Research demonstrates that what you wear gives your subconscious messages that affect how you behave.  So, are you the metaphor you wear?

Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management professor Adam Galinsky teaches ethics and decision in management. He and Hajo Adams conducted a study of the effects of wearing lab coats on people’s attention spans.  Pretests showed the participants associated the lab coats with attentiveness and carefulness, presumably because they identified them with doctors or scientists and what the participants considered to be their professional characteristics. When the coat was identified as a lab coat, participants wearing them had increased attention spans. When told the coats were painters’ smocks, participants demonstrated no difference in attention spans. Galinsky further mused, “Does wearing the robe of a priest or judge make people more ethical? Does putting on an expensive suit make people feel more powerful? Does putting on the uniform of a firefighter or police officer make people act more courageously?”

The quesitons rasied are endless. I wonder, how do suits affect professionals behavior in business, and what happens on “casual Fridays”?  Ladies, do you feel more feminine in a pair of heels? What effect does it have in a professional setting? Does wearing school uniforms change students behavior? Many educators claim they see fewer discipline issues after their schools adopt uniforms.

In each example, the clothes themselves have become a metaphor for the ideal performance of a job. They suggest the person has the attributes we associate with the job well done, be it a particular set of skills, an attitude of professionalism, caring, courage, wisdom, whatever. We expect there to be something more than just another human being under the uniform, and it seems, the clothes can serve as prompts, signaling us to deliver something more ourselves.

And what about the other side of the coin? Don’t people in uniform sometimes abuse their power, be they military, police, judges or what have you?  While being reminded that you belong to a particular group can inspire better behavior, it can also give one a distorting sense of power and entitlement or encourage a herd mentality.

I welcome your comments on other examples that come to mind–for good or for ill– of clothes that make the man–or woman or child. And tell us, what is it that you wear that brings out the best in you?

 

With Symbolic Modeling, are you attempting to change client’s cognitions through metaphor rather than focusing on accepting cognitions and changing behaviors, as we do in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)? I got the feeling that the change in metaphors was about playing around with behavior, not cognition, but if that’s not the case, I am a little skeptical.   -T. Morrel, psychologist, Baltimore, MD

Let me start by clarifying that it would be inaccurate to say I, as a facilitator, have the intention to change anything.  My role is to help the client gain access to his inner world through metaphor, and offer questions that heighten his awareness of the images/symbols there and identify what he wants to have–or not have–happen. To discover his own blocks, own patterns, own system. I ’hold’ what emerges for the client, direct attention and invite responses.

As we are all systems, I don’t believe you can effect change in a behavior without effecting cognitions and feelings, and visa versa. Who’s to say which comes first? The beauty of the Symbolic Modeling approach is you, as the therapist, don’t have to decide or to know which is the most effective way to help an individual change; you can honor the client’s system’s own knowing–believing the mind/body knows, on some subconscious level, perhaps– what is the best way to heal, in what order, at what pace. It is a process that is client-centered, deeply respectful, and very empowering.

I invite you to come train with a curious, open mind, and see what you discover. There is nothing that says you can’t combine this with other ways of working. There is much here to use, even if you choose to meld it with another technique. You will learn to listen precisely, use a client’s exact words, notice things about a client’s words that may well have passed unnoticed, and work with the problem/remedy/outcome model…for starters.  I am confident you will be excited about this. I have yet to train a mental health professional who was not eager to apply these new skills and ways of thinking.

I’m a business and leadership coach. Can you give me an example of how using metaphors might help my clients?  H.W.    

Many business and life coaches use Clean Language and Symbolic Modeling to help their clients get clear on what they want and need, to explore consequences of possible actions, to work on personal issues that are impacting their work, to enhance their leadership skills, to plan for the future, and more!

To give you an example, I recently had a client who runs a business. He wants to have his employees work together as an effective team, but two employees aren’t communicating.  Using metaphors and Clean Language questions, I facilitate his exploration of the situation. The client first discovers “knots around his middle”. Such in-the-body metaphors can pop up unexpectedly; what does this have to do with the employees?  More on that later.

My client’s next metaphor is that, as a leader, he is like a coach of a sports team, sharing values and goals with the team members. But further exploration reveals a fundamental problem: a sports coach is an expert in the sport. But this business man is not an expert in marketing or sales or human resources, etc.  He realizes this is the crux of his dilemma: how can he make decisions when he doesn’t have the expertise?

