Feeling Stuck? How a Simple Metaphor Can Overcome Leadership Challenges.

Have you ever used metaphors to describe how you feel? Did you find it helpful?

A while ago, one of my executive clients struggled to understand what was blocking her.

For a start, she'd only been in her role for a short period. She'd been promoted internally and was renegotiating her relationships with her former colleagues.

Consequently, her inner voice was not as helpful as it could be. She described her inner conversation with herself a bit like this:

"OK, you've got the job. That means you need to know everything and hit the ground running. You've worked here a long time – and now you need to get some quick wins so people will accept that your appointment was the right call by the Board."

Ever heard your own inner voice say something similar? Yup - me too.

Once my client could articulate all that to me, we could see how irrational those thoughts were and how unreasonable it would be to expect herself to achieve so much so soon.

I asked her to describe what her 'stuckness' was like. After a few minutes of silence, she described facing a wall of bricks – and the most challenging part was not being able to see what was on the other side, so she couldn't work out where to start first. The wall was blocking her progress, and she couldn't find a place to tackle her first big project as a senior executive.

Scary to admit – and seriously undermining.

After a few questions, we uncovered what the wall looked like, what the bricks were made of, how they were being held together, and that she might be able to see through the wall if she knocked out a single brick at eye level.

The conversation about tasks to work on flowed quickly from then on – and I could see the sense of relief, composure and clarity on her face.

At the end of our session, she returned to her office and created a drawing of a brick wall on her whiteboard. From there, she would write down all the significant tasks she wanted to knock over in her first 100 days and gradually erase the bricks as she achieved each one.

The visual helped my client feel a sense of control and agency about what she was achieving weekly, day by day, and a sense of connection with her new job.

A few days later, my client sent me a photograph of her 'bricks'. In our subsequent coaching session, she told me about her achievements and erased quite a few bricks. The other bricks were larger works in progress, which felt perfectly OK.

Sometimes, using an analogy can be the most helpful way to articulate what frustrates us or causes us grief.

If you're feeling stuck right now, try visualizing, listening, or feeling what this is most like – and see where that takes you. As the British Psychological Society says, “Metaphors typically act as a bridge between a source, which is concrete, and a target, which is more abstract or is less familiar.”

Since metaphors arise uniquely in the coaching conversation, I can’t offer a single method or top tips for choosing the best ones. However, metaphors can help us as leaders make sense of what’s occurring.

Like my former client, you might be surprised at how easily this technique can unlock your thoughts and help you move to your next step.

Lead well until next time.