Mindfulness and Leadership

Supporting Hypothesis 1, leaders' dispositional mindfulness was positively related to followers' perceptions of leaders' mindfulness in communication (see Table 4, Model 1). In line with Hypotheses 2 and 3, we found that leaders' dispositional mindfulness was also positively related to both followers' satisfaction with the leader–follower communication and followers' general satisfaction with their leaders (see Table 4, Model 2 and Model 5). In addition, we predicted that these two positive relationships were mediated by leaders' mindfulness in communication as perceived by the followers. When followers' satisfaction with the leader–follower communication was regressed on both mindfulness in communication and leaders' dispositional mindfulness, the relationship with mindfulness in communication was significant whereas the relationship with leaders' dispositional mindfulness was no longer significant (see Table 4, Model 4). Using the Monte-Carlo method for assessing indirect effects with 20,000 replications [cf., Selig and Preacher, 2008), we found that the mediation was significant (95% bias-corrected bootstrap CI (0.07, 0.52)]. Similarly, when followers' general satisfaction with their leaders was regressed on both mindfulness in communication and leaders' dispositional mindfulness, the relationship with mindfulness in communication was significant, whereas the relationship with leaders' dispositional mindfulness was no longer significant (see Table 4, Model 7). Using again the Monte-Carlo method for assessing indirect effects with 20,000 replications, we found that the mediation again was significant [95% bias-corrected bootstrap CI (0.06, 0.45)]. In sum, when leaders scored high on dispositional mindfulness their followers perceived them as showing mindfulness in communication, which in turn was positively related to both followers' satisfaction regarding their communication with the leader and satisfaction with the leader in general.