USING ATTACHMENT THEORY TO COMPARE TRADITIONAL ACTION RESEARCH AND APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY ERIC H.

NEILSEN Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio 44106 INTRODUCTION Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is now a well established technique for organizational analysis, design and transformation. (Fitzgerald, Murrell, & Miller, 2003; Fry, Barrett, Seiling, & Whitney, 2002; Ludema, Whitney, Mohr, & Griffin. 2003). It distinguishes itself from more traditional action research by its emphases on generative thinking (Bright et al, 2004). While traditional action research is built around a problem solving process, proponents of appreciative inquiry downplay problem solving and tout AI as more strength based, highlighting analysis of the best in an organization=s past and present, and using that as a basis for envisioning and implementing new designs. We argue that the proponents of appreciative inquiry have put traditional problem solving approaches in unduly bad light. They say that problem solving promotes deficit thinking, identifying what is wrong with something so that it can be fixed, rather than what is right about something that can be embraced more fully and amplified (Whitney & Trosten-Bloom, 2003). While acknowledging the power of appreciative inquiry, we disagree with the notion that human difficulties should not be construed in problematic terms. Consider for example a group of scientists who run into challenges during an important project (Houston, We have a problem!@), or a group of altruistic volunteers searching for ways to relieve others= suffering. In both instances one might argue that the actors involved are both enthusiastic and problem oriented. The underlying issue as we see it is not whether a given situation is framed as a problem or as an opportunity, but rather, whether the actors involved experience the situation as something that bestirs them to think at their best, to achieve the highest levels of collaboration, and to fulfill their needs and aspirations as fully as possible. We suggest that the absence of positive energy in some problem solving efforts is not attributable to deficit thinking, to the cognitive logic of problem solving, but rather, to the quality of attachment people have to each other and to their organizations in the moments when problem solving is encouraged. Appreciative inquiry has a major advantage in such a situation because its earlier stages tend to involve activities which heighten what we will call secure organizational attachments, as a prelude to dealing with material that might raise individual and collective anxiety. But traditional action research that starts with an attempt to create a clear problem definition can be equally effective provided the individuals involved already have secure organizational attachments and feel comfortable in collaborating with each other. Our formulation is based on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988), which originated in the child development literature and more recently has been embraced by adult therapists. Attachment theory offers a conceptualization of an ideal caregiver-child relationship, called a secure attachment bond, which clinical adult psychologists argue is recreated in the ideal therapist/patient bond (Fosha, 2000). We would aver it is also an ideal which OD practitioners aspire to in their relationships with clients. Attachment theory also offers conceptualizations of
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alternative kinds of attachment bonds (preoccupied, dismissing, fearful) that create challenges not only for healthy child development but also, we suggest, for both traditional action research and appreciative inquiry. The two techniques, moreover, deal with such insecure attachments in markedly different ways. Attachment Theory Attachment theory highlights the importance of the bond between mother (primary caregiver) and child in the latter=s growth and development (Bowlby, 1969; Bretherton,1995). Bowlby argued that the bond is an evolutionary adaptation. Children who remain in close proximity to their mothers and who behave in ways that induce the latters= help, are more likely to survive than those who do not. The attachment bond begins with an emphasis on physical proximity, but soon involves a psychological component as the child develops a mental model (an internal working model) of how the mother will behave in response to particular behaviors on the part of the child (Main et al, 1985). Continuous support and sensitivity on the part of the mother provide the child with a sense of safety that allows it to explore and learn from its environment and allows the mother to educate the child both emotionally and cognitively, helping it to recognize emotions, develop a language for thinking about them, understand and control one=s impulses in the service of adaptive goals, and understand how other people=s behavior also is driven by the same phenomena. If the caregiver provides physical support but not sensitivity, the child may not develop adaptive emotion management skills, but it will still seek the security of the mother=s proximity and protection. In fact, the need for such security is so strong that the child will learn to handle emotions in any way the mother demands. This has the effect of promoting the development in the child of its mothers strengths and weaknesses in managing the interplay between cognition and emotion. Thus, different ways of integrating these phenomena are passed down from generation to generation. Fosha (2000) recapitulated the field=s research findings in terms a two dimensional model, with one dimension being the capacity, or lack thereof, to have good access to one=s own and the other=s feelings, and the other dimension delineating the capacity, or lack thereof, to act adaptively in the face of strong feelings generated by threats to sever the attachment bond. Combining the two dimensions yields four attachment styles: 1) Secure - autonomous: (Feeling and dealing while relating). Secure-autonomous caregivers have the ability to process painful affects without resorting to defensive strategies. The child not only benefits from good parenting but also internalizes the basic skills necessary to eventually develop his own affective competence. 2) Insecure-preoccupied: (Feeling but not dealing). Insecure-preoccupied caregivers are unable to modulate their affect; the anxiety generated by its intensity overpowers them and interferes with functioning (Fosha, 2000: 52). They have difficulty reliably handling the child=s distress, and the child who is not being helped might even be called on to take care of his caregiver. As a result, the child becomes preoccupied with the parents emotional state and is incapable of dealing (taking action) adaptively in difficult situations. Insecure-dismissing: (Dealing but not feeling). Insecure-dismissing caregivers maintain their composure by defensively minimizing the importance of relationships and being affectively flat (Fosha, 2000: 52). They do not emotionally engage with either themselves or the other. Consequently, the child feels abandoned, experiencing his emotions as worthless and shameful, and internalizes
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the caregiver=s internal working model as a way of coping with the pain of rejection associated with emotionally unresponsive parenting. While capable of dealing adaptively, it becomes numb to feeling emotion. Unresolved-disorganized attachment: (Not feeling and not dealing). Unresolved-disorganized caregivers lose both contact and coherence; momentarily paralyzed on one side or the other of a dissociative state, they become unable to parent, and in that moment the child undergoes the trauma of loss. Fear, a major disruptive affect if not relationally contained, is transmitted to the child, who is left completely unprotected in the face of helpless parental abdication (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 1999) (Fosha, 2000: 53). Consequently, it adapts a disorganized way of both feeling and dealing itself. According to Fosha, just as caregivers have different capabilities to feel and deal in their interactions with their children, adults possess the same range of attachment styles in their relations with each other and seek therapy when their insecure attachment experiences are so thoroughly compromised that their emotional pain is unbearable. The role of the therapist is to be for the patient in the moment the secure caregiver this person never had. The act of being there in a supportive, sensitive and empathic way allows the patient to let go of defenses, hold anxiety in check, experience fully and authentically core emotions and states of mind, and to internalize a new, healthier mental model of attachment relationships. Likewise, we aver that for organizations to develop most effectively, the critical ingredient is for their members to revisit the compromises they have made in how they manage their cognitive and emotional worlds in order to maintain security in their organizational roles. Just as insecure attachments with important caregivers lie at the root of poor individual development, insecure organizational attachments lie at the root of less than optimal organization development. And in turn, just as individual therapists use different techniques to remedy insecure attachments, so do organization development specialists use different techniques to remedy insecure organizational attachments. Two techniques that differ markedly in their approaches to overcoming insecure organizational attachments are traditional action research and appreciative inquiry. Before we address them, however, we need to clarify our conceptualization of organizational attachment. Toward a Theory of Organizational Attachment Attachment theory to date has focused on bonds between individuals. Its proponents have made a case for identifying the attachment bond as distinguishable from other affective relationships, such as friendships. Weiss, for example, sited proximity seeking, evidence of a secure base, and separation protest as criteria for infant attachment bonds (1982). We would argue that adults hold internal working models of their attachments to their employing organizations that have qualities that parallel the infant-caregiver bond: 1. Proximity-seeking: Just as the infant will attempt to remain within the protective range of the attachment figure, adults attempt to remain within the protective range of their employing organizations. 2. Secure base: Just as in the presence of an attachment figure, so long as there is no threat, an infant will give indication of comfort and security, one can argue that employees who do not experience threats from their employers, tend to give indications of comfort and security in their everyday work. 3. Separation protest: Just as threat to continued accessibility by the infant to the attachment figure or actual separation will give rise to protest and to attempts to ward off the attachment figure=s loss or to regain the attachment figure=s presence, so will threats to adults=