So I ask, “What kind of coach is a coach with an effective team when he’s not an expert?” Client’s answer: a film director.  A director has the overall vision and determines the direction ‘team members’ will take, but he’s not an expert in acting, lighting, sound, set design, etc.  Still, he makes the decisions, and he is free to be creative.  It turns out that creativity is an important part of this client’s vision, and one he hadn’t considered before the session. And this is not unusual—discovering a new dimension that linear, logical analysis might never have uncovered.

And so, after one session, my client has an empowering metaphor for his role in building an effective team.  And the knots? The client sees them as limiting creativity and possibilities, tied up as he was by his belief that he had to let the experts decide what to do in their respective areas.  But insight alone as to what they might be about is not enough, in this case, to remove the knots. The client senses they serve a purpose, too. More to explore in another session…

Do you have a question? Whether you’re new to Symbolic Modeling and Clean Language, or use them in your work and are wondering what you might do with a client when….Ask  gina@miningyourmetaphors.com.

I am intrigued by memory, how it is stored and how it is accessed, and what metaphors have to do with it all, so I was fascinated to attend a dual lecture given by researcher Mike McCloskey from the Cognitive Science Department at Johns Hopkins University and artist and mother Margaret Kennard Johnson in conjunction with an exhibit at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore featuring the recovery artwork of Lonni Sue Johnson.  A successful illustrator before an attack of encephalitis in 2007 left her with severe temporal lobe and frontal cortex damage, she had produced delightfully whimsical and often insightful drawings, brimming with visual puns and clever conceptual conceits.

Lonni’s illness has basically destroyed her working memory. She remembers her mother, her sister, a few old friends, and little else. She can retain new information for no more than a matter of seconds.  While she can read words, she quickly loses the context, and trying to follow ideas from one sentence to the next is futile. Yet she can read music, and still remembers how to play the viola. Surprisingly, her language is intact. Her personality and her sense of humor are the same, though she remembers very little about her own history.  I watched a fascinating video of a conversation with her, when, given the slightest of prompts about 9/11, she was able to retrieve some details about the event: that it was about a big building in NYC, that it was sad, that there was an explosion, a declaration of war.

As tragic as brain damage is for a victim, for brain researchers, it offers a special opportunity to study how the brain works.  Her story raises fascinating questions about the nature of mind and memory.  About what is lost and what might only be consciously inaccessible. About what is knowledge and what is a skill. About just what one’s personality is; is it or isn’t it dependent on the memories that we imagine helped shape it? To what degree is the subconscious intact and functioning when the physical and conscious mind is damaged?  And what role might word-making and art-making have in neuroplasticity, in laying new neural pathways in the brain to areas we may not suspect capable of playing a role in a particular ability to compensate for ones lost?

The Walters exhibit shows the many stages of Lonni Sue’s drawings over the last three years, incorporating her obsession with word puzzles, theoretically an instinctive urge to heal using what skills she has retained and the power of images on paper to extend the time she can hold onto an idea that would otherwise slip away like water through her hands. Representational art-making is always metaphor-making (“It’s like this in my perception”), and to make art is to tap into the storehouse of metaphors in the brain. I was left pondering what further role her metaphors may play in Lonni Sue’s healing.

You can read more about Lonni Sue Johnson, an Artist’s Journey through Amnesia, on her website.

What it is about her story that peaks your curiosity?

At our last summer hurrah at the beach, our family was playing horseshoes, and it got me thinking.  In horseshoes, close just may be good enough. But, as a coach, counselor or therapist, when you use Clean Language and asking questions about your clients’ statements, you have to use their exact words.

Why isn’t close-but-not-exact good enough?

Try this. Take a piece of paper, and list the numbers 1-10. Consider the word ‘green.’ Write down the first ten things that come to mind related to ‘green.’  Then, without sharing your answers, ask a few other people to do the same. Now, compare lists.

Chances are you may have several words that are the same and then a few more that are only on your list but it’s logical to everyone why they made your list.  And then perhaps there are one or two words that leave your friends scratching their heads: why would that have anything to do with ‘green?  Maybe the word ‘grandmother’ because green was your grandmother’s favorite color, or ‘icing’ because someone once made you a funny birthday cake with green icing. The association is unique to you.

And that’s why close is not good enough when you’re repeating your clients’ words. Because every word, consciously or subconsciously, has its own resonance and associations for the speaker. Change it, and you lose the information that word ‘contains’….and you suggest to your client you didn’t really hear him/her.

Share your story here on the blog of a unique association you have with a word or respond to someone else’s word-story with your association.

And the next time someone uses the word “green”, you might want to use a Clean Language question, and ask, “Is there anything else about green?”