I use a lot of analogies when I’m explaining things, painting pictures with words that everyone can understand, and providing common ground. With everyone in mind, I have been hard at work trying to demascunilise and generalise my analogies. It’s on this journey that I found a common analogy that is far more divisive than I realised, lets dig into sports analogies.
As always a Chat GPT version is at the bottom.
The power of analogies. Before we even get into sports analogies, we need to know what an analogy is and why it has power. the official definition: a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification. An analogy is like a picture that you use to explain something really weird or complex in a way that makes more sense to people by abstracting the bespoke elements and replacing them with commonalities. Analogies have power because they bridge context gaps between people. In its power, it inherently has a crux, common ground. Without common ground, your analogies will have little success in spanning the bridges. This is where assumptions about what common ground means and what the group’s common ground is can become dangerous, and from personal experience assuming the group understands sports is one of the most dangerous.
Why is sport so dangerous, it has so many analogies?! Well, some people are just “Yay Sports” people. For a long time, I was a serious rugby guy, I understood the rules and the fine details of the sport, as well as every couch player and referee ever could. This passion inevitably bleeded its way into my conversations. In recent years I have become a “Yay Sports” person, I really don’t care unless it’s a world tournament or Olympics, where I support a random Lithuanian shot put athlete because why not. But here lies the truth of the matter something like sports, fishing, crochette, metal piercing and Mongolian throat singing is just not everyone’s cup of tea. Finding common ground for analogies then becomes a quest for finding a common enough interest or topic of cultural interest to base your analogy on. I find cooking or food in general makes for a good foundation and for some reason farming. Farming seems to be a good option, must be culturally significant enough, very few people I have met believe that milk comes from a bottle and not a cow.
OK, so what is my issue with sports? Firstly there is nothing wrong with sports and nothing wrong with liking sports, the issue I have is not everyone is into sports and that means sports analogies don’t land, score one for bad analogies, see what I did there. Sports has the ability to infiltrate conversations almost unnoticed because there are many sports-friendly people in the world. The bigger issue I have with sports analogies is not that it is limited common ground but that I have experienced it as being exclusionary to a significant degree. In my experience, being guilty myself, this is more often a male problem. Regardless, not only are many people left not understanding what “Skin in the Game”, ” scoring an own goal”, or “Kicking one up the throat” means, but it actually makes many people feel left out of the conversations. On top of the common ground being lost the conversation very easily becomes masculinised and this potentially polarises the conversation and further divides the group. Think about it this way, you would have felt excluded if you were in a meeting about building a greenhouse where the majority of participants are from the International Crochet Foundation and they were stitching away with their common ground analogies, placing hooks around your opinions and leaving you frayed on the edges. See it’s easy to make analogies if you have an understanding of the common ground.
It’s called exclusionary language for a reason. Feeling left out is one of the most painful things a human being can experience, we are designed for group existence and acceptance. I am always in two minds about speaking up, I used to think that it was not only the responsibility of people with opinions to make space for others but also for those who have something to say but don’t know how to at least try. Well, the fundamental issue there is confidence and safety. You can’t expect someone to be vulnerable and brave in a completely new situation, it’s scary and safety is unknown and not guaranteed. No, what we need to focus on is managing our conversations better, designing them so to speak, there is actually a wonderful book called Designing the Conversation, google it. The responsibility for creating common ground and bringing safety to spaces sits with every participant in a conversation, but more so with those in leadership positions, those with stronger communication skills, and those with more influence on the flow and direction of the conversations. These people are conversational custodians, they may not know it, but they have a responsibility.
Conversational Custodians, what now? Yes, conversational custodians, there is a common misconception that a custodian is a cleaner, not quite accurate. No, a custodian is a caretaker, a human charged with the maintenance, care and safeguarding of something, in our situation conversations. Conversational Custodians are the people we depend on to guide the conversation, keep it on point, provide common ground and introduce the safety required for people to participate. Should you choose to take up the mantle of custodian do so understanding that it is double-duty, participant and facilitator. This means you accept the responsibility to steer away from exclusionary practices, guide conversations to safe spaces and drive value out of them. This is no simple task but it is vital to driving value, building relationships and creating shared experiences that inspires the next rounds of conversations. Oh and try not to become the thought-police, 2+2 is in fact 4, as much fun as 1984 was to read, having lived it in multiple conversations I can assure you an Orwellian group experience is not all it’s cracked up to be. If you have a strong personality, good communication skills, and have some sort of authoritative position your chances of falling into the dictator trap are higher, check yourself often, and inspect your reasons for “guiding” a conversation in a specific direction.
Coming back to sports. The important take-away here is that there are many divisive and exclusionary “not-so-common” common grounds like sports analogies that are used all the time, not in malice but in ignorant habit. Guiding conversations into shared spaces is everyone’s responsibility, if you are not an “in the moment” custodian make your opinions known to someone you trust to help shape the next conversations. We can only find opportunities to improve if we look for them!
It is never easy to be the only voice standing against the norm, if you are that voice seek companions, if you can support this voice please do so, shared experiences make for better relationships. Support for inclusion and commonality is vital for driving value and safety. Help create those experiences where you can.
ChatGPT:
Analogies are powerful tools for explaining complex ideas, but they rely on shared understanding. Sports analogies, however, can be divisive because not everyone shares an interest in sports.
While there’s nothing wrong with liking sports, assuming universal interest can alienate some participants, especially in male-dominated conversations. Feeling excluded is deeply painful, so it’s essential for all participants, particularly leaders, to ensure inclusivity and safety.
Conversational custodians guide discussions, fostering common ground and creating a safe environment for all. Exclusionary language, like sports analogies, can hinder collaboration. By promoting inclusivity, conversations become more enriching and valuable for everyone involved.
Mind, on the rocks?! 