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continued accessibility to their organizations and their ongoing roles (and relationships within them) give rise to protest and attempts to ward off those losses. Like interpersonal attachments, moreover, we suggest that individuals= organizational attachments can take at least four general forms. Evidence for this is readily available in the OD literature. For example, Neilsen (1978, 1984) described an interview feedback program conducted in two outpatient departments of a large medical center. The answers to questions about the pluses and minuses of ones current job, role relationships, and formal organization policies and procedures were themed, appropriately disguised to hide individual identities, and fed back separately to each department and with an invitation to use them as a springboard for future development activities. Four different kinds of responses to the data were evident in the feedback sessions. Neilsen explained them as manifestations of different combinations of two values, 1) candor about ones organizational experience, or the lack thereof, and 2) willingness to take responsibility for ones own behavior, or alternatively, to give it to others. However, he offered little by way of a theory of how these values might have developed. We suggest that attachment theory fills that lacuna. Candor echoes Foshas capacity to feel dimension, and taking responsibility for ones own behavior echoes her ability to deal dimension. The four responses to feedback, in turn, recapitulate Foshas four attachment styles transmuted into adult organization life (See Figure 1). Thus, the kind of response Neilsen and his colleagues were trying to amplify was characterized as, Interest in the process, Inquiry into the data.@ Clients responding in this way approached the feedback data in the spirit in which it was intended, expressing surprise at viewpoints they had not heard of before, and trying to broaden their awareness (their mental models) of the organization=s dynamics. Clients who mouthed platitudes about the process while attacking imagined quoters were characterized as valuing self responsibility but also being closed about their organizational experience, as opposed to being open and candid. This kind of response, we suggest, also reflects an insecure-dismissing attachment to the organization, where individuals have been socialized into ignoring or repressing their emotional worlds and refrain from integrating the emotional dimension of their experience into their ongoing communications with each other. By contrast, clients who expressed outrage toward the process and tended to deny the messages in the data, were characterized as valuing candor but also preferring to give responsibility for their actions to others, rather than embrace self-responsibility. They can also be seen as having been socialized into insecure-preoccupied attachments to the organization, where vigilant attention to and protection of the emotional state of their leaders drives out their ability to act autonomously. Thus new data that threaten the status quo also threaten their sense of security, since it may change their support from powerful leaders. Finally, clients who expressed apathy about the process and skepticism toward the data, were characterized as valuing neither candor nor self responsibility, but rather, giving responsibility for their behavior to others and being closed about their organizational experiences. They can also be seen developing an adult response to capricious management, creating a mask over their feelings to prevent manipulation and losing all interest in autonomous action for fear of superiors capricious reaction to it. Exploring the Differences between Traditional Action Research and Appreciative Inquiry Rather than devalue traditional action research in favor of appreciative inquiry, attachment theory invites one to consider the possibility that there is nothing wrong with problem

