Have you got a ‘work wife or husband’? These amusing terms have appeared across platforms like TikTok alongside amusing videos about how we have replica ‘families’ at work. They in fact point to a deep truth and may explain many of the dynamics at work that can baffle, frustrate, annoy us or in the case of these videos make us laugh in identification!

As a manager you may have been faced with odd behaviours from and within your teams leaving you with the belief, there’s nothing so strange as folk! Individuals in your team may have been baffled by their own tendency to undermine themselves when faced with authority or find themselves relating to a colleague in ways that distress you. Attachment theory could have the answers for you.

What is attachment theory?

Attachment theory is a core concept in relationships and therapy, but is often only understood in a relatively limited way relating to romantic partners. It’s applicable to all human bonds and is a core concept to understand in how we develop as social animals. It underpins the neurological understanding of how our personalities form from birth onwards. Most people will know the three attachment patterns of: secure, insecure and avoidant, which are to a small extent inherited, but also hugely affected by the social environment in which we grow up and our current social environment. What is known less and useful to know in the work context is that attachments form in three developmental stages.

• Primary attachment – to the first care relationships of feeding, changing etc
• Secondary attachments to the carer who supports the primary relationship
• Tertiary attachments to the siblings if they are there in the family but also to school relationships and in this case, crucial work relationships

Attachment processes are biological due to us being social animals, but are experienced psychologically. So attachment processes happen whether we want them to or not and a smart manager is open to them and how they can help form a healthy efficient work team or destroy one.

Here is the rule, the more securely a person is attached the higher functioning they are, the more effective they are intellectually, cognitively, relationally and so on. Secure attachment has global impacts on the individual producing a more pro-social and effective person and a healthier person who takes less time off for illness. Every aspect of an individual’s functioning improves when they are in secure attachment. So who doesn’t want this?

Here is the second key rule, attachment processes open up at school and at work specifically. Work is a protective factor in health and wellbeing terms. Worklessness and unemployment is a stress factor producing ill health in most people. Given we are primed for attachment at work, we can use that fact to maximise our workforce by encouraging secure attachment processes.

Here is the third key rule, even if a person has insecure or avoidant attachment patterns they can be repaired by being in a healthy work environment, without recourse to complex psychological therapy. Just simply being in a healthy secure attachment environment will produce new personality growth moving the person into healthier self and other relationships.

The key to secure attachment in the workplace are:

Warmth and emotional support within acceptable boundaries

Predictability

Clear leadership on goals

Positive work culture promoting diversity

Attachment theory developed from the work of UK and also US researchers into psychologically healthy relationships. There were some now famous experiments on young monkeys who were placed alone in a cage and deliberately frightened. Both sets of young monkeys had access to a machine that offered milk to help calm them after being frightened. One of the machines was wrapped in fur to allow the babies to feel warm and cling on, one was not. This was repeated many times with the baby monkeys. The ones that had the furry, warm feeding machine reintegrated into the troop afterwards, the others did not. Warm furry support allowed the monkeys to overcome the isolation and the repeated frights. It’s not that complicated really. The warm, emotionally furry manager wins every time”.

– https://www.mentalhealthworks.net/