This month MF's Founder, resident bookworm and published author - Phil Hayes - reviews Lyssa deHart's transformative read for coaches and therapists at any level, illustrating the vital role of metaphors in coaching.
What is the book called?
‘Light Up – The Science of Coaching with Metaphors’ by Lyssa deHart.
The title is a partially accurate description of what the book is about. The first part is where the real juice is – lots of researched evidence-based insight into the benefits of using metaphor as a primary coaching tool. The second half of the book is more general commentary on broader coaching practice with the topic of metaphor referred to more in passing.
Why is reading this important for organisations and for individuals?
As you might expect from a book aimed at coaches, this is aimed primarily at the individual coach. It offers a good depth of knowledge into why working heavily with metaphor in coaching is powerful and effective. It provides essential background knowledge to back up what we at MF have been practising and teaching around metaphor for years.
What are the key learnings to take away from this book?
There are lots of genuinely interesting insights into what happens inside the brain when coaching employs metaphor. For example:
- Working with metaphor is a dual brain hemisphere activity.
- Most metaphors are visual – as in fact is the brain.
- The brain is primarily geared to survival.
- Any activity that reduces a sense of threat is beneficial to coaching, and this is one of the key functions of metaphor in coaching.
- Metaphor is the bridge between mental imagery and language.
- There are numerous categories of metaphor, including ‘dead’ or ‘frozen’ metaphors – metaphors that have fallen into such common usage as to become impersonal.
- All cultures use metaphor.
- People tend only to remember what they are expected to remember – clients often forget metaphors they use unless the coach remembers them on their behalf.
- A key function of metaphor is to make complexity easier to understand.
- Neurons are not confined to the brain – both the heart and the gut have significant and important neurological functions.
- Metaphor allows visualisation and feeling to work together.
- The abstract nature of metaphor contributes hugely to allowing the client to work in psychological safety.
- Language creates thought, not vice-versa.
- The structure of a language affects cognition and behaviour – language shapes our reality.
- Metaphor work enhances cross-cultural coaching.
- Metaphor work encourages playfulness and humour, which reduces stress hormones and enhances creativity.
Why should I read this book?
Coaching can be said to be a combination of skill, mindset, structure, and process. Underpinning this is background knowledge. As individual coaches it is important to understand the scientific basis for the approaches we take. When we teach coaching to others, as we do at MF, it is important that we understand what underpins the approaches we encourage. This book points us to ample solid background research that underpins the way we teach the use of metaphor in coaching.
And Finally...
The first part of this book is an excellent primer on the science of coaching with metaphor. Later, though, the book devotes substantial amounts of space to more general coaching topics, such as working with the body, coaching cross-culturally, supervision and self-care. These are all important topics to be sure, but the central topic, the science of metaphor, becomes diluted in the later chapters. Against this there are some interesting transcripts of actual coaching sessions where the author illustrates how she uses metaphor. I am pleased to say that these passages showed me that at MF we are probably at least as strong as the author in what we practice when we coach with metaphor!
A metaphor for the book?
How about... ‘An initially exhilarating mountain hike, in bright sunshine, revealing new vistas and delighting the mind – until the cloud begins to come down, the ground levels off, and it becomes a bit of a trudge to get to the end.’
