Making Emotions Meaningful: The Power of Mindfulness During Leader Developmental Trigger Events

<p>Successful leaders act with a sense of inner meaningfulness that contagiously influences followers to perform at their best. Leaders who purposely engage with emotionally intense developmental experiences (e.g., trigger events) cultivate greater meaningfulness in their work. Negative trigger events may be more impactful than positive trigger events because negative emotions shock beliefs and assumptions about reality. Additionally, due to the emotional intensity, leaders often fail to learn from trigger events that could develop leader meaningfulness. Mindfulness may help leaders appropriately use the emotional intensity of trigger events to produce meaningfulness. The purpose of this study was to empirically test the relationships of emotions, mindfulness, and meaningfulness. I pilot-tested measures and experimental conditions to make needed adjustments before the main study. Through a 2x3 experimental design, 401 participants underwent an intervention condition (mindfulness meditation group or control group) and a trigger event simulation (positive trigger event, negative trigger event, or neutral simulation). Moderated regression was utilized to analyze the predicted relationships. Results indicated that emotional intensity significantly predicts the meaningfulness of the trigger event simulation. Emotional valence significantly moderates that relationship, however in a surprising negative direction such that the neutral condition had the strongest relationship between intensity and meaning. Mindfulness did not significantly moderate, but the study did show how mindfulness predicts meaningfulness. This research advances understanding of the emotional mechanisms of meaningfulness in the leader development process. Additionally, practitioners can use the findings to understand how to integrate emotions appropriately for leader development learning from experience initiatives.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Psychology, PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Beck, Jason

Contributors dc:contributor

• Michelle Bligh
• Stephen Gilliland
• Jochen Reb

• emotions
• leader development
• meaning
• mindfulness
• Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/283

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-1293