The three cornered container

I continue to think through the ideas of containers in dialogic work. Thanks to some conversations with a couple of colleagues I had a thought today about the three-cornered nature of the container.

Inspired by the idea of a trialectic, we can describe containers as occupying a space between three points, depending on what they are, what work they are doing and the nature of the substrate in which they sit. The thee points are Designed, Built, and Emergent. Each of these three has a particular focus. The Designed container channels intention. The Built container provides retention and the Emergent container arises from, and demands, attention.

In facilitation practice, the language tends towards designed and built containers. We talk about holding space, we talk about the boundaries, the physical space, the beautiful question, the method. The role of the facilitator is often defined as a person that designs and holds containers.

Complexity however bids us to pay attention to what is happening. When humans meet, containers emerge, almost instantly. Our attention is directed and held, not with the help of a facilitator, but because the constraints of the situation shape what happens. Some constraints precede the encounter, like physical space, organizational history, culture, and power relations. Others emerge through interaction itself. Some are brought by the designer into the room. Together they constitute the container.

Every actual container is some combination of design, building and emergence. The space between these points is what matters, Asking where a container sits within the triangle tells us what work is being done by intention, what work has been stabilized in material, legal, or social structures, and what work must remain open to emergence.

Different types of containers need to do different work. A storage locker is a kind of built container whose work is only the retention of a space that can be filled. There is very little intention paid to the design of a storage locker, and once one is built, it doesn’t need to be designed again. Not much emerges within it. That’s a feature.

An emergent container is one that arises, for example, when two friends meet on the street. In the moment of encounter, a boundary begins to form and an attractor holds the attention of the interaction. When two friends are actively engaged in a conversation on the street there is stuff going on that an “outsider” would struggle to understand. What is at the centre of their shared attention might not be shared by others. You can feel how this little social space is carved out of the rest of the environment. A conversation between friends relies on attention to proceed, and both bring attention to the moment. No designer. No robust structure that must be held.

A designed container is something like a meeting method. When I am using Open Space for example, I am bringing a deliberate intention to the group. “We should meet this way. The conversations should flow like this. The outcomes can be harvested here.” This can be both helpful and extremely perilous.

When design makes contact with reality is the critical moment. Design is only the beginning. Once people begin interacting, the container inevitably shifts toward emergence. Good facilitation is less about preserving the design than noticing where the design is making contact with reality. If the design is held too tightly, the designer is privileged in the space and the group loses possibilities for true emergence. If the design proceeds from the use of constraints to shape interactions, that can be extremely helpful. If the work is complex, bringing attention to bear into the work is critical. The facilitator role shifts from being the process host to holding attention to what is emerging. Not to name it, or to synthesize, but to inform the next move of shifting constraints, including by enlisting the group in that work: “Should we take a break? Do we need more time? Is this the right question? What’s happening now?”

Design that contacts reality in a built container is one in which intention informs the retention. This is how architecture works. It’s about the deployment of pattern languages (in the Alexandrian sense) to the built environment. A living built environment begins with intention that translates into retention provided by stable structures in the built environment. It alos provides affordances for the attention of the users of space to learn and shape the space afterwards. Think of a community garden, or over longer scales, the built environments of towns and villages that shift and change over the years. Stuart Brand wrote about this in “How Buildings Learn.”

I’m exploring the idea that dialogic containers are spaces and moments (physical and non-physical) in which humans make meaning. Dialogic containers are not things facilitators create or hold. They are patterns of constraint within which meaning-making becomes possible. Good facilitation lies not in holding the container but in learning when to design with constraints, when to rely on built ones, and when to let emergent constraints lead.

The photo for this post was taken on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton last June when the Edmonton Oilers were in the Stanley Cup Finals. Everything in this photo can be mapped in the triangle above.