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Description of Communication Patterns

To grasp and describe patterns of communication in teams or organisations, one needs a variety of observations and their skilful evaluation:

It is important to see correlations between seemingly unconnected things. This requires an abstract theory in the background, which observes not the contents, but the processes and the ‘how’. It enables observations of equal things in the unequal and leaves the unequal to be recognised in the equal. One sees, for example, that all employees adapt to the manager but not all for the same motives! Or, to put it another way: One sees rebellion, withdrawal, complacency, apathy, over-engagement and understands it all as driven by anxiety!
Usually it helps a lot to allow different observers to share their viewpoints. Organisational consultancy, for this reason, should not be carried out alone.
Good pattern describers give spontaneous, individual evaluations and use them as part of the description. “At that point I noticed, that I would have gone up the wall if I had to work like your team, and, at the same time, I see that none of your employees do this!”
With all pattern descriptions it is important to watch for the interplay and the non-linear causalities. Cause and effect hypotheses are usually flawed by being too brief and they reduce too much complexity and reckon too little with the many causes and the many effects.