Introducing our new attachment-informed leadership (AIL) framework

Leadership comes in many different shapes and forms. As eloquently pointed out by Stogdill, there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it.

According to Northouse, it nonetheless appears that four components are central to leadership: (a) Leadership is a process (i.e., a transactional event occurring between the leader and the followers), (b) leadership involves influence (i.e., the effect the leader has on the followers), (c) leadership occurs in groups (i.e., leadership is about one individual leader influencing a group of followers), and (d) leadership involves common goals (i.e., the leader and the followers have a common purpose). Northouse summarises these four central components of leadership as follows:

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2022).

Despite the identification of four central leadership components yielding a relatively concise definition of leadership as illustrated above, a multitude of approaches for further conceptualising, classifying and measuring leadership have emerged in the past3. These approaches focus — amongst others — on traits, skills/abilities, behaviours and situations, and use a variety of labels like transformational, authentic, servant, adaptive, inclusive and ethical.

While all of these elements add valuable information, there’s still a lack of an overarching principle of leadership. In this post, we would like to suggest that this overarching principle of leadership should be attachment.

It may not be immediately obvious why attachment is foundational for effective leadership. Because to reach such a conclusion, one needs to “connect many different dots” in a way that’s not usually and readily done.

Our post will explain this process of “connecting many different dots” by illustrating the tight links between attachment and leadership. To do so, we’ll use our practice- and evidence-based empirical and theoretical insights as part of the Social Neuroscience of Human Attachment (SoNeAt). We’ll point out how:

• Social connection supports health via energy conservation and co-regulation (drawing upon Social Baseline Theory).
• Attachment strategies affect workplace functioning, with insecure attachment styles requiring more compensatory energy, thereby reducing capacity for creativity, resilience, and interpersonal effectiveness.
• Caregiving and leadership intertwine, since leadership inherently involves caregiving roles. A leader’s attachment style shapes their caregiving behaviour and their team’s regulatory capacity.

Our attachment-informed leadership (AIL) framework is distinctive because it builds upon many years of experience and expertise at the intersection of developmental psychology, social psychology, social neuroscience and leadership.

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