Leading mindfully towards resilience: a responsible leadership approach

Purpose Despite the growing emphasis on responsible leadership (RL) in leading a purpose-driven business within a Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, there is a lack of empirical understanding of how leaders address challenges arising from such a context in a socially responsible manner, as well as the resulting organisational outcomes. This study aims to investigate the critical role of leaders’ mindfulness and decentring in equipping them to address such challenges responsibly while building their organisation’s capacity for resilience. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopted a multimethod approach, using both a survey and a mindfulness intervention to test their hypotheses. Findings The results revealed that mindfulness significantly enhanced RL, and decentring fully mediated this relationship. Further, mindfulness strengthened the organisation’s resilience capacity, both directly and partially, through RL. Originality/value This is the first empirical study situating RL as a competency-based approach while offering theoretical articulation and empirical validation of the psychological mechanisms that enable leaders to navigate the VUCA environments responsibly. In contrast to previous studies, the findings of this study provide scalable and cost-effective insights for organisations to cultivate a pool of responsible workers through mindfulness-based interventions.