Follower Creativity and the Mixed Blessing of Mindful Leadership

Workplace mindfulness research recognizes that although mindfulness can be of benefit in organizational settings, it also has its drawbacks. Interestingly, social scientists and practitioners alike, so far, assume that mindful leadership is inherently beneficial. We portend that although mindful leadership helps with socio-emotional relations (i.e., affect conflict), it might hurt with respect to socio-cognitive relations (i.e., cognitive conflict). Along those lines, drawing on social information processing theory, we propose that mindful leadership is a mixed blessing as it relates to follower creativity. Using a multi-wave, multi-source field study, our results revealed that mindful leader was negatively associated with affective conflict, which in turn increased follower creativity. However, mindful leadership was negatively associated with cognitive conflict, which in turn decreased follower creativity. Further, leader’s organizational embodiment strengthened the positive indirect effect of leader mindfulness on follower creativity through affective conflict whereas leader’s organizational embodiment did not moderate the indirect effect through cognitive conflict. Theoretical and practical implication specific to mindful leadership, mindfulness, and creativity are discussed.