Calm Down and Enjoy It: Influence of Leader-Employee Mindfulness on Flow Experience

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the effect of mindfulness on flow at the organizational and individual levels. Based on perseverative cognition theory, we introduced work-related rumination (affective rumination and problem-solving pondering) as the transmitter in these processes.

Methods

This study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey. The data of 458 employees and 114 leaders were collected from three software parks in China. Multilevel structural equation modeling and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method were adopted to test all hypotheses.

Results

Employee mindfulness and leader mindfulness help reduce affective rumination by employees and increase their problem-solving pondering and flow experiences. Affective rumination and problem-solving pondering partially mediate the relationship between leader and employee mindfulness and flow. Leader mindfulness moderates the effects of employees’ mindfulness on their affective rumination and problem-solving pondering.

Conclusion

Our findings contribute to the current literature on mindfulness, work-related rumination and flow experience and extend the understanding of the effect boundary of mindfulness. This study also helps guide organizations to better design and carry out mindfulness and flow interventions.

Keywords:

• leader mindfulness
• employee mindfulness
• flow experience
• work-related rumination

Ethics Approval and Informed Consent

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee.

Data Sharing Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the author, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

Ethics Statement

The whole research project was completed under the approval and supervision of the Xiamen Guoxin Credit Big Data Innovation Research Institute (Ethics Committee).

The author declares that he has followed the guidelines outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki.

The author declares that he has obtained informed consent from the study participants. Only the questionnaires with informed consent forms signed by the subjects are valid in this study.

On the title page of the questionnaire, all participants were told why the research was being conducted, whether or not anonymity was assured, and how the data they were providing were being stored and used. Those who are worried about the use of the data or the purpose of this study could refuse to participate in the study or withdraw from the study at any time to ensure their right to confidentiality.

Disclosure

The author declares no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the general project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (716701677) and the major research projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (92146005).