The Interpersonal Benefits of Leader Mindfulness: A Serial Mediation Model Linking Leader Mindfulness, Leader Procedural Justice Enactment, and Employee Exhaustion and Performance

By Sebastian C. Schuh, M. X. Zheng, Katherine Xin, J. Fernández. 2019

93 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although it is an increasingly popular assumption that leader mindfulness may positively affect leader behaviors and, in turn, employee outcomes, to date, little empirical evidence supports this view. Against this backdrop, the present research seeks to develop and test a serial mediation model of leader mindfulness. Specifically, we propose that leader mindfulness enhances employee performance and that this relationship is explained by increased leader procedural justice enactment and, subsequently, reduced employees’ emotional exhaustion. We conducted three studies to test this model. Study 1 involved employees from a wide range of organizations in the USA (N = 275 employees). Study 2 used a sample of leaders and employees from China and measured our model variables at three different points in time (N = 182 employees and 54 leaders). Both studies provide consistent support for our hypotheses. Finally, Study 3 involved a laboratory experiment in which 62 senior executives were assigned to either a mindfulness induction or to a control condition. Again, results revealed a significant and positive link between leader mindfulness and leader procedural justice enactment. In sum, these findings expand our understanding of mindfulness to the domain of leadership, a key area of organizational research. Moreover, they complement prior studies by showing that mindfulness dynamics go beyond intrapersonal effects but also influence the attitudes and behaviors of others. We discuss our findings in light of their contributions to the mindfulness, ethics, and leadership literatures and point out implications for practice.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Demography, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ce1cecbadd4ff3331e5697b02bb05906b537b141

Citations in the corpus

• Leader Mindfulness and Employee Performance: A Sequential Mediation Model of LMX Quality, Interpersonal Justice, and Employee Stress (2018, unknown): “By showing that leader mindfulness is related to how much stress employees experience and how interpersonally fairly they feel treated, we shed light not only on how leader mindfulness supports better leader–employee relations, but also discover novel ways in which leader mindfulness benefits employ”