Mindfulness and proactivity: friends or enemies? Latent profiles and relationships with task performance and creativity

In line with control theory and related self-regulation perspectives as well as the dual pathway to creativity model, proactivity and mindfulness are both expected to enhance employee task performance and creativity. However, whether proactivity and mindfulness strengthen or undermine each other’s effects remains an open question. To address this question, we conducted a cross-sectional (Study 1; N = 255 employees) and a 4-week diary study (Study 2; N = 143 employees), and we adopted a latent profile analysis (LPA) approach with task performance and creativity as focal outcomes. Even though several employee profiles emerged from the datasets, two of them were replicated across both studies namely, the “proactive employees” (reporting high proactivity and low mindfulness) and the “proactive mindful employees” (reporting high proactivity and high mindfulness). Findings of both studies showed that the “proactive mindful employees” report the highest levels of creativity. The analyses of Study 2 furthermore revealed that both profiles display superior task performance compared to other profiles. The findings are discussed in light of the current debate in the literature, and recommendations for future research as well as for individual employees are provided (e.g., formulating mindful goals in a proactive way or proactive goals in a mindful way).