BUS603: Managing People

Research on mindfulness in the workplace in general and mindfulness of leaders in particular is still at an early stage and, so far, mainly consists of theoretical considerations. By empirically confirming interpersonal effects of mindfulness, the results of the present research have several theoretical implications.

First, our findings provide additional evidence for a positive link between an individual's (the leader's) dispositional mindfulness and the wellbeing of other people (their followers), suggesting that mindfulness is not only an internal capital but also aids individuals in interpersonal relations. These results are in line with the findings of Reb et al. who first provided scientific evidence for such interpersonal effects of mindfulness in leader–follower relationships. Also, our results expand evidence that has been provided in a very recent study by Reb et al., in which leader mindfulness predicted follower reports of enhanced LMX quality. With this, our study also contributes more generally to the perennial interest in leadership research regarding the effects of leaders' affect and emotions on their followers. Mindfulness, which is assumed to play an important role in emotion regulation, affect, stress, and well-being, constitutes a concept that is likely to offer new and fruitful insights for research in this area, where the emotional states of individuals have wide-ranging consequences on others.

Second, by examining leaders' communication style as an underlying mechanism, we take a step forward in clarifying how leaders' mindfulness may affect their followers. More specifically, we identify a behavioral mechanism – mindfulness in communication – which explains the interpersonal effect of leaders' mindfulness. The high agreement of multiple followers in their ratings of the leaders' mindfulness in communication that we found in our data (as indicated by the mean r_wg) suggests that mindfulness fosters a specific communication style, which is relatively stable across situations and followers. This is in line with emerging evidence that leader mindfulness is reflected in specific leadership styles, as perceived by others. Specifically, Pircher Verdorfer conducted a study which found a positive relationship between leaders' mindfulness and followers' perceptions of specific servant leader behaviors, that is, humility, standing back, and authenticity. Interestingly, our notion of mindfulness in communication fits well with these features. In fact, it is plausible that leaders who are mindfully present, accepting, and calm when communication with others signal humility (e.g., being open to different views and opinions of others), the ability to stand back (e.g., not chasing recognition or rewards), and authenticity (e.g., being open about own limitations and weaknesses).

Third, our results indicate that mindfulness in communication is a useful approach that meaningfully adds to previous perspectives in the field of leader communication style. Established instruments, such as the Communication Styles Inventory (CSI) by de Vries et al. have a strong focus on how information is conveyed (e.g., in terms of preciseness or expressiveness) and whether one is generally supportive versus aggressive or tense when communicating with others. With a behavioral measure of mindfulness in communication, we gain a better understanding of genuine interpersonal attunement of leaders that goes beyond the transmission of leadership messages. Related to this, an interesting implication of our results refers to the relationship between individual dispositions or personality traits and communication styles. de Vries et al. found support for the notion that a person's communication style is, partially, a function of his/her personality traits. They found, for instance, expressiveness in communication to be strongly related to extraversion, while verbal aggressiveness in communication was, not surprisingly, negatively related to agreeableness. Our results add to this picture by showing that mindfulness, as a distinct disposition, likely translates into a distinct communication pattern.