Crossing a threshold into containers?
I’m reading, writing and thinking a lot about containers these days. It has been a pervasive theme in my life, as I have constantly been obsessed with the concept, the ideas and the practices of building and holding containers for as long as I can remember. The spiritual practices I have cultivated in my life have always been related to containers. From the beginning of my facilitation career, the ideas that have most grabbed me are the ideas of hosting and holding space.
I remember a couple of significant events in my thinking as I realized how important containers are to facilitation and leadership. The first was my first exposure to Open Space Technology in 1995. That first experience, hosted by Anne Stadler, Angeles Arrian and Chris Carter, began with a kind of ritual invocation as we moved from what had been a traditional conference of 400 people to a day of self-organized conversations. In that instance, a candle was lit, and something more spiritual than transactional took place as we were welcomed into Open Space.
After that meeting, I devoted myself to Open Space Technology and to the practice of what I later came to know as “hosting:” holding space for self-organization and emergence. As I began to study dialogic practice, facilitation, self-organization and complexity, the idea of “the container” loomed large in my awareness.
If you have read my blog over the years, you will see this. There are more than two dozen blog posts that explore my thinking on this, and my only serious academic publishing has been on this topic. It is a subject that grabs me because it represents a concept that has appeared in every part of my life, from facilitation to music making, to playing and watching sports, to spiritual practice and so on. It is the one idea that seems to define what my life has been all about hosting and holding containers for self-organization and the emergence of good things.
And yet, it is almost a completely intangible idea. Of course, containers are quite visible when we make them out of walls and windows, or the sides of boats, or an island surrounded by water. But most of the rest of the containers we live in are ephemeral, diaphanous, hardly there at all, and yet they determine so much of our behaviour. Containers enact ways of thinking and cognitive patterns for good or ill. They can evoke emotional responses that arise from our subconscious. They define or challenge our sense of identity or belonging and they can focus our attention or cause it to become diffuse.
Ten years ago as I was starting out on my research for the chapter I ended up writing in the Dialogic Organizational Development book on containers, I had a chance to sit down with Crane Stookey, who is a tall ship captain and a consultant and who has written extensively and generously on containers. He was my first interviewee on this topic because he has such a clear experience of understanding and working with containers, as do all captains that command ships built for the roiling sea. Our conversation at the time was fantastic, and the only note I recorded said this: “The container builds the conditions for internal transformation. In Dialogic OD, needs this to be the primary site of change.”
What I meant by that is that any change that comes to an organization (or team, or group or community…) comes because the conditions for how that group self-organizations have changed. Containers are so important for this because the constraints at work in containers are the things that determine the behaviours and possibilities in a complex system. We know this is true – take the tables out of your board room and see what happens – and yet so much work in the world towards changes focuses on the idea that if we could just work harder to control on the interactions between people and the outcomes of those interactions, we will get the world we want. It is a perspective I find cruel and at odds with human community and life itself. It is one that is colonial at its heart.
So there are stakes to working on this and trying to bring this idea and set of concepts to some clarity, and I think this is something I am going to be devoting my time and attention to over the next little while to see if I can come up with some really good ways to describe the properties of containers, especially the ineffable ones, and the practices we use as humans for crossing over thresholds and entering into the bounded spaces of our lives that bring us into different ways of thinking and being. Maybe – and I realize I’ve made this promise before but…- maybe it becomes a book.
I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this topic, your questions, your enthusiasms and stories of your experience. What do you think? Is this something worthwhile? What would it mean to you to have a set of thoughts, practices and ways of working with containers that help you to see this locus of change work?
Just read your blog post and now I know what I’ll be mulling over in my journal today! The first thought that occurs to me is how permeable our containers have become since the advent of smartphones and social media. When I think of a container I think of something bounded, yet when we have our devices in our hands, those boundaries become blurred. We’re constantly space-shifting between the physical place we’re in and a broader space that includes people who are not physically there – and often excludes those who are. We aren’t going to go back to the “before times”, so what processes and practices do we put in place to make these fluid spaces work? How do we reimagine the container?
Oooh nice reflection!
(Sent from my iPhone)
What are the dimensions of a container?
(For example at a festival) – can agreements replace security guards?
Certainly. But that depends on the context and the other dimensions that are at play, such as trust, collective responsibility and goodwill.
Hmmmmm what you call containers … I wonder if that aligns with ideas behind the language I use of a culture of authentic connection that creates opportunity for creavity and wisdom to emerge from many perspectives. It is a culture that begins with deep connection to internal insights and blossoms with the intermingling of the strands of joy and wondering that emerge.
I think it does. The ways that we enable human connection and community depend on what we are doing, but yes.
Reading in the airport but want to share my immediate enthusiasm for a book on this topic!! I feel in the edge of clarity with this, and it resonates.
Chris, just to say I am loving these musings.
I am relatively new to this concept, but as a coach and facilitator I am adding increased significance to containers, self organisation, and complexity. Reading Margaret Wheatley helps shape my thoughts.
Keep these coming.
Hi Chris
This is very present for me as we embark on our plan to create a container as we build our creation centre
This makes me think of the Greek Temenos or container for sacred space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temenos?wprov=sfti1
Used as a concept in jungian depth psychology.
Also the alchemical still.
And David Byrne’s book “how music is made.” Where he traces the different styles if music not necessarily to the people but the venues it developed in.
And of lastly Peter Brook’s book on Theatre The Empty Space
From a fellow devotee to the ephemeral spaces where human connection, learning, and co-creation spark possibility, evolution, and magic… a little poetic remix from your offering… and always a heart bow and eye-twinkle of gratitude for all the learning you’ve supported to bloom within me.
