Supervisors' achievement goal orientations and employees' mindfulness: Direct relationships and down‐stream behavioral consequences

Abstract This study (among 256 employees and 97 immediate supervisors) examines whether supervisors' learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation are related to employees' mindfulness and whether, in turn, mindfulness is related to employees' creativity and organisational citizenship behavior (OCB). Whereas learning goals focus on non‐judgmental learning from mistakes, performance goals emphasise impressing others and obtaining positive evaluations. Accordingly, reasoning from the perspective of socio‐cognitive theory, we proposed and found that supervisors' learning goal orientation positively relates to employee mindfulness whereas supervisors' performance goal orientation negatively relates to employee mindfulness. Given the broad cognitive and social attentional focus entailed in mindfulness, we further proposed and found that mindfulness is positively related to employees' creativity and OCB and that mindfulness mediates the relations between supervisors' goal orientations and these performance outcomes. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of (a) understanding and managing organisational factors that relate to mindfulness and (b) the implications of achievement goal orientations in leadership processes.