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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.

What Does Leadership Metaphor Explorer Do?

Leadership Metaphor Explorer helps people think more clearly, collaboratively, and strategically about leadership, which creates the potential for people to take more effective actions in response to complex challenges. The tool draws attention to any or all of four levels of leadership, all of which are necessary for developing more interdependent forms of leadership (Palus, McGuire, & Ernst, 2011):

• society

• organization

• group

• individual

In particular, Leadership Metaphor Explorer helps people understand the leadership culture in which they live and work. The leadership culture of any collective is the constellation of deeply held beliefs and related practices that shape direction, alignment, and commitment (Drath, Palus, & McGuire, 2010).

In a business context, Leadership Metaphor Explorer helps an organization address important questions about its business strategy and its leadership strategy (McGuire & Rhodes, 2009; Pasmore & Lafferty, 2009):

• How well do the organization’s current leadership culture and subcultures support our business strategy?

• How can we adapt or transform the organization’s leadership culture to support its business strategy and meet the challenges it faces? What are the broader social contexts and scenarios that demand consideration?

• What is the organization’s leadership strategy for enabling its business strategy?

• How does my own individual approach to leadership align with the organization’s leadership strategy? How might I adapt my approach for a better fit?

Further, Leadership Metaphor Explorer helps people think about the following:

• their own actions and beliefs about being leaders and the available alternatives

• options for facing and resolving complex challenges

• leading a group by defining how it wants to accomplish its work

• leadership cultures and subcultures within organizations

• leadership for community engagement and social change

• leadership for spanning group, organizational, and cultural boundaries

• leadership strategy for long-term success

• the kind of leadership needed to meet their organization’s current and future mission and vision, and how to develop strategies for meeting the challenges that making those changes will bring

• how to develop more effective leaders and more effective leadership

• leadership as the social processes from which emerge shared direction, alignment, and commitment

• leadership outcomes at the levels of society, organization, group, and individual

• the types of leadership culture as revealed in CCL’s extensive work with organizations, groups, and individual leaders: dependent, independent, and interdependent (also seen as developmental stages for transforming organizations)

• how to generate more open and honest conversation about leadership in their organizations or communities