How this instrument works
This is a 20-item structured self-assessment of your professional attachment profile, read across 5 dimensions: Secure Base Behaviours; Anxious Activation; Avoidant Distancing; Working Model Flexibility; and Earned Security. Each item is a concrete scenario with four forced-choice responses — no neutral midpoint, so every answer commits to a direction — and response order is shuffled on every run to vary position; this implementation has not been tested for bias reduction. 5 of the 20 items are reverse-keyed — the attractive-sounding response is the structurally weak one — with wording intended to challenge socially desirable framing; this design has not been tested for bias reduction.
Scoring combines an overall reading with a per-dimension profile. Cascade flags compare configured dimension totals with editorial thresholds. They do not establish a compound risk and may not reflect the item-level pattern. The result bands are editorial guidance, not clinical thresholds: they organise the reading, they do not describe.
Every dimension insight cites peer-reviewed literature, and most answer reveals do — 5 sources back this instrument, each with DOI metadata supplied at build time; source relevance and claim interpretation remain editorial judgments. Compiled by the High Performance Culture editorial team. Instrument v1.1 · August 2026.
Read the full assessment methodology →
- Items
- 20
- Dimensions
- 5
- Format
- Forced choice, 4 options
- Sources
- 5
- Instrument
- v1.1 · August 2026
The 5 editorial answer groups
Secure Base Behaviours
Strength here looks like seeking support when genuinely stuck, being a reliable presence for colleagues, staying engaged through difficulty, and raising concerns directly — using professional relationships as a resource under pressure rather than a risk to manage.
The vulnerable pattern: pulling back when things get difficult, absorbing concerns rather than voicing them, and keeping colleagues at a distance even when support would help.
Sample itemWhen you are working through a difficult problem at work, how would you honestly describe your habit around bringing in a colleague?
First structural move: Identify one professional relationship where you have been more self-contained than the work requires and share one genuine uncertainty with that person this week. A small act of openness lets you see what, if anything, changes when a colleague hears about it.
Go deeperProtocol: The Radical Candor Protocol →Glossary: Secure Attachment →
Anxious Activation
Strength here looks like trusting your own assessment of interactions, processing difficult exchanges and moving on, attributing neutral signals neutrally, and keeping colleagues' views as one input among many rather than a primary source of self-evaluation.
The vulnerable pattern: seeking reassurance after significant interactions, replaying difficult exchanges for extended periods, reading threat into neutral signals, and allowing one key person's approval to carry outsized weight on how work is going.
Sample itemAfter an important meeting or exchange with a manager or senior colleague, how often do you find yourself seeking confirmation that it went well?
First structural move: After your next significant meeting, write down your own read of how it went before checking with anyone else. Notice whether your own read and the other person's view differ.
Go deeperDeep dive: The Neuroscience of Negativity Bias →Glossary: Anxious Attachment →
Avoidant Distancing
Strength here looks like investing genuinely in professional relationships, asking for help without treating it as inadequacy, staying engaged during team stress, and taking relational feedback seriously rather than dismissing it as others' concern.
The vulnerable pattern: keeping professional relationships deliberately bounded, experiencing discomfort asking for help, withdrawing during team stress, and dismissing feedback about your relational style as irrelevant.
Sample itemThink about how close you actually let professional relationships get. Which of these best describes your pattern?
First structural move: The next time you notice a pull toward managing a professional difficulty alone, pause and ask one person for their view on it. You could try framing it as a professional exchange rather than a personal admission, and notice whether the ask feels more manageable.
Go deeperProtocol: The Self-Sabotage Protocol →Glossary: Avoidant Attachment →Glossary: Window of Tolerance →
Working Model Flexibility
Strength here looks like updating impressions readily when evidence changes, regularly reflecting on where your relational patterns come from, trying meaningfully different approaches when a dynamic is stuck, and taking self-challenging feedback seriously rather than defending against it.
The vulnerable pattern: holding first impressions despite accumulating evidence, rarely reflecting on the origins of your relational style, keeping your approach consistent even when a dynamic is not working, and rejecting feedback that challenges your account.
Sample itemThink about how your first read of a colleague tends to hold up over time as you see more evidence. Which of these sounds most like you?
First structural move: Pick one professional relationship where your initial impression has been most persistent. This week, actively look for one piece of evidence that challenges that impression. Treating early impressions as hypotheses rather than verdicts is something to try and observe.
Go deeperDeep dive: The Neuroscience of Reframing →Glossary: Cognitive Flexibility →
Earned Security
Strength here looks like actively engaging with repair when professional relationships break down, balancing support and autonomy flexibly, extracting coherent learning from relational setbacks without self-blame or blame of others, and staying regulated during conflict.
The vulnerable pattern: withdrawing or ending relationships rather than attempting repair, pulling toward dependence or self-reliance consistently, confirming existing views from setbacks rather than learning from them, and losing regulation during significant conflict.
Sample itemWhen a professional relationship has broken down significantly — a falling out, a failure of trust, a prolonged tension — how have you typically engaged with trying to repair it?
First structural move: Earned security grows from accumulated experiences of working through difficulty — not from having had an easy relational history. Identify one current professional relationship that is strained and make one explicit repair move this week: name the difficulty, take responsibility for your part of it.
Go deeperProtocol: The Post-Traumatic Growth Protocol →Glossary: Difficult Conversations →
Questions, answered
Is this a diagnosis?
No. This assessment is a structured self-reflection tool, not a validated clinical instrument. Its result bands are editorial guidance, not clinical thresholds — they organise your answers into a readable profile; they do not describe a condition. If you have concerns about your health or wellbeing, speak to a qualified professional.
How were the questions designed?
Each of the 20 items presents a concrete scenario with four graded responses and no neutral midpoint, so every answer commits to a lean. Items were authored against the peer-reviewed literature listed in the evidence file on this page, and citation metadata is supplied at build time; source relevance and claim interpretation remain editorial judgments. Response order is shuffled on every run to vary position; this implementation has not been tested for bias reduction.
What happens to my answers?
Assessment answers stay on this device. Unfinished progress expires after 30 days. A completed profile and optional comparison history remain until you delete local assessment data or clear browser data. If you opt into email, your email address is sent; item answers are not. If you share a result link, total and dimension scores are included in the URL and may appear in browser, server, CDN, or analytics logs.
Can I share my result?
Links created by this assessment contain no scores. Older result URLs may contain total and dimension scores and can appear in browser history and server or CDN logs; avoid sharing them.
How often should I retake it?
The instrument keeps your previous reading and sets the two side by side when you retake — the Second Reading. There is no validated retest interval; repeat only if a raw answer-point comparison would be useful, and do not treat it as confirmed underlying change.
Why bands instead of percentiles?
Because this assessment does not collect a population score set, there is no reader population to rank you against — and we will not invent one. The 5-dimension profile groups selected answer points for editorial display; it is not a validated structural or decision-utility model.
Where does the evidence come from?
Every dimension insight cites peer-reviewed research, and most answer reveals do — 5 sources stand behind this instrument, each with DOI metadata supplied at build time; source relevance and claim interpretation remain editorial judgments. A few reveals are straightforward editorial reasoning from the same evidence base and carry no citation by design. The full list, with DOIs, is in the evidence file below.
