Exploring the Power of Analogies in Behavior Change: How Metaphors Can Transform Learning

Have I lost my marbles? Or is analogy the best way for us to teach insights?

I am re-reading an excellent book, by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, entitled Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the fuel and fire of thought.  If you want to see the author describe the work better than I can, check out this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36OscZs3cCQ

For the most part, the book sets forth an explanation for how the brain works in terms of shifting between words, concepts, categories and analogies in order to argue that at the center of all thought lies analogy…metaphor. And the implication is that learning pretty much arises from our ability to do this…to take words, create categories and link to analogies.

For instance, when is a paperclip not a paperclip? When it's a trombone, as they describe it in French.

It led me to surmise that perhaps teaching, then, must link to and be driven by analogies as well.

I mean, in teaching, we are trying to pass along an insight --- a new piece of knowledge, a new perspective and drive changed behavior. But how do we actually get the person to embrace the insight? Do we tell them, “Do this”?

In some cases, perhaps.

But when you are working with executives, adults broadly, does telling really work? My experience is that it does not.

Or is the truth that the way we tell them matters?  Does a particular kind of telling need to happen?

Hofstadter and Sander’s book suggests to me that to the extent that telling happens, it ought to be figurative, illustrative telling --- steeped in analogy and metaphor. And those analogies ought to emerge not just in language but in activity, so that the brain, doing what it does best, can take insights, understand them deeply, and act on them.

This is why, in my facilitated workshops with senior leadership teams, I refrain from telling and focus more on discovery activities that allow for reflection what the outputs of the activities "mean" for the participants.

Of course, I may be wrong. In fact, I may have lost my marbles. Hmmm, there’s an analogy in there somewhere.