From the language fold: metaphors as bridges, and blurry lines around the shape of ‘me’

Let’s invite each other into our messes!

I’ve lived with language as an important influence on my experiences throughout my life. I wrote about my first experiences with being an “in-betweener” when I came to the US from Germany as an exchange student when I was 16. I shared a bit about the role language has played in developing my own lens on the world. And how it influences my interactions and communications, as well as my understanding and interpretations of things.

I believe that our experience with language affects the way we make meaning of the world, the way we interpret meaning for our world, and how we communicate meaning to the world. Language can also be a barrier and a tool for how we make meaning with others in the world.

Shared language and legibility

Since I began working as an independent consultant / collaborator / researcher this lens has become especially relevant. I am in this continuous struggle with describing “what I do,” and I almost always resort to some sort of combination of words with lots of asterisks, commas, and parentheses. I am still not sure what to call my “work persona” and how to describe “what I do for work.” I’m quite happy living in this nebulous space, but those who may want to collaborate with me or explore potential opportunities may not be.

Of course, clear, concise language is valuable in describing what we do, how, and why. And I think that is true for many professions, including my peers in design, research, strategy, and innovation work. It may be especially relevant for those of us who are venturing out of spaces where that work is understood through a shared language into places where the work might be valued, but the language, framing, and context of the work are different. This has been my experience over the past year or so as I shift away from the world of the private sector and technology and towards civic work, work in the public realm, the world of non-profits, community organizations, and even policy.

Blurry lines: the shape of ‘me’

Part of communication is finding ways to share our personal context, our experiences, and our skills in ways that others can connect to. We often use stories, catchphrases, and even taglines and specific words to help us create an entry point.

The idea that simpler, more concise language and less slang are generally better seems obvious, but there is a flip side to this as well. A question by Danny Spitzberg and Humphrey Obuobi in their recent post and podcast “why design research is stuck,” made me reflect on my own balancing act between putting enough shape around what it is I do and leaving space for personal and shared interpretation.

One of the things Danny and Humphrey talk about is the adoption of catchphrases and tag lines meant to simplify complex meaning. They use the example of “design with, not for” which triggered some self-reflection for me, as it is a phrase I use as a guiding principle in my own work. They point out the risk of stopping at the simplified tagline without a recognition or exploration of the underlying context and meaning. They point out that high-level catchphrases and slogans are necessary and helpful but can also hold us back.

Progress as a community of practice comes from diving into the nuance and context of what we actually mean when we talk about what we do, how, and why. When we stop talking about these things together, we lose historical context, shared understanding, and opportunities for learning and evolution. But I think the same goes for our individual practices. It is equally important to have guardrails around how we envision, reflect on, and imagine our “work” without losing the important nuance and our own principles and standards. How we communicate this through language is a big part of it.

So especially outside my safe bubble of shared language, I often wonder: how much shape do I really need to put around my “work self” for other people to be able to discern it? Yet, how do I avoid drawing the outline so thick that I won’t ever be able to break out of it? How do I avoid creating an image that is too high-fidelity for people to connect to the complexity that is a full person? And how do I make myself legible yet keep the lines blurry enough for me to continue to evolve and grow, as well as provide a space for shaping the work together and allowing opportunities to emerge?

Metaphors as a bridge

Metaphors create a world around an idea that is rich in context and story, but also vague and abstract enough to let others create their own picture of it. And they can be useful when trying to communicate new ways of thinking or doing things.

I’ve found that to be true throughout different roles and work experiences. In the past, we talked about cooking and appetite when establishing a new research practice (where you need recipes and cookbooks). We later used gardening as a metaphor for planting seeds of change and nurturing the right environment (culture) for things to grow, and similarly, I’ve used the metaphor of an Inn-keeper as a way to think about my role in larger organizations aiming to nurture a culture of learning. And a lot of this was intentional to counter the prevalent language of war that we found everywhere in corporate environments (war room, rally the troops, capture market share, defend positions, target markets etc).

