Metaphores are really nice to use but... where I work, i have a lot of colleagues of different nationalities. Very often I need to explain in detail what I mean

Metaphores are really nice to use but... where I work, i have a lot of colleagues of different nationalities. Very often I need to explain in detail what I mean by them and that tends to defeat their purpose. Sometimes using very explicit or correct terminology sticks better. As always YMMV