Change the Space, Change the Dynamic
Have you ever left a meeting thinking: “I knew that was going to happen.”
You knew the conversation would become defensive.
You knew someone would shut down.
You knew the same two people would end up talking past each other.
You even knew the meeting would run over.
And yet, somehow, it happened again.
Not because anyone chooses or enjoys that outcome.
Not necessarily because nobody noticed what was happening.
It probably happened again because everyone is operating inside the dynamic while it's happening.
In my last posts, I explored the differences between understanding, capability and capacity.
This week, I want to bring everything together and look at what can help when a team is caught in a difficult dynamic.
Because to change a dynamic, people need to be able to notice what's happening, know what they could do differently, and have enough capacity in the moment to do it.
This can be tricky to accomplish, especially when you are trying to shift a pattern from the inside.
If you're currently stuck in a pattern at work that you can see but can't quite seem to shift, this blog is for you.
Let's unpack why this can be so tricky — and why a deliberately designed space can help create the conditions for something different to happen.
What a Meeting Really Is
We often approach meetings logically :
Something needs to be done, so let’s get some people together in a room to work on it together.
It sounds simple but if it really was, 70% of meetings wouldn’t be considered ineffective or even a barrier to productivity.
A meeting is actually a temporary social environment in which human dynamics and the work are happening at the same time.
The work doesn't happen in isolation from that environment. It happens through it.
That environment is shaped by both :
external conditions : the time, location, technology, organisational culture, purpose of the meeting
the internal context each person brings with them : Their history, relationships, power, expectations, sense of safety, ways of working and emotional state.
And when those contexts meet, they interact — and a dynamic emerges.
“It can be momentary, recurring, or become established over time
Now, some dynamics support the work but many don't.
So when there isn't a strong enough centre — a clear purpose, structure, decision or person - holding the meeting, the human dynamics can start to take over. (I go deeper into why so many work meetings don’t have a clear center in a separate blog post here.)
On the surface, a meeting can look like it's working. But underneath, people may be:
protecting their position
avoiding tension
second-guessing themselves
waiting for someone else to speak
diverting attention away from the work itself
To some extent, this is simply part of working with other humans.
The problem starts when these dynamics become strong or frequent enough that the group spends more energy managing itself than working on what it came together to do.
Why it takes two to Tango
A dynamic is essentially a dance between people. I say it takes two to tango — because of a phenomenon called co-regulation.
Co-regulation means that humans are constantly reading and adapting to each other’s emotional states through cues like facial expression, voice, or posture within fractions of a second.
Each person is making small adjustments based on what they are reading: what feels safe to say, how much to say, when to push, when to hold back, whether to address what is happening or let it pass.
And because co-regulation happens so quickly, the room is often responding to itself before anyone has consciously registered what they are responding to.
You experience your own response as a reaction to what the other person just did, and they are doing the same.
In a recurring dynamic, the reaction can also happen in anticipation. You feel like you already know how the meeting is likely to go, so you start rehearsing what you're going to say in your head before it even begins.
The dynamic itself isn't set in stone.
But the system has become very familiar with one particular pattern of interaction — and every repetition reinforces it.
That is why trying to change a dynamic from the inside can be so difficult.
Everyone is affected by it and responding to it in real time.
Designing a Different Space
So what happens when a group cannot find its way out of a dynamic from inside the dynamic?
That is when you need a change in the environment. The idea is simple: if you change the music, the steps are likely to change as well.
Because when the human dynamics are no longer supportive, the group doesn't need another meeting, a tighter agenda or better slides to try to work around the dynamic more effectively.
It needs a different kind of space to work on the dynamic itself.
That's what a held container can provide.
A held container is a space intentionally designed to shift a dynamic that is getting in the way.
It uses structure, rules, boundaries, pace and intention to guide people into a different way of being together, rather than automatically falling back into the patterns that they already know.
Creating one takes both detective work and creative work.
First, you need to understand what is happening. Then you design the conditions around what needs to shift.
Maybe in everyday work, the most senior person speaks first.
In this container, they speak last or not at all.
Maybe the team normally moves very quickly towards solutions.
In this container, they are not allowed to look for solutions. They are only looking at the group process.
Maybe disagreement usually gets softened or avoided.
In this container, challenging people and ideas is actively rewarded.
Maybe people normally have to defend their position.
In this container, they need to explain their interpretation of a question or comment before they start to answer.
The container doesn't remove the tension or erase the history or change the relationships.
Instead it gives the tension somewhere to go, because the conditions are deliberately designed to hold it and keep it in service of the work, rather than trying to push it aside so the group can get on with the meeting.
And that is what makes a container different from simply making a meeting feel nicer.
You're changing the conditions around the difficulty so the group can do something different with it.
The containment — the limits and structure of the space — is what makes this possible. The purpose is clear. The rules and boundaries are explicit. The experiment is limited in time and space. And someone is usually responsible for noticing when the group starts slipping back into the old pattern and bringing it back to the purpose of the container.
A good container creates enough difference from the group's normal environment for something new to be experienced and practised.
Then it dissolves.
But ideally, what becomes possible inside the container doesn't stay there. It gives the group something to carry back into the environment where the dynamic originally developed.
Closing
Sometimes the first step isn't changing the dynamic.
It's seeing it clearly enough to know what you're trying to change.
If you can feel that something is happening in your team but can't quite name the dynamic leading up to it — or understand why you keep ending up in the same place — the Human Dynamics Checkup can help you get a clearer picture of what's going on.
It asks 7 questions to help you identify where the friction may actually come from in your team.
Because once you can see the pattern, you have something concrete to work with.
