Mindfulness Meditation Interventions as a Predictor of Environmental Leadership
Abstract
Climate change is a crisis of global proportions. Corporations are leading contributors to this problem, and organizational leaders can play an important role in driving organizational solutions. As such, the development of environmental leadership is vital. To this end, this study sought to gain a better understanding of interventions for developing environmental leadership. Synthesizing research on mindfulness meditation, environmental psychology and environmental leadership, this study explored whether a breath-focused and a virtual nature-focused mindfulness meditation would predict three primary variables pertinent to environmental leadership: leaders’ state nature relatedness, leaders’ pro-environmental behaviours, and followers’ ratings of environmentally specific transformational leadership (ETFL). The study also investigated whether leaders’ trait empathy would moderate the relationship between the meditations and these outcome variables. Using data from leader-follower student groups (n = 172), ordinary least squares regression analyses revealed that the findings did not support the hypotheses. Neither types of meditation influenced leaders’ state nature relatedness and leaders’ pro-environmental behaviours. In fact, ratings of ETFL were found to be significantly lower in the nature-focused mindfulness meditation compared to the breath-focused mindfulness meditation and control condition. Leaders’ trait empathy was not found to be a significant moderator. The analysis of the results brings into question whether virtual nature scenes and a single short meditation intervention are appropriate approaches to develop leaders’ environmental tendencies.