Adam Lane Smith: Successful at Work, Struggling in Love? Your Attachment Style May Be Why | Relationships | E420

Hala Taha (0:00)

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Adam Lane Smith (1:08)

If you are avoidantly attached, you probably are going to have a very difficult time sharing personal emotional context. You will intellectualize things instead. You'll have a difficult time making direct eye contact. You will feel uncomfortable after sex with your partner because you don't know how long you're supposed to sit with them and you're waiting, and waiting, and waiting to just get up and go, go, go, go, go.

Hala Taha (1:26)

We hear a lot about attachment styles when it comes to dating and relationships. But the truth is that attachment styles show up everywhere. They shape how we communicate, how we build trust, and even how we lead at work. To help us understand this better, I brought in Adam Lane Smith, an attachment specialist, author, and relationship coach.

Adam Lane Smith (1:46)

I do see a lot of people with anxious attachments struggle. That's one of the hardest styles to build real leadership with because everybody else's feelings are more important. You are the momma of the whole company, man or woman. You are managing everybody's feelings all of the time, and the research indicates the best way to burn out your best talent is to leave them afraid and performing.

Hala Taha (2:05)

Help us understand the difference between what a fear-based environment looks like versus a safe environment in a company.

Adam Lane Smith (2:11)

A fear-based environment, when there's a problem, everybody on the call suddenly goes quiet. You're actually no longer their leader that they trust. At a certain point, they're not thinking about what's great for the company anymore. They're thinking, how do I minimize?

Hala Taha (2:23)

Now, AI is actually impacting our relationships and a lot of people are getting from AI what they should actually be getting from their husband, their wife.

Adam Lane Smith (2:32)

I will say three things on AI.

Hala Taha (2:34)

This is juicy, I can't wait to hear it.

Adam Lane Smith (2:36)

One is.

Hala Taha (2:38)

Adam, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

Adam Lane Smith (2:41)

Thank you for having me here.

Hala Taha (2:42)

So you are an attachment specialist. You've been studying this for 15 years plus. You're one of the biggest experts in the world on this topic. So I wanna start there. I just wanna have people understand what is attachment exactly?

Adam Lane Smith (2:56)

Attachment is the way that we build relationships based on either trust or fear. That's really it. It's that simple. Either you build a structure where you believe that you can trust the other person with openness, transparency, you build mutual loyalty together. There's something that we can talk about called symbiotic mutualism. It's a behavioral piece for biology.

Or you build structures based on guessing, fear and performance. You base structures on, can I get one more day from you? And if so, what does it cost me? And most people, the research actually indicates about 65% of people are doing that second structure instead, even at work.

Hala Taha (3:30)

Oh, wow. So help us understand, what are the key attachment styles? What are the attachment styles that we need to know about?

Adam Lane Smith (3:37)

Sure. Do you want the originals they created back in 1950s or do you want the updated ones that I've built since then?

Hala Taha (3:41)

How about both? Talk to us about where it started and how you're evolving it.

Adam Lane Smith (3:45)

Absolutely. Originally, they had a dichotomy split. You're either securely attached where you believe that you can be open, transparent, and clear with other people. Doesn't mean you can trust everybody, but it means that you can work openly and clearly with people and everything is right on the table so you can build exchanges, not transactions, not one-off, but ongoing mutually fulfilling systems where you both get to benefit. That creates symbiotic mutualism which says, when we combine together and work effectively, we get so much better than we would get as individuals.