Greg Stevenson spent thirty years as a CEO before realizing attachment theory explained his leadership style. Early patterns about approval and safety don't stay in childhood; they shape how executives respond under pressure. Recognizing these hidden templates lets leaders make actual choices instead of running old relational scripts.
In the first semester, I encountered attachment theory— the way we form bonds early in life with caregivers, with the world, with safety itself. This creates what psychologists call internal working models— templates for how we relate to other people. And those templates are not left behind in childhood. They travel with us into every role we ever hold— into the workplace, Into the boardroom, into the CEO office. An executive who learned early that approval was conditional on performance will lead differently under pressure from one who grew up knowing that connection was stable regardless of results. Neither is better or worse necessarily, but they are fundamentally different. And when the stakes get high enough, those early templates get activated in ways that look like leadership behaviour, but are actually something much older and much deeper than strategy. I sat in that lecture and thought, I've watched this exact dynamic play out across 30 years of executive life, in myself, in the people around me. I just didn't have a name for what I was seeing.
