By Lynn Gaertner-Johnston
Founder,
Syntax Training
Imagine this scene: You are reading a fairy
tale to a spellbound preschooler.
Suddenly her
face wrinkles and she asks, “What
does betray mean?” What will you say? “To
be disloyal to”? “To deceive”?
Neither of these definitions would be any clearer
to her than the word in question.
Finding myself in
this tricky situation with my daughter, I responded
with an analogy: “If you told me a very important
secret, and I promised not to tell anyone, and then
you heard me telling it to someone and laughing,
you would feel betrayed.” The analogy worked.
With satisfaction, she repeated it back to me as
though it had been her own. Now she understood what
had happened to the fairy tale character.
It’s
the power of making connections. When
definitions don’t clearly define, when abstract
concepts fall with a thud, analogies—similarities
from which we can draw comparisons—can clear
things up and help ideas fly.
Recently I was asked
to write an article for an organization of which
I’m a member. I had to write 
about how we had
not grown—and perhaps had shrunk—even
though months earlier we had spent a lot of time
and effort on a strategic plan for organizational
growth. I was to write about essential next steps.
It was a sensitive subject, and I was concerned about
not offending anyone. The solution? An analogy. I
compared the situation in our organization with my
landscaping situation at home: I had spent a lot
of time and money on a landscape design, but right
now, well into implementing the plan, things looked
worse, and I was overwhelmed with how much had to
be done.
Because I was able
to tie the organization’s current circumstances
to my own, and because tearing up a yard was something
familiar to my readers, the tough concepts in the
article were more palatable. Members thanked me for
helping them put our situation in perspective. The
analogy worked.
Analogies
can also make training concepts come alive. Here
are two examples:
-
In a class on performance appraisal.
To reinforce that supervisors should collect
data throughout the performance period rather
than focusing on one recent example of behavior,
use this analogy: “If
you could take snapshots throughout the year in
every season—or shoot a video of just one
event during the year—which would
more accurately capture the period?”
-
In a workshop on how to welcome and orient
new employees. To convey the
reason for spending time and energy on
orientation, this analogy works: “You are dreaming that
you are running in a race. In the dream you don’t
know the course, you have no idea where
the finish is, you have not trained for
the event, and everyone is speeding past
you. Is this a good dream or a bad dream?
How is this dream like the reality of
new employees?”
Here are tips for using analogies well:
- Choose analogies that are familiar to
your audience. My landscaping analogy
would have fallen short for a group of apartment
dwellers or people who are homeless.
- Use an analogy as a springboard. Once
it has launched a connection, refer
to the analogy only sparingly or to
summarize. In the analogy about taking
performance “snapshots,” further
comparisons to cameras, photography,
etc., would be distracting.
- Use analogies from your personal experience. Then
if a class participant or a correspondent
takes the analogy further, you can
stay with the discussion.
- Keep
analogies short. It
takes no more than 30 seconds to read
the analogy that begins this article.
If it were any longer, it might have
lost you.
Analogies
are powerful tools in business writing and training. They
make it easier for listeners to hear hard truths
and for readers to grasp abstractions. They help
shape theory into practice. They can make real
learning happen.
