NEWS-FINANCE -QUOTE-EDUCATIONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL
ADI IGNATIUS: I’m Adi Ignatius.
ALISON BEARD: I’m Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
ADI IGNATIUS: So, Alison, I think leaders often wonder whether and how they can be funny at work with their teams. I think there’s something great about humor, it brings us together. It’s also risky, right? One person’s joke is another person’s offense. Tell me about you. Do you try to be funny at work with your teams?
ALISON BEARD: I would say that I don’t try to be funny. I try to be amusing. I think you do a really good job of sort of throwing in a joke once in a while, witty banter, the occasional Russian accent.
ADI IGNATIUS: I appreciate this very much.
ALISON BEARD: But I tend to bring levity to situations with maybe some telling of funny stories or self-deprecation. And I think it’s a really hard thing. We’ve published a lot of research showing that humor can be used for good in leadership, but, as you say, it’s very hard to thread the needle sometimes.
ADI IGNATIUS: And look, there’s the image we all have of Steve Carell in The Office, the boss who tries to be funny who never is, who crosses lines and really accomplishes the opposite of what he’s trying to do. So, there’s a right way to do it. There’s a wrong way to do it. The conversation though that I had with our guest, his belief is that even people who feel like, “I’m not funny,” they can tap a kind of funniness within themselves if they pay attention to sort of who they are and how they communicate, and that that can be all part of our arsenal, but there are ways to do it and there are things to avoid.
So, Adam Christing is a comedian and speaker. He’s author of the book, The Laughter Factor: The 5 Humor Tactics to Link, Lift and Lead, and he talks about different kinds of funny that might work in the workplace and how to embrace those different styles. So, here’s my conversation with him.
So, your basic premise is that humor can be a valuable leadership skill and that it can be learned. Let’s unpack that a little bit. Do leaders need to be funny?
ADAM CHRISTING: The key to leadership is trust. And sometimes we think it’s primarily about casting a vision, that’s really important, but if people don’t trust your vision, if they don’t follow your leadership and your words, you’re in trouble as a leader. And so research is showing that humor is actually a shortcut to trust. It’s a very human thing to have a sense of humor. And some leaders feel that, “Well, I must be serious, I’m a leader,” but your people are silently begging to enjoy what you’re talking about, what you’re sharing. And maybe most importantly Adi, it’s about connection. We crave connection.
ADI IGNATIUS: So, your other basic premise seems to be that everyone is funny or can at least find their funniness. I think that’s interesting because I think there are plenty of smart, amiable people who would say, “I’m not funny.” Can we just leave it at that, or do you think –
ADAM CHRISTING: I do believe that everyone has a sense of humor. It’s just that there are different types of humor. It’s sort of like if you were playing chess, you might enjoy using the queen as your attacking piece or a rook, but you have access to the bishop and the knight and the what I call humor tactics. I think the key really is not trying to be funny, but taping into the connection and the style that’s already yours. So, years ago there was a book that’s actually still selling zillions of copies called Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.
Just as there are love languages, I believe there are laugh languages, and I’ve identified five of them. The first is surprise. I like the acronym SAD, which stands for surprise and delight. If your laugh language is surprise, you probably have a knack for delighting people with the power of the unexpected. The next is poke, and this is probably the trickiest because it’s easy to poke fun of other people. I tell my readers and clients to avoid sarcasm, but poking is powerful, especially if you poke fun at yourself and use self-effacing humor.
The third laugh language is called in jokes. This one might be the best tactic for leaders. This is the power of laughing over a shared experience. This is where repeating a story… You’ll notice when you get people together, they might say, “Hey, tell us about the time…” That’s in jokes. The next is for your punsters out there in your listening audience. It’s called word play. This is clever banter, might even include dad jokes. And amplify, and this is where you exaggerate stories and details and you really, you actually heighten the pain and you form a deeper connection with people because they can relate. So, sometimes our failures are the funniest things that we can share.
ADI IGNATIUS: I want to ask though, what is the evidence that making people laugh equates to some sort of benefits for leaders for the workplace?
