Do I have what it takes to be a leader? Why do I struggle to express emotions? Why can't I inspire my team? Am I too dependent on others? Do these type of questions seem familiar, either related to you or someone you know?
Researchers believe that in many of such cases, these negative perceptions relate to attachment disorders. In this edition of the CL weekly, we would like to bring forth some thoughts on the relationship between attachment patterns and effectiveness of leaders. Few highlights from a blog written by Professor Manfred Kets de Vries from Insead:
- Psychoanalyst John Bowlby noted that the ability to form attachments is a part of our evolutionary heritage. A child's thoughts, emotions, behavior all contribute to how s/he engages and handles relationships in future
- How these attachment patterns resolve themselves influences our self-efficiency, self-confidence and self-esteem
- Recent work in this area talks about attachment style based on two dimensions:
- anxiety that drives the behavior of abandonment and rejection
- avoidance which reflects the discomfort associated with closeness and dependency.
- People with low anxiety and low avoidance have secure attachment patterns that leads to good social skills and high sense of self esteem
- People with high avoidance patterns either tend to be dismissive (those with low anxiety) or are fearful (those with high anxiety) and find relating to others difficult
- Safe and secure environment that makes people face and deal with their vulnerabilities or support from a coach, psychotherapist may enable an individual enhance capacity to build trust based relationship and express emotions better
Read more at INSEAD's blog. (Thanks, CL)
