Why do some people greet change with curiosity while others respond with worry, withdrawal or resistance? The answer does not necessarily lie in the change itself, but in what each person believes they stand to lose by going through it.
This article explores the part played by attachment theory in how we react to change at work. It shows how attachment styles can shape behaviour in the face of uncertainty, and why leaders have every reason to identify the strength anchors that allow people to recover stability, confidence and the capacity to act.
For executives, HR directors and talent management professionals, this perspective adds a valuable complement to personality assessment. It helps make better sense of team dynamics, support transitions and create the conditions for sustainable leadership capable of preserving performance, innovation and engagement all at once.
Most leaders come up against resistance to change at one point or another. Rather fewer of them understand the psychological mechanisms behind it. Attachment theory may help explain how people react during periods of transition and help leaders support their teams better.
Episode 148 of the podcast The Science of Personality set out to explore the psychology of change. Co-hosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp welcomed Victoria Grady, PhD, who teaches management as an associate professor at George Mason University's Costello College of Business.
"I am, by nature, someone who is fairly resistant to change," Victoria explains. "When I started studying change in order to learn to become more flexible myself, I became fascinated by the part attachment theory plays in how we go through the change process."
This article looks at the tension between innovation and change, at the influence of attachment theory on our reactions to transitions, and at the essential role of strength anchors.
"After fifteen years spent studying attachment behaviours, I do not think it is really change that people resist. I think their resistance is about the loss they anticipate as a result of that change," Victoria explains.
Put differently, people do not necessarily resist change itself so much as the uncertainty that comes with moving from a known situation to a future one.
The psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott had already worked on the notion of transitional space in the 1950s.¹ Resistance to that space of transition can originate in uncertainty, instability and the anxiety attached to the prospect of a loss.
Innovation inherently brings change, and therefore an element of risk. Organisations often find themselves caught in a contradiction: they expect their people to innovate while asking them to cope with the uncertainty that innovation generates.
It is entirely legitimate, then, for people to wonder what they stand to lose along the way.
Those losses can also be intangible: a drop in productivity, a decline in creativity, even a weakening of the capacity to innovate itself.
Victoria cites the example of a technology start-up that left a workspace made up of a single large room and moved into offices with several separate areas.
Roughly half the staff were enthusiastic about the move, while the other half felt more uncertain.
Once they had settled into the new premises, productivity collapsed.
Victoria found that the creative connections which had developed naturally in the old open space had given way to silos in the new offices. As soon as a space was recreated where people could gather and talk, the start-up's performance improved.
"Identifying and providing support mechanisms for people going through a change is essential to its success," Victoria points out.
In this example, the mechanism that fed the start-up's innovation was quite simply the sense of connection between people.
Whether staff were naturally resilient or more resistant to change, all of them needed that point of support to return to their previous level of productivity.
Resistance to change can find part of its origin in our attachment style.
Attachment theory suggests that the emotional bonds we maintain with others influence how we react to stressors.
Our development in early childhood, mainly the relationship with our primary attachment figure between birth and the age of five, helps shape the way we create and manage attachment bonds.
While anyone can feel some form of stress when change arrives, individual differences in attachment style can influence how strongly resistance is expressed:
A dismissive attachment style tends to come with real skill at working out which support mechanisms are needed during a period of change.
People with secure attachment also show real subtlety in the way they seek out different kinds of support.
These support mechanisms, referred to here as strength anchors, play a decisive part in how we react to change.
Strength anchors can take various forms: they may be people, objects, settings or values.
"A strength anchor is what allows you to steady yourself when you feel that first wave of uncertainty, instability or anxiety tied to a change," Victoria explains.
She mentions in particular her work with a public sector organisation whose leader was about to depart after thirty-five years there.
People across the organisation felt sadness at the loss and struggled to reconcile their sense of grief with their wish to celebrate the new chapter opening up for their leader.
He then convened a meeting bringing everyone together in order to acknowledge their emotions explicitly. He also handed each person a small stress toy printed with the organisation's mission.
"That leader had created a culture which, even in his absence, went on flourishing and became more productive, more innovative and more effective, because he had given his people the conviction that they were capable of succeeding on their own," Victoria explains.
