Being “there and aware”: a meta-analysis of the literature on leader mindfulness

ABSTRACT

Leaders occupy the most critical roles in organizations. A growing body of research on mindfulness in the field of leadership suggests that mindfulness is a highly beneficial factor for various leader and organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study is to quantitatively review the research related to leader mindfulness from the perspectives of both self-report mindfulness levels and mindfulness interventions. Meta-analytic results from 54 independent samples and 9,414 leaders suggest that leader mindfulness significantly relates to leaders’ well-being (e.g., stress), relationships (e.g., relationship qualities, leadership styles), and job performance, as well as followers’ well-being and job performance. Moreover, we found strong support for the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in improving leader well-being. We also found a significant difference between leader mindfulness levels before and after the intervention. The difference of post-test scores between the intervention and control groups was not statistically significant, though the effect was in the predicted direction. Through this quantitative review, we synthesize findings on leader mindfulness and mindfulness interventions for leaders, identify research gaps in the literature, and lay a solid foundation for advancing research on leader mindfulness.

KEYWORDS:

• Leader mindfulness
• mindfulness interventions
• well-being
• meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For the intervention studies that measured leader mindfulness, we included various measures of leader mindfulness, because first, very few studies purposefully and clearly distinguish between the different conceptualizations of mindfulness in the intervention studies. In addition, extant literature suggests that interventions can improve various forms of mindfulness (i.e., state, trait, skill). However, the majority of them still utilized trait mindfulness scales to assess mindfulness before and after interventions. Lastly, previous meta-analysis and reviews of mindfulness intervention in the workplace choose to include all forms of mindfulness, and not distinguish them (e.g., Bartlett et al., 2019; Donaldson-Feilder et al., 2019). Therefore, to be consistent with previous meta-analysis and reviews, and also based on the extant literature, we also include various measures of mindfulness scales in the intervention analysis.

2. In our original database of the coded articles, five other samples reported leader mindfulness practice habit. These samples were not taken into our meta-analysis because first, three studies measure mindfulness practice habit with dichotomous single-item measure. Second, the outcomes of the other two studies cannot be combined and meta-analysed because the coded effect sizes had insufficient k (k < 3) for meta-analysis. In total, 22 papers were excluded because their coded effect sizes had insufficient k (k < 3) for meta-analysis.

3. We converted Cohen’s d to Pearson’s r (when applicable) reported in prior studies before comparing effect sizes. In our study, the effect sizes for pre- and post-intervention comparisons in the treatment group for leader mindfulness and well-being were .25 and .28 (absolute values), respectively. The effect sizes reported in meta-analyses ranged from .29 to .30 for general training (Arthur et al., 2003) and .30 to .38 for leadership training (Lacerenza et al., 2017).