Leadership Lessons from Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

Sports analogies in business leadership are nearly as certain as death and taxes. You simply cannot lead in a large organization without hearing sports analogies daily. For me, sports analogies don’t bother me too much; however, I do notice them. I wish there were fewer of them.

If you’ve ever been told to “skate to where the puck is going to be,” “it’s time for a full-court press,” “throw a hail mary,” or discussed the “bench strength” of your team, this article is for you.

The term “sportsball” is slang used by non-sports fans to make fun of sports fans about their fandom. It’s intentionally nonsensical. It’s a signal indicating that you do not take sports very seriously and you think some are quite overboard with their enthusiasm.

My experience

A few years ago, someone described a conflict to me and said, “They’re giving me the Heisman.” I hadn’t heard that sports analogy before, so I did some thinking. While I’m not an avid football fan, I had heard of the?Heisman trophy. I knew it was a prestigious award given to college football players.

My first interpretation was that “giving someone the Heisman” meant giving someone some sort of award or accolade, but the context made no sense, so I was lost.

The person noticed the dumb look on my face and elaborated. He made a pose, like the trophy design, sticking his hand up in a blocking motion. Then I realized it was meant to communicate a block, not an accolade. That made much more sense.

I’m fairly literate in American sports, but that one went over my head. Others, with less knowledge, must really struggle.

Insider language

While I’m not a huge sports fan, I am a big-time Star Trek fan, especially The Next Generation.?Picard is my captain. The next time someone says “They’re giving me the Heisman,” I’d like to respond with, “Have you tried?Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra?” If you get the reference, it’s an appropriate suggestion and equally obscure.

One step further, the whole plotline of the Darmok episode is the language barrier. This is something that advanced cavillations in Star Trek were not used to dealing with because of their universal translator technology, but in this situation, it didn’t work, so they had to figure out how to communicate. Captain Picard, being the cunning leader he is, eventually figured out the insider language, and avoided disaster.

Outside of sports and Star Trek, I can think of two other recent uses of insider language. My company is embracing the popular continuous improvement framework,?Lean. Lean has a lot of insider language in it. I heard several early adopters excitedly exclaim in meetings, “We should?A3?that problem.” Those that knew Lean understood. Those that didn’t were left out.

Within our IT organization, we are working on transitioning to a?product operating model. Product teams work on their “OKRs.”?OKR?stands for Objectives and Key Results. I saw this tweet recently and it made me smile:

The leadership responsibility

What should leaders do about this? I can accept the inevitability of insider language. I often observe those who frequently use their own insider language and are subsequently excluded by others’ insider language. Leaders need to be self-aware enough to stop and think, “Hmm, this is probably how it feels when I do this to others.”

Sports analogies aren’t going away, but I try to be careful about how much I rely on them. I recognize that a big part of my team cares way more about cricket than American football. I couldn’t come up with a cricket analogy for business leadership if my life depended on it.

The best approach is to be mindful of our insider language. The goal of leadership is clear communication. Does my analogy help or hurt that goal? Communication habits are very ingrained. I don’t expect this to change overnight, but please be mindful.

At a minimum, make sure you confirm understanding with everyone in the meeting. If you get a sense that some aren’t following along, pause to explain your analogy or terminology.

If you don’t, then I hope you don’t mind if I start saying “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” “Temba, his arms wide,” and “Shaka, when the walls fell” to describe various leadership scenarios.

This article was adapted from an original post on zachonleadership.com on February 11, 2022.