Mindfulness as substitute for transformational leadership

Abstract

Purpose Transformational leaders spark the intrinsic motivation of employees, thereby stimulating their extra-role performance. However, not all employees are lucky enough to have a transformational leader. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent mindfulness can function as a substitute for transformational leadership. By being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present, mindfulness provides employees with a source of intrinsic motivation that lies within the person, thereby possibly making employees less dependent on transformational leadership. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was used to collect data of 382 employees working in diverse sectors in the Netherlands. Findings Moderated mediation analyses indicated that mindfulness partly compensates for a low levels of transformational leadership in fostering intrinsic motivation and in turn extra-role performance, thereby providing evidence for the substitutes for leadership theory. Moreover, the findings extend previous research on the contribution of mindfulness to in-role performance by showing its additional value for intrinsic motivation and extra-role performance. Research limitations/implications Despite the use of validated measures and the presence of an interaction effect, common-source bias cannot be out ruled completely. Practical implications Since mindfulness can be developed, the results suggest a training intervention to make employees less dependent on their leaders for their motivation. Originality/value This paper is the first to show that mindful people are more resilient against the absence of transformational leadership. Given the frequent changes in management layers in organizations, knowledge about resources for individual resilience and self-management is sorely needed.

Mindful Leadership: The Ability of the Leader to Develop Compassion and Attention without Judgment - A Case Study of the Leader of Buddhist Higher Education Institute

“…Furthermore, other mindful leadership studies reveal that continuous mindfulness practices in leadership reduces stress, increases health, and can affect transformational leadership. Therefore, it increases intrinsic motivation and performance (Kroon, Van Woerkom, & Menting, 2017;Wasylkiw, Holton, Azar, & Cook, 2015). When leaders consider ways that can increase effectivity and also reduce their stress, mindfulness can offer practices for both.…”

Managers’ regulatory focus, temporal focus and exploration–exploitation activities

“…For this purpose, we employed bootstrapped mediation analysis (Hayes, 2018), a contemporary and robust technique that has become quite widely used in recent years (e.g. Bentein, Guerrero, Jourdain and Chênevert, 2017;Kroon, van Woerkom and Menting, 2017). The bootstrapped mediation analyses (50,000 samples)…”

Enhancing Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence: Why Mindfulness?

“…Second, mindfulness corresponds to living in the moment (Sethi, 2009), while EI emphasizes the need to accurately understand emotions (Salovey & Mayer, 1997); given that emotions occur in the moment, assessing them accurately as they occur is an important aspect of mindfulness. Third, the pursuit of emotional and intellectual growth is at the centre of EI (Salovey & Mayer, 1997), while mindfulness emphasizes the importance of rigorous mental practice (Kroon et al, 2017). Said another way, how can emotional and intellectual growth come about without rigorous mental practice?…”

“…When drawing connections between EI and mindfulness, it also is helpful to consider how Goleman's (2004) five components of EI-motivation, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills-can be developed through mindfulness. For example, Brown and Ryan (2003) and Levesque and Brown (2007) found that individuals who are mindful are more intrinsically motivated (as cited in Kroon et al, 2017). Brown and Ryan (2003) also point out that those who are mindful have greater self-awareness and are better able to regulate their behaviour (as cited in Kroon et al, 2017).…”