A while back, a friend and I were going back and forth about a decision at work. I wanted to make a point about how a certain kind of leadership style plays out, so I reached for Elon Musk and Twitter as my example.
My friend brushed it off. Not interested, moved on.
I sat with that for a second, then tried again. Same point, same structure, but this time using our own company and our own manager. My friend engaged. We had the conversation.
Nothing I said was different. The example changed. That was it.
I keep coming back to what actually happened there. My friend wasn’t rejecting my argument. They were rejecting the example I’d used to carry it, or maybe the person attached to the example, I’m not entirely sure. Either way, the moment I swapped it, the thing I was trying to say became receivable.
I started wondering how often I do the same thing. Dismiss something not because the idea is wrong but because the example has baggage, and I respond to the baggage. I probably do it more than I catch.
My first instinct when my friend dismissed the Twitter example was to defend it. To argue it was a valid comparison. That would’ve been a waste of both our time, and the funny thing is I wasn’t even attached to Twitter as an example. I was attached to the point. Once I remembered that, finding a different example took about five seconds. My friend did the same thing I was almost about to do. Got pulled into the example instead of what I was trying to say, just from the other side.
I’m starting to think the burden is probably on the person trying to make the point. Not because the listener is off the hook for anything, but if you’re the one who wants to be understood, finding an example that can actually land seems like your problem to solve.
The harder question is what to do when I can’t find a replacement that works as well. My suspicion, and I haven’t really tested this, is that those cases aren’t about the analogy being irreplaceable. It’s more that the idea might be leaning on the specific example to do more than just illustrate. Like the example isn’t just pointing at the argument, it partly is the argument. I don’t know what to do with that yet.