Introduction

      Leadership Metaphor Explorer is a compact tool for enabling creative, insightful conversations within and among groups of people about three topics:

      • the kinds of leadership they presently have or practice

      • the kinds of leadership they need in the future

      • how to develop the required forms of leadership, as individuals and as a group, organization, community, or society

      The tool itself is a deck of 83 cards, each with a different metaphor (in the form of a drawing and label) for how leadership can be enacted. Leadership Metaphor Explorer is playful as well as serious, and deepens dialogue in an engaging way. You can find a more detailed explanation of the ideas and the work underlying the tool in The Leader’s Edge (Palus & Horth, 2002).

      The Leadership Metaphor Explorer cards are available in digital form for use in slide shows, creative digital media, and other kinds of reports and presentations. To see the digital version, go to www.cclexplorer.org/metaphor.

What Is Leadership Metaphor Explorer?

      CCL finds it useful to define leadership in terms of its outcomes: direction, alignment, and commitment. Leadership happens among people with shared work, in the interactions that create direction, alignment, and commitment (McCauley, 2011).

      Each card represents a way of thinking about direction, alignment, and commitment in the context of leading organizations, teams, or other social groups. The cards are effective in helping people have conversations about the kinds of leadership they have and the kinds of leadership they need.

      Leadership Metaphor Explorer is a result of CCL research that studies the forms of leadership needed in an increasingly complex and interdependent world (McCauley et al., 2008; McGuire & Rhodes, 2009; Palus & Horth, 2002).

       IN-THE-MOMENT COACHING

      Our CCL colleague Clemson Turregano did an impromptu coaching session with his client, a CEO, with a set of Leadership Metaphor Explorer images Clemson had stored on his iPod Touch.

      I was showing Leadership Metaphor Explorer on my iPod to JB, the CEO of Big Co., India Division, while we were waiting in the lobby of a hotel. We did an impromptu one-on-one coaching session. I handed him the iPod and showed him how to browse the digital Leadership Metaphor Explorer. He said he liked the tool, and then I casually asked him, “Where are you now, as a company?”

      He chose the one labeled Ruthless Gang Bosses, laughed, and said, “Gang of idiots—that’s us.”

      We talked about that awhile, and then I asked him, “Where do you want to go?” JB said that the people who reported to him had a lot of autonomy and big egos, all of them had different agendas, and the team was all over the place in terms of what it wanted to accomplish. He wanted the team aligned and focused on one objective. He picked Squadron of Jet Fighters and talked about ways in which he and his team could all be flying together in sync.