Coaching with Metaphor and Story

We each have a plethora of stories to tell ... but to whom?

Did you know that another person can get their life out of your story? Hmmm. That seems amazing and a bit hyperbolic. Possibly so but, never discount the illustration and what another can do with it.

I'm just off the phone with a client who is in the midst of a consequential transition in his job. It's disorienting to change ... who doesn't know that. So first we talked about how it's going at his end of the picture and then we talked about a major transition I'm involved in on my end of things. The whole thing dissolved into some raucous laughter because each of us has made a big deal ... big drama ... out of it all and we saw that in each other.

So what? Well, out of all this my client saw quickly a series of small moves he could make to put him in the mindset of moving to another building ... and, incidentally... to also put his current colleagues in the mindset of adjusting to change. Guess what? The entire drama was about change (of course it was).

Here's the point. As a coach it's not my role to take on my client's life or decisions. It is my role to partner with a client in a search for what is going on. So, a story that simply occurs to me at the moment (one cannot plan for such moments, by the way), may be a way to explore. The best part is that I tell my story and my client gets what he gets out of it. It's not my role to tell him what the message is. Sometimes it doesn't work but often it does.

Metaphors are pictures, music, scenes, poems, stories ... that have nothing to do with what we think they are. They work beautifully also but mostly are visual keys and clues ... movies, sports ... these are great metaphors. For example, this week we're still in the midst of the Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada. Watch the champions and you'll see metaphors for high performance everywhere you look. Bringing a metaphor like that to a client is powerful; bringing it into your thinking is also powerful.

Here's the deal with stories and metaphors: you cannot plan them, have them ready, think about them. They are to be spontaneous, arising out of what your client just said. And, more important than anything, they are first person, lived again in the moment, and never lectures "about" the story. Remember that. It's critical you do.