Concentric Circles of Containment (Visualizing Organisational Dynamics Series #2)

How can we support frontline staff to better manage the anxiety associated with difficult or complex tasks, and therefore provide effective and compassionate services?

The concept of concentric circles of containment is one way of visualizing how this can be achieved. First introduced by Claudia McLoughlin, the model shows how anxieties and stressors originating from the nature of the work can be held and thought about at each level of the organization.

All types of work can be the source of both satisfaction and frustration. Work can be stressful because of the inherent nature of the task or because it is badly organised. Or both!

One of the functions of leaders is to help staff to manage the anxieties associated with their work, whether this is in high-pressure commercial settings or frontline public services. If the task itself involves working for customers or clients who have complex needs, or whose ways of relating to others are perhaps chaotic and disturbing, then there is likely to be a direct emotional impact on the staff in contact with those individuals or groups. This can harm relations with the client and the quality of service provided. Unless, that is, the disturbance can be contained and thought about.

Containment is a key concept in consultancy work with organisations. It is seen as the necessary foundation for emotional growth and learning from experience and derives from the process whereby a parent receives and processes the baby's anxieties on their behalf. 

In later life, we may sometimes lose our capacity for rational thought and to hold onto our emotions – we may instead act out or blame others. Sometimes we need another person to temporarily hold our anxieties until we can regain our own capability for being thoughtful. This is the role of coaching, supervision, reflective practice groups, and also of leadership.

Margot Waddell uses the example of a parent helping their child with a jigsaw puzzle to describe the process by which emotions are contained sufficiently to help thinking emerge:

By thus holding the emotional state and neither acting prematurely nor excessively prolonging the frustration, this mother enables her child to "see" what had been impossible only a few moments earlier.

Providing containment is therefore not simply about ‘helping people with their anxieties’, which some managers may (unfortunately) not see as their role, but is actually critical to sustaining employees' capacity for thinking and for empathy, in that a contained person is better able to understand and respond to the feelings of others. 

Claudia McLoughlin describes how circles of containment were built up around troubled young people in a pupil referral unit. This included direct support to the child and the family, and supportive work with the staff group and wider networks. The worry and concern generated by the child’s behaviour was thought about at each of the layers, rather than being dismissed or acted on as a disturbance in the system. Each circle provided containment of the anxieties of the people within it. The result was the provision of effective care and education for the child which enhanced their own capacity for managing their emotions and therefore learning.

I have developed this visualization:

In this example, anxiety is effectively contained by the supervisors, team manager and colleagues.  Additionally, the disturbance does not ‘land on the desk’ of senior management or impact external perceptions of the service in the way that, for example, a serious case review would. 

In my own consultancy work I have seen how this model works with residential childcare and in a service for adults with learning disabilities whose behaviour was challenging. For example, whilst clinical colleagues supported young people and key workers, I ran a group for children’s home managers to develop their leadership capacity and reflect on how the specific dynamics of looked after children might be impacting the organisation. All of the homes received good or excellent Ofsted ratings and two of the managers became Directors. Incidentally, Ofsted should be part of the circles of containment for those they inspect, in order to support the delivery of care and education for young people, but sadly it appears they are often experienced as persecuting by staff.

Finally, in my doctoral research I identified that, within increasingly digital organisations, the capacity to process emotions (which technology does not have), and therefore to keep thinking alive, may become the most important human attribute and one that should be nurtured.  I therefore believe the model of concentric circles of containment has relevance to all sectors and types of organisation.

References

McLoughlin, C. (2010). ‘Concentric circles of containment. A psychodynamic contribution to working in pupil referral units’, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 36 (3). pp. 225-239

Waddell, M. (2002)  Inside lives: psychoanalysis and the growth of the personality. Revised Edition. London: H Karnac (Books) Ltd.

Waggett, N. (2012). ‘Ghosts in the care home: the nature of relationships in a home for people with learning disabilities’, Journal of Social Work Practice: Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community, 26(4), pp. 443-457.