June 11, 2025
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In "Leading Through the Fog", we are capturing what many of us feel when the workplace shifts beneath our feet—uncertainty, silence, and the quiet fear of what’s next. It’s easy to check out. Harder to stay connected.
But connection is exactly what teams need to steady themselves.
This first exercise kicks off a series designed to help you do just that: create space for honesty, rebuild trust, and find small wins—together—even when the future is unclear.
In moments of uncertainty or stress, people often struggle to articulate how they feel. Language breaks down. Emotions stay bottled—or worse, leak out in passive-aggressive behavior, disengagement, or silence.
This exercise uses metaphor and art as a safe, creative way for people to express the atmosphere they’re experiencing in the team or organization. It invites emotion without drama, insight without blame, and humor without detachment.
Done well, it builds alignment, safety, shared language, and a sense of being seen. That’s what teams need most when everything else feels out of control.
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1. Set the Frame
Introduce it like this:
“Today we’ll check in using metaphors—images, symbols, or scenes that capture how work feels right now. You might choose something from a book, a film, a piece of music or art, or just a random picture that comes to mind. It doesn’t have to be clever or perfect. Just something that expresses your experience.”
Why this matters:
Many people have never been asked to reflect this way at work. Giving permission—and range—helps them feel safe to try.
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2. Model It Yourself
Always start with your own metaphor. This is key.
Example:
“Last week, I felt like I was living in Catch Me If You Can. I was trying to move work forward across different teams, and it felt like everyone was vanishing or dodging me just when we needed to align. It was stressful, but also kind of absurd—and I noticed I had to laugh to stay sane.”
Why this matters:
People often don’t know what “metaphor” means in practice. Your example grounds it. Sharing a real, funny, or even vulnerable image sends a powerful message:
“You’re safe here. We don’t have to pretend.”
This also taps humor—one of the most effective ways to break tension and build connection, especially under pressure.
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3. Invite the Team to Share
Each person offers a metaphor. No judgment, no interpretation. Just sharing. It might be:
• A jungle full of animal clans, each fighting for survival
• A ship with no rudder, drifting
• A well-directed movie where no one has the script
• A campfire—warm but shrinking
• A dance routine with one dancer out of sync
Why this matters:
These metaphors help people externalize their feelings. When emotions get externalized safely, they lose their charge. The person still feels them, but they’re not owned by them.
It’s powerful because it helps people speak honestly without getting overwhelmed. That’s exactly what’s needed in chaotic environments—expression without collapse.
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4. Reflect as a Group
After everyone shares, ask:
“What do you notice about what’s been said?”
“Are there any common themes or surprises?”
“What does this tell us about where we are as a team?”
Why this matters:
This shifts the exercise from individual release to collective awareness. Teams begin to recognize patterns—either alignment (“we’re all feeling stuck”) or divergence (“wow, some of us feel calm, others frantic”). That creates empathy, clarity, and often a starting point for meaningful change.
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5. Let the Metaphors Live On
Encourage the team to reuse these metaphors as shorthand in future conversations.
“Sounds like another jungle-move.”
“We’re heading into Catch Me If You Can territory again.”
Why this matters:
Shared metaphors become shared language. That’s culture-building. In volatile times, having even one phrase everyone understands and smiles at can become a lifeline.
This is not just a fun or creative activity. It is a carefully designed psychological intervention—simple on the surface, but operating on multiple levels of the individual and collective psyche.
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1. Why Metaphor? The Brain’s Native Language
From a neuropsychological perspective, metaphor is how we process complexity. The human brain evolved to think in images, patterns, and stories long before we had formal language or linear logic. When a person says,
“It feels like we’re a herd of deer in headlights,”
they are accessing a symbolic truth that may bypass their conscious cognition, but land precisely in their emotional and somatic reality.
This is why metaphor allows access to truths that can’t be reached through typical analytical conversation. It activates the right hemisphere, the seat of imagery, emotion, and systems awareness—balancing the often overused rational mind.
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2. Psychological Safety Through Indirect Expression
In high-stakes or high-stress environments, speaking openly about one’s inner state can feel risky. Vulnerability is rarely rewarded in corporate culture.
This exercise protects the speaker with a layer of abstraction. Instead of saying “I feel ignored and useless,” someone might say:
“I feel like a violinist in an orchestra with no conductor.”
That image communicates deep frustration and invisibility—but without directly naming conflict or weakness. This creates what psychologist D.W. Winnicott would call a “transitional space”—a place where real emotions can be played with, explored, and witnessed without triggering shame or defense.
This is critical in systems where trust has been eroded. Metaphor allows truth-telling without fear.
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3. Emotional Regulation and the Power of Symbolic Distance
In emotionally charged environments, people tend to do one of two things:
• Suppress emotion (leading to burnout, disconnection, and health problems)
• Discharge emotion through complaint, blame, or conflict
Both are reactive. Both bypass integration.
This exercise does something different. By translating emotion into a symbol—a book, a scene, a dance—the speaker externalizes their feeling while keeping just enough distance to avoid overwhelm.
This is known in psychodynamic theory as symbolic processing: the ability to represent an emotion rather than act it out. When we say “It feels like we’re trapped in a maze with no exit,” we allow ourselves to feel trapped without becoming trapped. That is emotional mastery.
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4. Group Coherence Through Shared Narrative
When a team hears each other’s metaphors, something powerful happens:
The invisible emotional field becomes visible.
This is what systems theorists refer to as “the voice of the system” emerging. People start to recognize:
• Patterns (“Wow, many of us feel lost or reactive.”)
• Divergences (“You feel hopeful—I hadn’t seen that before.”)
• Shared language (“This really is a jungle.”)
This creates what Bion called “container function”: the group becomes a container that can hold, metabolize, and reflect emotional reality. That is the essence of psychological safety—not avoiding difficult emotions, but being able to hold them together.
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5. Laughter as a Regulator of Shame and Fear
When the exercise elicits humor—as in your Catch Me If You Can example—it performs another vital psychological function: it regulates shame.
Laughter, in this context, is not about avoidance. It is about co-regulation. It signals:
“You’re not alone. This is hard. And we can still be playful humans in the middle of it.”
This releases oxytocin and down-regulates cortisol, allowing people to re-engage from a grounded place. It’s not trivial. It’s somatic resilience in action.
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6. Ongoing Metaphors as Cultural Anchors
When metaphors from the session become part of the team’s language—“It’s another ‘jungle moment’”—they create anchors. These anchors are small stabilizers in an unstable system.
From a psychocultural standpoint, this is the beginning of ritual—a shared symbolic practice that helps a group navigate chaos without losing identity. That’s not just cute. That’s evolutionary.
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In Summary
This exercise, when done with presence and care, allows:
• Emotional honesty without risk
• Connection without confrontation
• Insight without intellectualization
• Resilience without denial
In a time where people often feel helpless, cynical, or cut off from meaning, metaphor reconnects them to the story of their experience—and to each other.
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If this resonates and you’d like support, I offer team workshops, personal coaching, and organizational consulting to help navigate uncertainty, build trust, and foster resilience.Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or book an intro call — happy to explore what could help in your context.