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solving per se. Client responses to OD initiatives will depend on the kinds of attachment bonds the clients have with their organization. Dismissing attachments arguably will prevail when the unfeeling pursuit of self interest has been experienced as a primary criterion for continued survival. Preoccupied attachments will prevail when actors have been obliged to put responsiveness to their superiors moods over adaptive action in order to maintain job security. Fearful attachments will predominate when people experience their management as capriciousness, responsive neither to their emotions nor the dictates of successful job performance. Finally, secure attachments will predominate when those involved have consistently experienced both emotional and instrumentally adaptive support. This raises the question, if the way initiatives are conceived does not account for the strength of AI, what is it that creates greater emotional uplift in the latter when compared to some traditional action research efforts? We suggest that AI offers a more direct way to move people into secure relationships as an initial element in the improvement process. That in turn allows a greater proportion of the membership to engage wholeheartedly and non-defensively with each other and have more time to explore and discover new paths of collective action. Traditional forms of action research use a primarily cognitive approach (Neilsen, 1984). Data are gathered regardless of the emotional content they evoke. Subsequently, current conditions are juxtaposed against the ideal and the differences confronted. People respond to such confrontation in terms of the kind of attachment to the organization they already have, and therefore, the quality of the results depends at least in part on the proportion of participants who already have secure attachments, and on the resources and leadership skills the latter possess.. Appreciative inquiry, on the other hand, starts with appreciative interviews that invite participants to remember and relive in the moment their most positive past organizational experiences. This is essentially equivalent to asking the participants to remember and reexperience secure attachments. The resurrection of such experiences is accompanied by a collaborative attempt between interviewer and interviewee to identify the contextual factors that created or fostered that experience. In this author=s experience, such activities almost invariably include descriptions of secure attachments with many of the people the person was interacting with at the time, plus the identification of structures and policies providing a secure basis for action, opportunities for individual growth and exploration, and the presence of group norms and values fostering secure relationships. These insights in turn are then contributed to a shared data base, and it is from this collection of ideas that new organization design are collectively imagined. The subsequent juxtaposition of the new designs against current realities, of course, leads to the identification of gaps that represent Aproblems to be solved.@ However, the fact that the broaching of such problems in implementation has been preceded by appreciative interviewing and analysis, can be seen from an attachment theory perspective as having a major impact on the energy and emotional valence of the participants. For rather than address the issues surfaced from within the context of current attachment styles, many of which are suboptimal, the preceding activities induce participants, if only temporarily, to move as far as they can into a secure space. And just as with infants in secure relationships with their caregivers, such emotional security raises tolerance for dealing with threatening material and fosters spontaneous, exploratory, and generative organization development. REFERENCES AVAILABLE FROM THE AUTHOR

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FIGURE 1. Foshas Attachment Typology Overlaid on Neilsens Typology of Reactions to Feedback Data and the Values Supporting Them Fosha: CANNOT DEAL Neilsen: Gives Responsibility for Ones Own Behavior to Others Fosha: Insecure preoccupied Attachment Fosha: CAN FEEL Neilsen: Outrage Toward the Process; Denial of the data: Fosha: CAN DEAL Neilsen: Takes Responsibility for Ones Own behavior Fosha: Secure autonomous Attachment Neilsen: Interest in the Process; Inquiry Into the Data: Its useful to have the quotes without the authors. Anyone could have said this. The comment about was something I never thought of before. I dont agree with the statement that Fosha: Insecuredismissing Attachment Neilsen: Platitudes Toward the Process; Attacks on Imagined Quoters: Glad to have things out on the table. We needed this. Just watch, nothing will happen. What they need is a good swift kick in Source: Adapted from Neilsen, Eric H. 1984. Becoming an OD Practitioner. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall: 210-211; and Fosha, Diana. 2000. The Transforming Power of Affect. New York: Basic Books: 52-53.

Neilsen: Candid About Ones I think this is dangerous. Organizational Experience You should never have printed things like this. Why wasnt I told to my face? We dont really have any problems. Insecure-Fearful Attachment Fosha: CANNOT FEEL Neilsen: Closed About Ones Organizational Experience Neilsen: Apathy About the Process; Skepticism About the Data: I could have said more, but I didnt think it was worth it. Everyone knows this already.

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