ADAM CHRISTING: Well, we know that medical research is doblockented, I think most people are very aware that laughter releases endorphins, it deescalates attention and stress. But I think what a lot of research is showing now that was surprising to me as I was working on my book… For example, Eric Romero produced a study in the human relations journal and what he doblockented was not just the health benefits of humor, but how it diffuses conflict and actually creates cohesion with people. It’s hard to be upset with a coworker or a colleague when you’re laughing together.
ADI IGNATIUS: And the real key may be vulnerability. Vineet Nayar was a very successful CEO for HCL Technologies, a big Indian IT company, and he wrote books and articles about putting employees first. And he was a self-proclaimed terrible dancer, but he would dance at public events, sometimes at the kickoff of his own speeches, knowing that it would be funny, a bit humiliating, but would humanize himself. Once you’ve done that, then people are like, “Okay, this guy’s the real deal, and I’m willing to hear what he has to say.”
ADAM CHRISTING: We want to look good, we want to look smart and we want to be articulate. But what happens is when you use, for example, self-effacing humor, I’m not talking about self-defeating humor, but when you poke fun at yourself, you not only beat people to the party, you become more approachable, more human. So, I encourage leaders to start off. For example, if you’re giving a presentation, the temptation is to start off with a winning story, but if you start off with a story where you flopped, perhaps in the earlier days in your career, you actually become more approachable and more authentic to people.
ADI IGNATIUS: There is this particularly American protocol of opening every speech with a joke. And I have to do it tomorrow. I’m giving a commencement speech tomorrow, and I feel pressure to open with a joke, make it a good joke. And not everyone can do that. And not every joke can carry the opening of a speech. What’s your advice on whether that is something that people need to strive for?
ADAM CHRISTING: Well, the goal is to take pressure not only off your audience but off yourself. And so what I encourage CEOs… And I did a commencement address not long ago and I felt that same kind of pressure, like, “I’ve got to win them in the first 10 seconds.” But the advice that I would give is test out a joke. If you’re going to do a joke, try it out on friends, try it out on family, get some feedback, so that the first time you deliver it, the stakes don’t feel as high. And then if it doesn’t get a laugh, sit with it, be okay with it because sometimes, as we learned from maybe the greatest talk show comedian of all time, Johnny Carson, he got bigger laughs when he didn’t get a laugh. And so you don’t want to scold your audience and say, “Oh, you didn’t get it.”
The purpose of the humor really is to serve the situation. And so you don’t want to try to overdo it. I was on a flight one time with Jay Leno and I was coming back from Las Vegas. And I think he had just performed at Caesars and I had probably been working at Little Caesars, but I asked Jay, I said, “Jay, give me some tips on your stand-up and your comedy.”
And he said, “Adam, you want LPMs.” And I said, “What’s that?” He said, “Laughs per minute.” And I think leaders don’t need to get a lot of laughs per minute, but they want to increase the number of laughs per meeting. And that doesn’t mean that you have to generate all the laughs. It might be that you create an icebreaker or invite your management team to share their funniest dad joke. Somebody else might have the laugh language of amplify where they exaggerate stories. And so the mark of a good leader is not necessarily that they’re funny, but that they’re open to creating fun and connection.
There was another study done not too long ago by Oxford that doblockented that humor-friendly cultures actually show a 30% increase in productivity and creativity. And I think about why that is. I believe it’s because when we’re playful, we feel more persuasive, we feel more productive and perhaps most important of all, we’re more collaborative. If you can feel free to tell a joke or have some fun, you probably feel more free to fail and to experiment.
ADI IGNATIUS: There is the famous example of Gerald Ratner who ran a discount jewelry chain in the 1980s in the U.S. and the U.K. And at a fancy dinner he made some deprecating jokes about his company, about the low price of what the company produced. And one of his lines was people say, “How could you sell this for such a low price?” I say, “Because it’s total crap.” The crowd loved it, but it got picked up in the UK press. It angered bargain shoppers that were his audience. Tanked the stock by more than a billion and he lost his job. There always probably should be a voice in the back of your head saying, “Yeah, maybe don’t tell this one. It’s a good one, but don’t tell it.”
