Confirming
For an interaction pattern to form in the team, individual interaction events must be repeated. For such interactions to repeat themselves, they must first be confirmed as useful, possible, right, appropriate and more. On the other hand, what is perceived by team members in the interactions can be shown on many levels and in many forms. The process of confirmation is first executed implicitly and then takes a direction-dependent form: That which is established, will establish itself still further through usage (like a path on a parking meadow, which, once established, will instinctively be used by almost all people). At some stage it becomes clear who is popular with the boss and who has difficulty, who makes inappropriate jokes and who is no longer taken seriously. In each team there are innumerous implicit patterns like this. They are very stable and can (like all decisions) be functional and dysfunctional. The process also runs explicitly, where expectations are formulated and are either diffuse (“Are you engineer, too?”) or specific (“The filing system here works like this!”). Expectations communicated in this way develop into rules, norms and values. Usually, counsellors are very quickly confronted with these patterns. As counsellor, one can therefore recognise the patterns of the team by one’s own reactions and then use these as a basis for intervention.