The Intersection of Past and Future: Attachment Styles
In professional life, we encounter people with various characters and attitudes. We do not have the luxury of choosing our colleagues and managers. Sometimes, we find it difficult to understand the behaviors of the people around us in the work environment or to communicate with them. Especially in the processes of establishing and maintaining relationships, the attitudes and behaviors of the other person can lead us to develop certain prejudices. Labels created from prejudices such as indifferent, unemotional, intrusive, aggressive, or insecure are factors that significantly hinder the creation of synergy within the team. These labels do not always reflect the true situations or intentions of individuals. For example, a person who is actually seeking security may be perceived as intrusive or indifferent from the outside. Similarly, difficulties in expressing emotional needs can be interpreted as unemotional or insecure. At this point, the concept of attachment styles comes into play.
What is an attachment style?
Attachment is the bond that forms between babies and their primary caregiver, which lays the foundation for a sense of security. It is related to how much of the physical and emotional needs of the individual during infancy are perceived and met by the caregiver. Meeting the needs sufficiently during infancy creates secure attachment, while not meeting the needs or ignoring them leads to difficulties in attachment style. According to psychologist Mary Ainsworth, there are three different types of attachment: secure-anxious normal, anxious-avoidant, and anxious-resistant.
Anxious normal: This is a healthy and desirable type of attachment defined as secure attachment. As a result of the needs being sufficiently met during infancy, the person can reflect positive and negative emotions healthily in adulthood and create a positive self-perception.
Anxious avoidant: This attachment style shows that the individual's needs were met inconsistently and unbalanced by the primary caregiver during infancy. In adulthood, it causes the individual to tend to think negatively about the people around them and feel insecure. They constantly need approval to meet their security needs.
Anxious resistant: This attachment style is formed as a result of caregiver neglect. Individuals with this attachment style think that it is better to trust only themselves and hide their emotions. In adulthood, they resist forming close relationships, do not like intimacy, and do not want to share their feelings and thoughts. They avoid seeking support and help.
As can be understood from the definitions above, the bond between us and our caregiver during infancy determines many of our attitudes and behaviors in adulthood. Attachment style is an important determinant of how individuals express their feelings and thoughts, their self-perception, their tendency to trust the people around them, and how they express their desires and needs. These attachment characteristics are valid for relationships in all periods of life. The traces of attachment style become more visible in stress situations, especially in work life. For example, anxious-avoidant individuals constantly worry about being the cause of a problem or making others unhappy. Therefore, when asked to take responsibility, they avoid adapting to new expectations. In contrast, individuals with a secure attachment style are ready to strive for their duties. If they encounter issues they are not competent in, they do not hesitate to express their inadequacies. They can ask for help from their surroundings. Anxious-resistant individuals generally show resistance to fulfilling expectations and organizational roles. They prefer to stay on the sidelines and take on more of an observer role. They adopt the understanding of 'those who do nothing make no mistakes,' which is prevalent in Turkish culture. Instead of asking for opinions, they may lean towards being resistant.
In the 21st-century business world, employee selection, delegations, and promotions have become very important. The rapidly developing and globalizing business world has to take continuous action to adapt to the changes that occur. The most important issue that institutions face at this point is time. Adapting quickly to sharp changes in processes and creating a culture open to change within the institution has become one of the first requirements to be included in the competition between sectors. Therefore, selection and evaluation studies in institutions have been significantly increased. The personality inventory test, which forms the basic stage of these studies, makes the selections for target positions more accurate and predictable.
As Baltaş Group, the Personova personality inventory we have developed examines individuals in 6 main dimensions and 31 sub-dimensions. Secure attachment, which is included in our sub-dimensions, predicts individuals' tendencies to relate, trust, and bond in business life. The predictions made by the Personova personality inventory ensure optimum efficiency between the individual and the institution.