Psychological safety is the cornerstone of thriving teams and workplaces. In fact, research shows that when psychological safety exists, individuals feel valued, collaboration deepens, and innovation increases. That makes it an important aspect of your team or workplace culture.
But creating psychological safety, isn’t always easy. One reason for this may be that one critical but often overlooked factor that affects your team’s ability to build more psychological safety is your attachment style. Because building psychological safety is a whole team effort, attachment styles for everyone on the team can impact your team’s ability to create psychological safety.
Before we dive into attachment styles, let’s start with a refresher on psychological safety.
What is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety is a term coined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson. It is the belief that the work environment is safe to risk expressing yourself authentically. This means you feel you can ask questions when you don’t know, volunteer your ideas when they might be “out there”, or admit mistakes that might be embarrassing.
For purposes of this post, I’m focusing on you as team leader. This is because your behavior – the way you show up — is particularly important because of the amount of influence you have based on your status and authority you have. In turn, this makes your attachment style very relevant to how you interact with and relate to others.
So, do you create a climate of trust and safety? Or do your tendencies based on your attachment style work against creating the level of trust and safety required for your team to do its best work?
Attachment Styles and Their Impact on Psychological Safety
Let’s now turn to what an “attachment style” is and the 4 main attachment styles identified by psychologists. Your “attachment style” is the way you characteristically relate to others in close or important relationships, including those at work. It is primarily shaped by your early childhood experiences with caregivers and greatly influences how you interact with others, especially when you’re under stress.
In other words, your attachment style shapes how you approach trust, communication, and connection—all key elements in fostering a psychologically safe and ultimately productive environment. Thus, your attachment style will impact the degree to which you are able to build and maintain the conditions necessary to create adequate psychological safety.
There are four attachment styles, one of which is your primary style. Want to find out what your attachment style is? Take this free quiz to find out.
The Challenges of Creating Psychological Safety with Each of the 4 Attachment Styles
1. Secure Attachment
If you exhibit a secure attachment style, you have confidence in relationships, good emotional balance, and trust in others. Therefore, with this attachment style, you can create psychological safety more easily than others.
This is because you value open dialogue, encourage diverse perspectives, and handle mistakes with understanding rather than judgment. Your ability to regulate your emotions and communicate effectively makes team members feel respected and valued.
For example, with this style, you will most likely respond to a team member’s mistake by focusing on solutions to encourage learning and growth, instead of concentrating on who is to blame.
2. Anxious Attachment
If you have an anxious attachment style, you tend to show a need for approval, might be sensitive to rejection, and fear failure. With this style, you may unintentionally undermine psychological safety by frequently seeking validation or over-reacting emotionally to feedback.
While your empathy can make you approachable, your sensitivity might discourage team members from speaking openly because they don’t want to deal with an emotional response from you.
For example, you might overreact to constructive criticism, causing team members to hesitate to give you honest feedback in the future.
3. Avoidant Attachment
With an avoidant attachment style, you can be emotionally detached, prefer your independence, and be uncomfortable with being vulnerable. This means, you may struggle to create psychological safety because you are reluctant to engage with others on a heart-felt level.
You might dismiss team members’ concerns too easily or avoid difficult conversations, which can lead to a lack of trust and openness. While you often excel at logical decision-making, your emotional distance can make others feel unsupported or undervalued.
For example, you might downplay an employee’s request to receive feedback from you and inadvertently signal that you don’t value their contributions.
4. Disorganized Attachment
If you have a disorganized attachment style, you exhibit unpredictable behavior, which is a mix of anxious and avoidant tendencies as described previously. If you have this attachment style, you often create inconsistent environments, shifting between over-involvement and detachment. This can confuse team members and erode trust, which is the opposite of creating psychological safety. In other words, your team requires consistency, something you may struggle to provide.
For example, you might alternate between micromanaging or being overly involved with team members and neglecting your team. This means you end up creating an environment of uncertainty that stifles open communication with your team.
Ways To Address Your Attachment Tendencies
It’s estimated that approximately 50% of the U.S. population has a secure attachment style. This means that the remaining 50% of people in the country have one of the other 3 types. Even if you think you have an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment style, you are not doomed to be a bad leader. You can still develop the qualities needed to foster adequate psychological safety.
Here’s how:
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Raise Your Self-Awareness
Just by learning more about attachment styles, you’re already becoming more aware. Continue raising your awareness by recognizing how your attachment style shapes the way you show up for your team members. Using this awareness, reflect on how your behaviors might be perceived by your team then work to adjust your behavior(s) where necessary.
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Regulate Your Emotions
Use your increased self-awareness and start practicing how to manage your emotions, especially in high-pressure situations. Strive to model calmness, which will increase trust between you and your team because they will be able to reasonably predict that you won’t break down or lose your cool easily.
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Become an Active Listener
Show genuine interest in team members’ ideas and concerns with behaviors like eye contact, head nods, and questions that show you’re hearing what they say. Avoid showing dismissive or defensive reactions–even if feedback from others feels uncomfortable.
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Strive to Be Consistent
Be reliable and predictable in your actions. A steady presence helps build trust and reduces anxiety among team members.
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Seek and Act On Feedback
Encourage open dialogue by inviting then acting on feedback from your team. This will demonstrate your humility and build trust.
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Invest in Your Own Personal Growth
Depending on your particular situation, you can address attachment-related challenges through coaching, leadership training, or even therapy in some cases. With support, you can develop more secure leadership behaviors.
Final Thoughts
Your attachment style shapes how you as a leader relate to others, and that, in turn, influences your ability to create an environment of trust and safety. If you believe your attachment style is impacting your effectiveness at work, all is not lost. You can develop the awareness and skills that will enable you to a foster safe and collaborative team environment. By cultivating self-awareness and prioritizing trust-building behaviors, you can overcome attachment-related barriers between you and your team to create a psychologically safe workplace where your team feels safe to contribute, innovate, and thrive.
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🚀Want to work on your ability to creating psychological safety as a team leader, middle manager, or executive? Or maybe you want to explore team coaching for your whole team to collectively do so. Let’s discuss how I can help you.
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