The Power of Metaphor and Imagery in Executive Coaching

One important aim of executive coaching is to raise the awareness of clients about their thoughts, feelings and situation. This enables clients to obtain fresh insights and new perspectives on their situation and as a result find solutions that are right for them.

I have found that the use of metaphor and imagery is a powerful way of enabling executive coaching clients to get new perspectives on their coaching topics. The approach seems to work particularly well with clients who are natural thinkers and like to analyse and rationalise the facts and evidence about things. This can sometimes lead to over-analysis and the client becoming ‘stuck’ in a rationale domain. It might seem as if they have temporarily lost access to their emotions and feelings. Metaphor and imagery is also helpful to clients with a preference to visualising situations. For them it seems to tap into a natural way of looking at things.

A metaphor involves understanding, or experiencing, one thing in terms of another. An example might be ‘I feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall’ or ‘I seem to be keeping the barbarians from breaking down the gates’. Metaphors are very common in everyday language and can be quite revealing in terms of how we feel about something. They tend to be used subconsciously and as a result can reveal new insights for us about the way we perceive things. There are many great books that expand in much length on the use of metaphor. In this article I focus on three practical examples of where I have worked with them with my executive coaching clients.

One client that I worked with in executive coaching was seen by his peers as cool, detached and as a result sometimes as lacking in empathy.  We spent a long time exploring this and analysing what he might be doing that made people feel this way. However my client was making little headway. Until in one discussion he described himself as putting on a mask as he went to work in order to appear professional and be respected.

When I asked him to describe the mask he expanded and said that he saw himself in a suit of armour with a sword and shield. We spent some time exploring the type of armour and where he held his shield (up or down). It was through this exploration that he reached an understanding of why this armour was important and how it may make him appear distant to his colleagues.

In another case I worked with an executive coaching client who lacked confidence in a certain type of meeting. Again we spent a lot of time discussing what caused these feelings of a lack of self-confidence. Initially I used a cognitive behavioural approach to looking at what my client was thinking and feeling and we looked at the evidence for this. This helped ‘unpack’ some deeply held beliefs and values, but didn’t seem to be useful to my client in overcoming the concerns.

Eventually I asked her when she was at her most confident and asked her to describe this as an image. The image she created was of a general on a large horse sitting on a sunny day and looking out over a huge plain where everything was in clear sight. We worked on this image and the way it made her feel as a way of accessing her most resourceful and confident self. It seemed by using this imagery before and during the meetings she was able to recreate feelings of confidence and calm. From here she was able to build her confidence and eventually overcame her problem.

In my final example, my executive coaching client was feeling at a bit of a loss about what he should be doing in the future. He described himself as feeling marooned in a calm sea and going nowhere. On this occasion I decided to experiment with creating an image from the future. I asked him if he would be happy to come to our next session with a picture or image that represented the future that he wanted. I didn’t ask him to create a current picture as I didn’t want him to get bogged down (metaphor!) in the present.

I was unsure how well this approach might work, but we both agreed it was a worthwhile experiment. At the next session he had created a picture that portrayed the future he desired. The process of generating the picture had acted to get around his rational side and access his more creative processes. As a result he was able to talk in some detail about the elements in the picture, the colours used and the total image in a very descriptive manner. This enabled him to get rid of his blockage and we were able to start working on how to achieve the future he wanted.

These examples describe the practical benefits of working with metaphor and imagery for three of my executive coaching clients. It’s important for the Executive Coach to be prepared to suggest this approach to clients, who in some cases may see it as a fairly alien idea. However I have found that in every case my executive coaching clients have been happy to give it a try. It doesn’t always create a dramatic shift in perspective, but it does always seem to enable my clients to obtain new insights on their thinking or feelings.

Tony Goddard

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