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Attachment at Work: Understanding Trust, Reassurance and Connection

Attachment styles can offer another perspective on how comfortable we feel with trust, reassurance, independence and connection in relationships.

These patterns can sometimes become more noticeable when there is uncertainty, pressure or a relationship feels particularly important.

Within Discover Insights, Attachment at Work is one of three complementary perspectives. It is used alongside DiSC and Enneagram to add context to working relationships and recurring patterns, rather than treating an attachment style as a fixed explanation for everything we do.

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Attachment Styles - hands cupped round in a circle

What are the different attachment styles?

Attachment theory describes broad patterns in how people experience closeness, trust, reassurance and independence. These patterns are not fixed personality types, and context and experience can influence how they show up.

Within Discover Insights, the focus is less on giving you a label and more on exploring whether any of these patterns help you make sense of your own experiences and working relationships.

Secure attachment style

People with a more secure attachment pattern are generally comfortable with both connection and independence. At work, this can show up in being able to ask for support, receive feedback, communicate needs and trust other people without feeling that every disagreement threatens the relationship.

Pressure or uncertainty can still be uncomfortable, but there is often more capacity to stay connected while also maintaining your own point of view.

Anxious attachment style

People with a more anxious attachment pattern may place greater importance on reassurance, approval and signs that a relationship is secure.

At work, this can sometimes show up as overthinking changes in tone or behaviour, seeking confirmation, worrying about how something has been interpreted or finding uncertainty in working relationships particularly distracting.


Greater awareness can help you notice when reassurance is genuinely needed and when you may be filling in gaps with assumptions.

Avoidant attachment style

People with a more avoidant attachment pattern may place greater value on independence, self-reliance and having space to work things through themselves.


At work, this can be a real strength, particularly where calmness, autonomy and independent problem-solving are useful. Under pressure, it may also show up as holding concerns back, finding it harder to ask for help, stepping away from difficult conversations or appearing more detached than intended.


Greater awareness can create more choice about when independence is helpful and when connection or support may be more useful.

When can understanding attachment patterns be useful?

Understanding attachment patterns can be useful when you want to become more curious about how you experience trust, support, independence and connection, particularly when pressure or uncertainty makes familiar responses more noticeable.

  • noticing when you may seek more reassurance or certainty from other people
  • exploring when independence or self-reliance becomes particularly important
  • understanding patterns around trust and asking for support
  • recognising what may change in working relationships when pressure rises
  • becoming more aware of expectations you bring into relationships
  • adding another perspective to a recurring relationship or leadership pattern

The purpose is greater awareness, not to decide that every difficult relationship or response is caused by attachment style.

How Attachment at Work fits within Discover Insights

Attachment at Work can add useful context, but it is only one part of the picture.

A familiar response can have several possible explanations. Someone seeking reassurance, becoming very independent or finding uncertainty difficult may be responding to the situation, the relationship, pressure, previous experience or a combination of different factors.

That is why Discover Insights brings Attachment at Work together with DiSC and Enneagram.

DiSC helps us explore observable behaviour and communication preferences.

Enneagram adds insight into some of the motivations and drivers that may sit underneath familiar behaviour.

Attachment at Work can help us explore expectations around trust, reassurance, independence and connection in working relationships.

When you complete Discover Insights, you complete all three assessments. I review the information before we meet, then we have a guided interpretation conversation where we explore what stands out and how the different perspectives may connect with your own experience.

The aim is practical self-understanding and curiosity, not to give you three fixed labels.

What’s included

Three assessments and reports, preparation and a 45 to 60-minute guided interpretation conversation.

£349 + VAT

Find out about Discover Insights

Testimonial

Learning about my attachment style has enabled me to understand how I instinctively react in relationships. I can understand my reaction when I perceived there to be conflict; which can be at times when there is no conflict apart from that I have created in my own thoughts. My behaviour in groups can be viewed through my attachment style, as hey can be viewed as a family.

Having an understanding of the source behind these behaviours has allowed me to reflect on them. This has given me the ability to notice them before they occur and the choice of how I behave. I can forgive myself when I fall into these patterns and see how important that relationship is to me. I have also noticed that I can respond to someone in a way that I would have to my mother, even when there is no connection there, as I have begun to understand that it is my perception of the persons characteristics or the position they hold that has triggered my attachment behaviour.

Ange Day

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