When explaining complex topics, metaphors are indispensable.
Understanding complex topics without metaphors is like learning a word in another language without a dictionary. It’s not impossible to find out what the word means by seeing it several times in context, but it’s much quicker to learn a word by knowing its equivalent in your own language.
Metaphors are a bridge
Metaphors are when you take a new concept and say it has equivalence in a familiar concept.
Let’s say you’re round your Mum’s house installing their new broadband (of course) and you want to explain how broadband is better than her dial-up she’s had for five years.
Grabbing the first equivalent that comes to mind, you explain that she’s been using a bicycle to get to places on the internet. Effective but very slow, and some places are just too far away.
Broadband is like driving a sports car on a highway. Fast, efficient, and you can get anywhere you want.
A nerdy grammar point for nerdy grammar people
Yes, English grammar taught you that there is a difference between ‘metaphors’ and ‘similes’.
In theory, metaphors say that something is something.
Whereas dial-up is a bicycle on the a country lane, broadband is the fast lane on a highway.
Similes use the word ‘like’.
Whereas dial-up is like a bicycle on a country lane, broadband is like the fast lane on a highway.
For our purposes, this is too specialist a description, it doesn’t make any discernable difference in spoken language. Helvetica and Verdana are different fonts, but you can still understand an article written in either. Only font nerds will notice.
NB I am both a grammar nerd and a font nerd. I am also a realist.
How to choose the right metaphor
If you can choose the right metaphor, it will allow people to access your concept much easier.
You really want to make sure your metaphor is one that is going to suit your purpose. You want a metaphor than clarifies rather than confuses, and, I would add, one that creates curiosity.
Because metaphors are so much a part of our thinking, many metaphors have been used again and again.
In fact, a particular topic often has the same metaphor used as a matter of course. Fresh metaphors are much better to keep people’s interest.
~ Think about who you are presenting to – what do you know about them?
~ What’s do you want them to be able and motivated to do after your presentation?
~ What aspects of your topic/sub-topic do you need to emphasise so that they are able to move closer to that goal?
~ Allow your mind to roam around, vaguely asking: What else in the world shares those qualities?
~ Choose something.
~ Experiment explaining your subject using the known something as a bridge – draw links (‘this in the technical topic is like this in the known image…’)
~ Evaluate. Does it make it easier to explain, easier to understand? If not, go through the process again.
Gold star metaphors
You get a gold star for your metaphor if
~ it allows your listeners to extrapolate other things about your topic
~ it doesn’t have unintended negative connotations
~ you’ve never heard anyone else using it.
Example of a good metaphor
A basic concept of systems theory is the feedback loop.
Qualities:
~ A flow coming in
~ A limit
~ A way of adjusting the flow so that it doesn’t exceed the limit
The way Dana Meadows, one of the original systems gurus, explains a basic feedback loop is it’s like filling a glass of water from the tap.
You turn on the tap. You watch the level. As it gets near the top, you slow the flow. When it is at the limit, you turn the tap off.
This is a lovely metaphor as you not only get the concept easily using an easily understandable image but you can make extrapolations from it.
For example, you can predict problems with systems from the metaphor.
~ If your system’s flow is very fast, you’ll find it difficult to stop the flow before it gets to the limit.
~ If you can’t see the glass, you won’t be able to adjust the flow accurately. Same with your system – if you can’t judge when the loop is reaching its limit, you won’t be able to adjust the flow.
~ If you are not able to adjust the flow accurately (maybe the tap is faulty), again, the system is likely to exceed its limits.
Good, right?
The only shame is that inside the systems theory community, it’s the standard metaphor. So if you’ve read about systems before, you’ll have heard it.
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Choosing a metaphor can make your concept immediately accessible to your listeners.
If you just want to use an image to briefly bring some spice into your talk, that’s one thing.
However, if you want to use a metaphor to base your presentation around, that’s another.
If your image is going to have any kind of extended exposure, you’ll need to think more carefully.
A bad metaphor can kill your presentation – either confusing your listeners, or turning them off with cliches.
A great metaphor can clarify understanding and, potentially, last a long time.
Choose well…