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Geological metaphors for Coaching topics
Just like a picture tells a thousand words, a metaphor is a powerful figure of speech for analogous situations.
Metaphors often come up in coaching and mentoring conversations. It accelerates learning and possibly gives new direction.
With my background in Geoscience, I often come up with Geo-metaphors. For example, an awesome process can be described as going from graphite to diamond!
If you like cooking (yes, I like cooking too), an analogy for the carbon transformation from graphite to diamond could be: if someone is whipping up a puddle of egg white and turning it into a beautiful meringue...et voila, there is your metaphor... The beauty is they mean something different to everyone.
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Here are some geo-pics of situations that could be used as a metaphor:
Prioritising: How do you pick your rocks and pebbles to fill your jar?
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Ventifact wind erosion
Getting into the state of FLOW
Pahoehoe Lava flow (in flow)
Twisting and turning to please everyone?
Pahoehoe Lava flow (cooled down)
What is your perspective? What lens are you looking through?
Sand ripples
CLIMATE workshops
Facilitations for Business Leaders
A customised session tailored to your needs
Facilitating workshops around climate strategies using a scientifically calibrated simulator. Evaluate the impact of your decisions or decisions of others will have on the climate and your business. Support teams with strategic discussions and decision making with sustainable developments and energy transition in mind.
Climate change for teams and students
A 45 min session to explore what 2100 could look like
An interactive session where you get to create your own climate forecast using an interactive climate simulator created by MIT and climate Interactive.
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Build scenarios to test your thinking and deepen your understanding of how the system works. Systems Thinking is explained here.
SystemS ThInking
Systems Thinking can be applied to just about anything. As opposed to the traditional analytical and linear thinking approach, the context is capturing cyclical nature of our world.
Take the metaphor of the elephant and the blind men for example:
In this story, each individual thinks they are dealing with a wall, rope, hose, and a tree.
Yet, if they had considered their observations in the context of a system, they would have figured out out how the different parts connect within one system, what the relationships are between the different parts, what kind of causal relationships they have (for example, if the elephant drinks water, what happens to the water in the system?). You could also investigate what mental models and beliefs the persons have in relation to what they observe and study the system over time to figure out what they are dealing with.
The parable of the blind men and an elephant
A story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tail.
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So if you apply the principle that everything is a system, be it a product, the climate, or the elephant; to understand and improve the system you have to figure out the context and the dynamics. If you can't see the full system, you create models to put it together, hence the climate interactive models used in the climate change facilitation.