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| Worthy distractions. |
I really should be working on my
research project right now, but sometimes i find life and the topics
of my research project too exciting and obvious that it amazes me
that nobody really knows much about this stuff. Today we bought
guinea pigs and these things are stinking cute, but are also further
easy distractions from what I should be doing.
It's a bit of a sad state and I confess
that I haven't looked at the materials for the research in well over
a month. I have looked at piles of comic books, written articles and
reviews for a variety of sites, and even entered into some severe
therapeutic parenting. No research.
I needed a plan and that's where this
starts. I figure if I can start pushing out content based on the
research topic and peoples contributions to the topic, it can serve
my lit review. It can act as sort of a roadmap. It can also fill the
desire I have to create some awareness about the topic. I figure if
people knew a bit more about this exciting relatively new application
of relatively old concepts, they may be able to consider their
workplaces in the context. It's a new lens that has been a distinct
revelation for me.
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| Dr. Bowlby |
Attachment theory has been around since
1982 when Bowlby first came up with the concept. The way I can best
explain attachment is as a sort of unspoken language where trust,
self confidence, and empathy are the moderating rules. Just like any
language, we have to experience it to be fluent in it and to utilize
it. If we as children didn't have a secure and trusting bond with an
attachment figure (a caregiver) we will likely have little deeper and
natural orientation to provide those things.
Of course, right? We know this to be
true. Babies need love in order to thrive. I don't mean love as an
abstract feeling, but rather as an act of nurturing where levels of
safety of the world are communicated. As simple a concept, it's
actually very difficult for a lot of people to create attachments.
The attachment style that we develop has been shown to influence our
experiences in other relationships through the lifespan. The large
body that this attachment theory has been applied to has been in
romantic relationships.
We know however that there are other
relationships, at times just as emotionally intimate as our romantic
relationships, that have a major bearing in our lives. These are the
ones that exist in the workplace. In a lot of cases, coworkers can
see more of each other than they do their spouses, so of course the
dynamics of attachment are going to play a role in this.
Where levels of romantic satisfaction
were attributed to the different attachment styles, we could likely
say the same thing for job satisfaction where a number of very
complex and dynamic relationships occur. If all relationships depend
on the attachment styles of those involved, we can see just how
intricate this network of attachments are in the workplace. The
supervisor or manager will have their attachment styles which
influence the satisfactions of subordinates who have their own
attachment styles.
That's the plan of this blog, then, is
to scrutinize and shed light into some of those dynamics and to
reveal to you this newborn gem of insight that exists in the
literature on leadership and organizational dynamics. Come along for the trip and see how this stuff applies. It may for some and not for others, but there may be a deeper explanation for that as well.
