CHEMISTRY COMMUNITY

I'm having trouble visualizing this phenomena. Does this only occur with atoms that have a lone pair? What exactly is happening at the ligand bonding sites?

Basically a polydentate is a molecule (of sorts) that has multiple electron pair donating sites. This means that a polydentate can bind to multiple sites simultaneously. Each site does have to have at least one set of lone pairs to donate in order for the ligand to bind to the transition metal.