Organizing for Mindfulness: Eastern Wisdom and Western Knowledge

When Mindfulness Interacts With Neuroticism to Enhance Transformational Leadership: The Role of Psychological Need Satisfaction

“…Specifically, we focused on if and when mindfulness influences transformational leadership. Mindfulness was hypothesized to be specifically beneficial for transformational leaders in several ways: it may enhance idealized influence since is related to authentic functioning (Leroy et al, 2013), it may support intellectual stimulation based on the enhanced objectivity and creativity (Langer and Moldoveanu, 2000; Brown and Ryan, 2003; Bishop et al, 2004; Weick and Putnam, 2006; Dane, 2011; Karelaia and Reb, 2015), mindfulness may influence inspirational motivation since it supports value-driven, ethical behavior and a better understanding of own values and needs (Brown and Ryan, 2003; Ruedy and Schweitzer, 2010; Eisenbeiss and Van Knippenberg, 2015; Guillén and Fontrodona, 2018) and it may increase individualized consideration based on the enhanced awareness when communicating with employees, increased empathy and decreased emotional reactivity (Block-Lerner et al, 2007; Bunting, 2016; Pinck and Sonnentag, 2017). Besides theorizing based on mindfulness research, self-determination theory was our primary theoretical lens: we hypothesized that mindfulness also influences transformational leadership through aiding the satisfaction of the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness.…”

“…Second, mindfulness should help the leaders' propensity to provide (2) intellectual stimulation, since it helps to see situations with a “beginners' mind” (Brown and Ryan, 2003; Dane, 2011), allows leaders to observe situations more objectively (Bishop et al, 2004; Pinck and Sonnentag, 2017) and helps overcome automatic processes and cognitive biases (Brown et al, 2007; Karelaia and Reb, 2015). Mindfulness also enhances flexibility, curiosity and therefore creativity (Langer and Moldoveanu, 2000; Weick and Putnam, 2006). In sum, this helps leaders to provide their employees with novel ideas and perspectives.…”

Leader Mindfulness: Well-Being Throughout the Organization

“…In another, perhaps more 'western' view on mindfulness, it is seen as a "creative way of thinking" (Langer 1989). This viewpoint is based upon the idea that mindfulness provides flexibility of thought: through the active contact with the present moment, one becomes sensitive to the context and new things can be observed (Weick and Putnam 2006). Here mindfulness is mainly viewed as a way to process information, rather than a cognitive characteristic (King and Haar 2017).…”

“…The open and nonjudgmental way of paying attention supports creativity (see, e.g., Langer 1989). Leaders who score high on mindfulness also make fewer cognitive mistakes (Weick and Putnam 2006;Karelaia and Reb 2015) and have less automatic emotional reactions that may obscure the decision-making process (Hülsheger et al 2013). If a leader is 'mindful' in interactions with employees, (s)he can also notice more relevant information and perhaps make more ethical or helpful decisions with regard to the employees (Ruedy and Schweitzer 2010; Karelaia and Reb 2015).…”

“…Decision-making. Mindfulness can also support better decision-making by an increased awareness of the limitations of one's own thinking process (Weick and Putnam 2006). This creates room for multiple perspectives.…”