Many organisations do not take enough time to acknowledge what is hard during a transformation, nor to talk openly about how to move forward.
In this example, the leader had previously been the organisation's principal strength anchor himself.
But gradually, the new anchor did not turn out to be the object handed to staff. It shifted towards something deeper: the shared values of the organisational culture.
Effective leaders thus help their teams identify the element, tangible or intangible, capable of supporting them through a transition.
Just as personality shapes team dynamics, attachment style can play an important part too.
Victoria has, for instance, worked with a team made up of people with differing attachment styles.
"Once they understood how to work with one another, they became an extremely high-performing team. But it took them a little time," she recounts.
She explains in particular that one team member with a preoccupied attachment style had initially caused frustration among colleagues, until everyone came to understand each other's ways of working and needs.
From a change management perspective, understanding how to work together is an essential dimension of getting through transformations effectively and limiting change fatigue.
Organisations that assume healthy team dynamics will appear spontaneously, with no period of adjustment, are holding unrealistic expectations.
Work devoted to improving collective dynamics can, among other things, reveal how attachment styles and personality tendencies shape performance at work.
There is no perfect combination of attachment styles that guarantees a high-performing team.
"The magic formula is taking the time to understand who is actually on your team," Victoria explains.
Effective leaders seek to understand what each member contributes, what each one needs in order to feel supported, and what keeps each one connected to the team's mission.
That understanding also helps reduce resistance to change when transitions, inevitable in the life of an organisation, arrive.
For professionals in talent management, assessment and development, or coaching, this approach is a reminder of how far understanding individual differences is an essential lever for team transformation.
The way an organisation or a leader introduces a change can have a considerable influence on how that change is ultimately received.
Victoria recommends several principles.
Every leader and every team member can observe their colleagues' behaviour at work and try to understand how they form bonds.
Attachment is part of our biological instincts and stays with us throughout our lives.
The aim, however, is not to box people into categories, but to better understand the mechanisms that can shape their reactions when their environment becomes uncertain.
The most relevant model or methodological framework for supporting the change process will depend on the organisation itself, on the nature of the transformation and on how it will affect people.
There is therefore no universal method: an effective HR strategy has to take account of the human context in which the change is happening.
Change management efforts can become more positive when they establish a link between the transformation and whatever feeds people's satisfaction at work.
Apple, for example, has come through major changes because its spirit of innovation is a lasting anchor, beyond the particular figure of Steve Jobs.
Seen this way, organisational culture and shared values can become powerful reference points when an organisation goes through periods of uncertainty.
Leadership during change has to give people access to that transitional object, in the broad sense, which helps them through uncertainty and the sense of loss.
It may be concrete, symbolic or deeply tied to the culture of the organisation.
"The main piece of advice I would give leaders would be to take the time to recognise that you yourself, like everyone who works with you, needs the support a transitional object can provide," Victoria explains.
"An anchor has the power to shape the change strategy, whatever the methodological framework chosen."
Resistance to change is not simply an obstacle to be removed. It is often a signal: of uncertainty, of an anticipated loss, or of a need for safety that has not yet found an answer.
For executives and those responsible for talent management, this reading opens up a particularly useful perspective. Understanding personality, relational styles and support needs makes it possible to support people without reducing their reactions to a simple lack of commitment or willingness.
Personality assessment, when it forms part of a broader approach to skills development and to understanding human dynamics, can thus help pinpoint what individuals and teams need in order to come through transformations.
The challenge is not to do away with all resistance, but to create the conditions in which people recover enough safety to move forward.
This is precisely where sustainable leadership proves itself: building organisations whose performance does not rest on a single person, but on a culture, on values and on reference points solid enough to let teams keep innovating and succeeding when their environment shifts.
Within an approach to developing leadership potential, transforming teams or shaping HR strategy, identifying these anchors can therefore become a genuine lever for lasting performance.
Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena; A Study of the First Not-Me Possession. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34(2), 89-97. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1954-02354-001
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: Understanding Resistance to Change Through Attachment Theory
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