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Characteristics of Well Functioning Relationships (Barrett-Lennard, 1998)

• There is an openness to communication in the relationship, a free flow of information, and an expressiveness and general clarity of meaning in communicative interchanges. 
   
• A climate or attitude of trust tends to pervade the relationship. The participants are not in fear and guarded; their individual identity is not at issue and they behave in ways expressive of mutual acceptance and felt safety. 
   
• The participants provide openings and make way for each other, less as a matter of deference or polite consideration, more as an expression of mutual interest and positive expectation of one another, and of a sense of their “we“ as having resources additional to the “I“ or “you“. 
   
• Self-trust on the parts of the members fosters interdependence in the relationship rather than promoting a “self-contained“ stance. Each one finds meaning in their own experience, looks for it in what the other expresses, and draws on both jointly and separately discovered meanings. 
   
• In other words, the relationship is a living, open, adaptive system, self-regulating and growthful in quality, aware of itself through the consciousness of participants and in dynamic motion through feedback both from within and from persons and systems outside of itself. 
   
• The substantial presence of well-functioning relationships within the same larger community, organization or other encompassing system, interactively contributes to and benefits from the health of that larger system.