadership, so it’s OK to drop the ball occasionally as long as you learn and improve.”

 The Construction of a Metaphor

 There are a number or ways to construct metaphor depending on whether you are using it for a state induction or for helping an individual or group to overcome a particular challenge.To create a basic metaphor use the following steps.

 Displace the focus
It’s axiomatic that nobody likes to be told; they like to discover the answers for themselves. By changing the focus of the story from the listener to some other time, place or person reduces resistance by allowing the listener to draw their own meanings. For examples of this refer to the parables of Jesus of Nazareth eg. Casting seeds, faith like a mustard seed etc.

 Get the listener to search their unconscious
By using non-specific descriptions your metaphor will induce trance by causing the listener to go inside and to fill in the details from their own mental map or experience. An example would be; “Perhaps if you were in a similar situation you would have an idea as to what to do.”

Pace the Structure
For the metaphor to be effective it needs to have the same stucture as the problem it sets out to gain perspective on. So if the listeners are facing a challenge and don’t know how to resolve it then the subjects of the metaphor will also face a challenge. The difference is the outcome.

 An Outcome
The metaphor needs an outcome or resolution that will add resources to the listener; this will often be in the form of a reframe of what the situation means, for example “they discovered that the challenge was in fact an opportunity to do things better.”

 The Delivery of metaphor

If you are not already a natural storyteller, set an outcome to hone your skills, listen to others who have the ‘gift’ and then practice. If you have children, read them bedtime stories and then practice creating your own. If you can enthrall a child you are well on you way. 

A metaphor must be meaningful; it needs to pace the elements of the listeners intellectual level, experience and current situation. Good storytellers gather information about their audience and not only pace content but pace their delivery. No two audiences are the same and so a single story may vary in length and detail depending on how it is being received.

Just as with state induction the storyteller must use his or her voice and physiology to act out the story for maximum impact.

So learning to tell stories is like learning to cook, at first you start with a few simple ingredients but after a few tries you can add flavour and spice and make a meal that is both satisfying and memorable.