Chris Corrigan

I’m writing about dialogic containers these days. They are tricky to describe, and in the same way that Mike asserts a sophisticated understanding of systems, it’s important to find helpful metaphor for a dialogic container. As facilitators we are used to using the world “container” to describe something that we can sense, feel or even physically see. The term does not convey the nature of an actual thing, but if you ask people what they mean by container you find yourself in a metaphorical world. And also, it feels like a finger pointing at the moon. Dialogic containers are important to dialogic organizational development. In the Dialogic Organization Development book there are several metaphors employed by several of my co-authors to describe containers. What I’m finding is that we commonly refer to containers in four distinct ways…

Lots of new stuff is bubbling up into the Art of Hosting we teach, including different ways of teaching. Read on to find out more.

I don't love using Jeff Bezos as an example of anything virtuous, and the anecdote in this post may just be apocrophal, so let's treat it like that, but this is a useful quote:

A group that gathers but doesn’t know how to fight without ‘un-gathering’ won’t remain a group for long. A group that can’t disagree and commit will disagree and dissolve.

The point here is that "conflict preservation" is much more useful to a group than "conflict resolution" for most things. When clients ask me to help people come to "alignment" on things like the organization's vision or mission statement, they often talk about a river, with everyone travelling in the same direction. My response is often to unpack that image.

If "alignment" is like a river, let's really look at how a river flows. When you do you will see that healthy rivers flow slowly, and in many different directions. There are pools of still water, eddies that cause the flow to reverse itself, vertical upwellings, places of rapid flow and others where the flow is slow. And yet, everything is going in the same direction.

It's a question of scale. At fine levels of granularity, conflict and difference are critical. Held skillfully it can also create and sustain the relational capacity that can withstand times when the river goes over a waterfall. In those moments, relationships can come apart just when they are needed the most. Simmering conflict embedded in a reluctance to work with difference requires a tremendous amount of energy to later resolve.

It's a practice.

Last night I visited Meaford with my mom and her partners to hear The Irish Descendants, an iconic Newfoundland band. They are touring a new album of Stan Rogers covers, and between those pieces and the Irish Descendants’ own repertoire, I think I sang along with just about every tune they played.

Afterwards we headed across the street to The Dam Pub. This whisky bar is one of my favourite pubs in the world. It has over 1000 whiskies in the collection, a supremely knowledgeable staff and a great kitchen. It has been a longstanding tradition whenever I visit this region that we visit The Dam Pub. When my dad was alive we would go on Sunday for the prime rib dinner, and as was always our tradition, we would finish the evening with a nip of very excellent whisky. I’ve spent many nights there with friends and even sitting in with the traditional music session once.

Last night we took our seats at the bar and found out that this was going to be the last weekend of The Dam Pub. After starting in Thornbury in 2006 and moving to Meaford in 2022, Stephanie is finally calling it quits and retiring. The pub has been sold and much to my sadness, the whisky collection will be auctioned off.

This is surely the end of an era, and for me it feels almost like a right of passage. The Dam Pub was a ritual of my visits with my father especially. He died in 2021 and every visit since to the place was like circling up with one of his sweaters. It filled me with warmth, love, and the friendship and community that has gathered in and around those 1000 bottles over two decades.

Last night I ordered a nip of a 1993 Ledaig bottle commissioned by Gordon & McPhail. Tim, the bartender slid the ladder over and went to the very back of the top shelf, pouring me a nip and offering a little pipette and some distilled water to open it up.

That was to be my very last whisky at The Dam Pub. I wished Stephanie and Tim all the best and closed the book on a sweet and meaningful little ritual of my life. I’ll miss them terribly.

Here’s the Dam Pub’s last whisky menu preserved for posterity.

Crossing Otter Creek near Smiths Falls, Ontario on the VIA 643.

I’m on the VIA train from Ottawa to Toronto. We’ve just passed through Smiths Falls, streaking past paper white birch trees, golden fields, blazing orange maple trees, marsh reeds turned red, scarlet sumac all under a clear blue sky.

I’m listening to The Great Lakes Suite by Rheostatics, which features poetry read by Ann Carson, who today was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I’ll meet my brother in Toronto and spend the next week with family in southern Ontario celebrating Thanksgiving together.

This just might be the most Canadian moment possible.

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Dialogic containers and the danger of metaphors

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How rivers of conflict flow

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The parting glass

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Dialogic containers and the danger of metaphors

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The new stuff we are doing in the Art of Hosting

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How rivers of conflict flow

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The parting glass

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The most Canadian morning possible

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