Hosting and holding containers, spaces for self-organization and the emergence of good things
ephemeral, ineffable containers
the conditions that enable human connection and community
constraints at work, influencing behaviors and possibilities, building the conditions for internal transformation
practices that bring us into different ways of thinking and being, cognitive patterns for good or ill, practices we use for crossing over thresholds
dependent on the context and other dimensions at play, such as trust, collective responsibility and goodwill
Containers can evoke emotional responses that arise from our subconscious, they can define or challenge our sense of identity or belonging, they can focus our attention or cause it to become diffuse.
?
I guess this box doesn’t like the shape of poetry quite so much!! 😉
Yes! Such a worthwhile topic to dive into deeply. Your insight and gift for making the intangible accessible are terrific for taking this on. Do be sure to include stories!
What caught my attention in your post is this vital notion:
“…any change that comes to an organization (or team, or group or community…) comes because the conditions for how that group self-organizations [sic] have changed. Containers are so important for this because the constraints at work in containers are the things that determine the behaviours and possibilities in a complex system.”
I think I first came to appreciate the notion of containers from Juanita Brown’s World Cafe principle of creating hospitable space. At a session of Spirited Work, some of the people who took on the role of welcoming decided to greet people at the door to our meeting room with a hug (or whatever the recipient was comfortable with). The energy of the room was palpably different and led to more closeness. I became a believer.
Another of my stories: I did a conference keynote years ago in which we arranged the room in four sections: a section in theatre style, a section in a circle, a section in cafe-style tables of four, and a section with bean bag comfy furniture. I stood in the center, said a few things, then invited them into conversations with each other. At the end, we talked about how the section they sat in influenced their experience. The bean bag people came in stressed and loved having a place to decompress. The cafe-style people loved being in intimate conversations. The circle group were thrilled to dive deep together. The people in theatre style seating arrived late and that section was the only place left. They were frustrated by the constraint. We all learned a lot from the experience.
I remember that multi-set up experiment you did! Great stories. Yes stories will be a part of this.
I love this, Chris. Since being introduced to Meg Whitley, Christina Baldwin and Berkana, I have worked with containers in work with financial planning couples, in leading organizational board meetings and regrets and in my coaching and circle work with women focused on relationship with money. What has challenged me lately now that I am less active in the organizational leadership and facilitation work, is the fragility of containers in the sense of over time. For about 7 years the Financial Planning Association shifted to a governance and board practice that used dailogic tools like circle, open space and knowledge cafes to invite emergence and deeper decision making. Then it seems one person was able to end the commitment, to quite painfully kill the process and now years later the association has no memory of its former way of being and doing and appears to have lost vi Randy. Relevance, purpose and members. Is this just the inevitability of self organization, which sounds so cynical? Is there always an attachment to outcome, really, even by those of us committed to self organization? I never would have imagined this painful turn. I was clearly attached to at the least, the outcome of continued embracing of the importance of container and dialogic process.
Yes. Containers are embedded in bigger containers and the energy cost of sustaining a counter cultural container is high. It requires constant attention, even if it is producing desire effects. Cycles are a natural aspect of this, an oscillation between what a small group of determined folks want and the deeper attractors in a culture that pull it away to something else.
Sustaining a counter culture does take constant work. It was painful watching it slip away when I left St Paul’s. It was also fascinating to watch as the next minister sought to develop a counter culture without acknowledging there was one there that his direction could have built on. He talks about how quickly he was able to shift the church but actually it was already shifted before he got there. Unfortunately some of the nuance of the culture we had developed was lost. One of the components in my style is to include regular evaluation, so people can see the benefits and the need for shifts, but also a regular updating of what we called the covenant. Part of the covenant is to agree to it each time you meet. It was those two pieces that sustained our groups. But it can be toppled pretty easily by one person protesting unless the group is deeply aware of the benefits, which is helped by the regular evaluation.
It’s interesting to think about what it takes to enter into an existing culture and envelop the awareness to be able to act with what is there. This is why the inner work is so important so that we can examine what is also there within us that makes our stepping into a new container one that is more aware of what could otherwise get in our way.
Sorry, I didn’t spell check. Not ‘regrets’, I meant ‘retreats’!
Containers, conditions, constraints – are they all interchangeable? Or do they form a triangle? How are they connected? Does it matter at this level of abstraction? Can they all morph into each other like Glenda’s CDE? Do constraints emerge containers that set conditions? Will some poetry help???!!!
Musing that containers are the products of constraints at play that create the context for action. (Or set the conditions). How does that sound? I’ll post a bit longer on CDE too. But my definition and understanding of containers is quite influenced by her ideas and especially the way she describes them in Coping with Chaos.
Reflecting on Containers….
I’m noticing a shift in how I foster relationships and serve emerging community needs. My lived experience has focused on facilitating leaders, civil society, and living systems capacity. This conversation about ‘containers’ is attracting my attention and focus. In the past words like ‘join’, ‘member’, ‘register’, ‘donate’, ‘volunteer’, have been entry points to organizations, community and engagement. The structures, hierarchies, and decision-making processes have taken a particular, commonly agreed upon form and shared meaning. I’m noticing a process of transforming. Emergent, informal [or non-formed] connections are evolving. Are others noticing these trends and patterns? I’m curious to explore. Thanks Chris for opening this thread of inquiry.
One of the things I hope to do by writing about this more is to seed the seeing.