Serendipity is crucial for fostering team adaptability and driving innovation in today’s uncertain and dynamic business environments. Errors are a key precursor to serendipity, providing opportunities for exploration and discovery when managed effectively. Leadership plays a critical role, with leader perfectionism introducing a tension between the pursuit of flawless performance and the need to embrace errors as a pathway to achieving optimal outcomes. We propose and test a model that explains how and when leader perfectionism toward the team impacts team serendipity. In a sample of 740 members across 189 R&D teams in three Chinese tech firms, we find that leader perfectionism promotes team serendipity by fostering team appraisals of errors as opportunities and enhancing team error risk-taking. Conversely, leader perfectionism suppresses team serendipity through teams appraising errors as threats and inhibiting team error risk-taking. Furthermore, leader displays of a growth mindset strengthen the positive effects of leader perfectionism on team serendipity by reinforcing the influence of leader perfectionism on team appraisals of errors as opportunities. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights for fostering innovation through leadership in team-based environments.
