The 4 Attachment Styles and How They Show Up at Work

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Careers, Business, Management

4.9 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Helen and Sarah borrow brilliance from the psychology of attachment styles and explore what this concept can teach us about working relationships. Sparked by a Harvard Business Review article on managing insecure leaders, they unpack the four main attachment styles and what they might look like in the workplace: secure, anxious, avoidant-dismissive, and fearful-avoidant. If you’ve ever wondered why certain working relationships feel easy while others feel surprisingly tricky, this episode will give you a useful lens for understanding behaviour and adapting in ways that help you work better together. Episode 543 🦞 Learn Like A Lobster: 🇺🇸PRH US - https://bit.ly/3KxTeBn 🇬🇧 Amazon UK - https://bit.ly/46lj8Av (00:00) Attachment styles at work (01:14) The four attachment styles explained (09:13) Helen and Sarah reflect on their own styles (22:20) How secure styles show up at work (25:06) Managing anxious behaviours (29:01) Avoidant-dismissive patterns and how to adapt (34:18) Avoidant-fearful behaviours and building trust 📚 Resources Mentioned How to Manage an Insecure Leader (Harvard Business Review) https://hbr.org/2026/03/how-to-manage-an-insecure-leader For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free career tools: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 🦞 Join the Learn Like a Lobster Sprint: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNQl9gsac8BXnWe2qoGuHkLKwsygjP_Ma&si=l7kODG3JpopH0Irz 📮 Get Squiggly Careers in Action in your inbox: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books: The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://www.amazingif.com/books/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast where every week we borrow some
0:06.3	brilliance and try to turn those ideas and that curiosity into useful action for you and your
0:12.8	squiggly career. And so today we are going to borrow brilliance from the concept of attachment
0:18.9	styles, which I have known about for a while, probably in a very
0:23.3	much like an out-of-work concept, because it's the sort of thing that I'm quite interested in
0:26.9	and curious about. And often, when I'm talking to friends about their relationships, it will
0:30.9	often come back to what's your attachment style, what's their attachment style.
0:34.9	And I knew that Sarah would never give this the thumbs up to talk about on the podcast until it was featured in Harvard Business Review.
0:43.3	And I was on an aeroplane last night to come to Toronto, which is where I now am, because we are doing some Learn Like a Lobster work here as part of our book launch.
0:54.8	And I was reading Harvard Business Review.
0:56.4	And there was an article in it.
0:57.5	Let me read you the article, Sarah, because I said that Sarah a screenshot.
1:01.2	How to manage an insecure leader three steps for dealing with anxious or avoidant executives.
1:08.8	And anyone who is familiar with the concept of attachment stars will know that a lot of it is about whether you've got a secure attachment or an anxious attachment or an avoidant attachment.
1:19.3	And this whole article is about when you spot those styles in the people that you work with, particularly your leader, what should you do about it?
1:29.4	And so I've managed to get attachment styles on the podcast. And I thought you were just going to say,
1:33.9	this is how we detach. I was like, we could be attached and now it's time to detach.
1:39.1	No, you need to stay. Well, I guess you need to adapt dependent on someone's attachment style. If you care about working with them, right? I guess you need to adapt, dependent on someone's attachment style.
1:46.5	If you care about working with them, right?
1:48.2	I mean, it's a choice.
1:49.0	You could just be like, oh, that's how they are, this is who I am and like, I'm not going
1:54.3	to do anything different.
	...

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