An administrator in a university biology department complained to me that one of her assistants was having difficulty getting along with the researchers, who in this particular university were well-known names in the field. In gathering information, I learned that the assistant was slow in getting paperwork to the researchers, argued continually with them, and frequently ignored their requests to recruit experimental subjects.

The assistant saw it differently. She contended that the researchers were a pain in the neck—they constantly made demands, gave little thanks, and were arrogant to boot.

The administrator confirmed that her assistant's perceptions were in fact quite accurate. Nevertheless, the way she interacted with the researchers was unprofessional and unacceptable.

The administrator had intervened several times in constructive ways. She had arranged structured meetings to discuss the problem. She had asked the assistant what she thought could be done to make things better and had asked what she could do to help. She had explained the importance of getting along with the researchers. She had even used an occasional threat—all to no avail.

After listening to the administrator's complaint, I asked, ''What does the assistant like? Does she have a hobby? What is important to her?''

A few days later, when the time was appropriate, the administrator spoke to her assistant once again: ''You know, these researchers are very special. They are just like your plants and flowers. They need a lot of care. They have to be watered daily and given some sunshine, and you need to talk to them. When you do that, they will bloom and become stronger and prettier. And it will be easier for you to take care of them.'' By the end of the following week, the administrator noticed that her assistant's attitude and behavior toward the researchers had improved markedly.

What the administrator said might sound hokey and contrived, but the fact is, it helped her finally get the results she wanted. She used a metaphor to get into her assistant's world—she talked about the researchers in a manner that enabled the assistant to relate to them in a familiar and enjoyable way. This is exactly why metaphors are effective tools for giving criticism.

Does this mean that you should always make the recipient ''the captain of the ship''? Of course not. But there are many times when you will find metaphor to be a handy tool to help you get the power of positive criticism. One case is when your criticism is not effective because it is not meaningful to the recipient and thus does not motivate him to change, even when you have tried linking the change to monetary or other incentives.

Here, you may find that your savior is giving criticism through metaphor backed by the psychological principle that metaphor serves as a gateway to a person's subconscious. What this means is that metaphors allow you to enter the recipient's world in a way that is meaningful to him. Put another way, you are putting ''your picture in his frame.'' The criticism now taps in to the recipient's motivational system—it has become meaningful and thus motivates action.

A second calling for the use of metaphor arises when your criticism is either hypersensitive or sure to evoke defensiveness. Here, criticism through metaphor is helpful because it allows you to present the information in a more benign manner. You may find, for example, that your subordinate is too impulsive on his projects. Yet, every time you broach the subject, he responds with defensiveness. It is also a well-known fact that this subordinate spends his vacation time on fishing trips. Your criticism might be more powerful if you told him, ''This project is like going after Jaws. Go slowly, wait until you are sure that you have it, and then carefully reel it in.''

A third situation in which you might find criticism through metaphor to your liking is when you have to criticize a group—whether it is a team, a department, or a division. Crucial to this use is choosing a metaphor that applies to the whole group, a unifying metaphor so to speak.

Case in point is the medical director of a hospital who criticized all of her department heads for not working as a team; they were overly competitive with each other and more interested in the welfare and reputation of their particular department than the welfare of the general hospital.

After analyzing the situation, the medical director concluded that directly confronting the issue—''Cardiac department, why are you not working with Rehab?'' or ''Radiology department, what is going on with Surgery?''—would elicit anger, blame, and defensiveness, hardly the stuff she wants in a hospital environment.

Instead, she sought to change her staff's behavior by giving them the information in the form of a metaphor that she knew her entire staff would relate to; she used the metaphor of a human body. She explained in all-too-familiar terms what they already knew—what happens when one organ fails to work in conjunction with the system. Almost instantly, the physicians got the point. ''Things got better,'' she told me.

Two general guidelines to use this tip effectively are:

Metaphor is a rich and revealing way of communicating, and being able to use metaphors is one of the most important skills for unleashing the power of positive criticism.