Language matters, and using the language of war vs the language of gardening changes how we conceptualize the work together. But, the metaphor also influences how I am able to reflect on and internalize something and share it back with the world. When I think of planting seeds, tilling the ground, and nurturing an environment to enable things to grow, my focus, actions, and relationships are going to take a different form. And, I would argue, a more productive form.

Metaphors act as a membrane between what I’m thinking and what I am communicating, and vice versa. Metaphors bridge the gap between my deeper contextual understanding of something and the need to communicate it clearly and engagingly. When I can imagine a visual story around an abstract concept, it helps me bridge the chasm between “simple, snappy phrases and taglines” and my own internal “rich, contextual understanding.”.

Metaphors are both a reflective tool AND a communication tool. Metaphors help simplify the complex and connect the worlds of implied context and spoken language.

What’s interesting is that metaphors seem to layer on top of each other, enriching our understanding of a concept through addition. As I’ve gone through different experiences, new metaphors get added and adopted. Every time, my understanding deepens and my field of vision expands. This article by Benjamin Santos Genta in Aeon supports that:

Metaphors thus seem to provide the foundation of how we conceptualize abstract concepts (and, therefore, much of the world). A single metaphor, though, only partly structures complex concepts – typically, more are used. Any speaker knows that the language we use matters, and that there is a complex feedback between the language we speak and the thoughts we think. Empirical studies support this intuition: having different conceptual metaphors in mind, people will tend to make different decisions in the same context (a reasonable indicator that they harbour different concepts).

Inviting each other into our messes

So metaphors are a tool for me—for my reflection, understanding, and exploration. They also help us communicate complex concepts and philosophies to each other. But most importantly, they can offer a bridge into each other’s worlds; they enable us to invite each other into our personal contexts.

At the beginning of this post, I shared some questions I’ve been wrestling with:

How much shape do I need to put around my “work self” for other people to be able to discern it? How do I avoid drawing the outline so thick that I wont ever be able to break out of it? How do I avoid creating an image that is too high-fidelity for people to connect to the complexity that is a full person? And how do I make myself legible, yet keep the lines blurry enough for me to continue to evolve and grow as well as providing a space for shaping the work together and allow opportunities to emerge?

A friend once talked about “inviting each other into our messes,” and I think that is a beautiful summary of what I mean here. So how do we then bring each other into this complex space of understanding and context? How do we invite each other into our messes?

Over the past few years, in different roles and different work contexts, the focus has been on creating shared-learning spaces and nurturing trust-based relationships as the foundation for building shared understanding at this deeper level.

I have seen how humility at the individual level is needed to enable each of us to reflect and admit to ourselves that we are always learning and that it’s ok if we don’t have the perfect phrase for what we are trying to say just yet. Vulnerability is another critical aspect of this, as we need to open ourselves up to others, to share in progress work and thoughts, and to invite each other into our context-rich yet messy in-progress spaces.

I believe that metaphors can help us bridge the language gap to create an engaging, relatable, and legible frame for others to enter this space with us.

This is how we create a container that allows us to build a fuller, more contextual understanding of each other's skills, passions, goals, and opportunities together. The relationship creates a loose boundary—an overlapping opportunity space for thinking and learning together.

So, over the years, my own language continues to evolve, and with that, the shape around my “work persona." Using metaphors, and especially layering multiple metaphors, has helped me widen my frame, and it has helped me invite others into my mess.

The cooking, gardening, and inn-keeping metaphors all connect and layer on top of each other to create an even richer image. An innkeeper or good host considers and integrates all aspects required for holding space, enabling connections (of people and ideas), and conversation. When thinking about the role of the Inn-keeper, maybe metaphors are the way we create the right “vibe” or ambiance that enables connection and can help us explore new ideas and knowledge. The right “vibe’ can also help us feel inspired and motivated to act together. This is what I mean when I talk about a shared-learning space, or “shared messes.”

I don’t think this kind of overlapping opportunity space can exist when it is only based on snappy language on a website, a clever LinkedIn post, or a catchy phrase in a proposal. I find the messy and context-rich spaces much more interesting and fruitful for finding mutually beneficial opportunities in our work and beyond. And for me, metaphors have been an entry point and a tool to open up those shared spaces and explore them together.

For now, blurry-lined and messy.

Lena