ADAM CHRISTING: That’s a funny one, but that’s a great point. My philosophy is if in doubt, leave it out. I was involved with a national conference one time. And the CEO so wanted to impress his new audience, he had just come onto this team, he convinced his production team that he was going to ride in on a Harley with “Born to be Wild” playing and win everybody over. And it was bold, it was gutsy, but it kind of flopped because it just didn’t fit his personality. So, if you’re someone who loves language and clever banter, you want to lean into that type of humor. I’ll give you an example of a type of humor really where you don’t need jokes at all, and that’s the power of surprise. You can surprise your audience, you can surprise your customers. And so we can plan surprises through our communication.
For example, a company could be very effective doing direct mail where someone opens a gift or an envelope and there’s some three-dimensional thing that’s not SWAG, it’s not self-promotional. So, for example, you could go to Walmart and for about $2 or $3, buy one of those bouncy balls that you would give a preschooler, and you could write a note with a Sharpie right on the ball that says, I had a ball meeting you at the sales conference. And imagine the mail carrier comes and brings it to the office, and it’s like it didn’t cost you much, but you surprised and you delighted your recipient. And that’s maybe the essence of all humor is the power of surprise.
ADI IGNATIUS: One question we’re probably all dealing with now is whether or not AI is funny. In my experience early on it was not. You try to get funny from it and it offered up just sort of bad puns. But then we learned how to prompt it and, “Make this funny in the style of David Sedaris,” so you could actually get something that actually seemed clever. What do you think? Is AI your friend here, if you’re searching for humor as a leader to present to your team, to break the ice, to be vulnerable?
ADAM CHRISTING: Yes, AI is your friend, and it’s great for prompting jokes, especially if you do gravitate toward witty wordplay style of humor. But you want to be careful. Really, comedy is not so much based on a joke or even the delivery, it’s based on a shared experience. And there was a great book called The Campfire Effect, and AI can never give us that. When I was a kid, I would go to camp and the highlight was the campfire where there’d be the talent show and somebody would sing and somebody would do a skit and someone else would do a magic trick. And I think it’s almost a primal thing where you’re gathering around the fire and human beings sharing stories and connection. What I tell executives is, “Don’t try to be the funniest person in the room. Be an orchestrator of the fun.” And I think AI can help you do that, but it certainly can’t replace the magic of human beings gathering together.
ADI IGNATIUS: I did, of course, ask ChatGPT for a couple of jokes before this.
ADAM CHRISTING: Oh, good.
ADI IGNATIUS: This is the latest version of ChatGPT, so hopefully it’s the funniest, but I tried to get something contextual and relevant, so here goes. One-liners: “When a boss tries to be funny, it’s less comedy and more a hostage situation with snacks.” Okay. And then the second one, “Leaders who tell jokes at work remind me why mute buttons were invented.” So, s***y.
ADAM CHRISTING: Not bad.
ADI IGNATIUS: Little s***iness from our friends at OpenAI.
ADAM CHRISTING: Well, what I like about that Adi, is it could prompt you to come up with your own. I have noticed that ChatGPT has certain favorite sayings. I’ve seen the snacks thing come up a bit. But I think studying great comedians, witty writers is helpful. One of my favorites is Steven Wright. And he’s the one who said things like… With his total deadpan delivery, he would say, “I put spot remover on my dog, now he’s gone.” And it wasn’t just the words, it was his delivery. And so as leaders, I think sometimes we think that it’s about what we say, but it always goes back to how we say it and how it’s received. It goes back to speech cl*** 101, is know your audience. But I would take it even further and say feel your audience. What are they feeling? Are they frustrated? Are they scared? Are they intimidated? Are they celebrating? And allow your humor to really fit what’s happening in the room and in the moment.
ADI IGNATIUS: Well, in your book, one of the best tips is that leaders should work at developing this in-group humor or in-group experience. So, callbacks from earlier experiences or even earlier in the meeting, if you’re speaking to a larger group, figuring out what people care about, what they’re thinking about. When I was at Time Magazine, I got Jon Stewart to do the first Time 100 gala in 2005. And he got our guest list, and landed specific jokes, particularly about Martha Stewart who was fresh from doing jail time and the other celebrities in hand. So, that kind of direct engagement with the audience, in this case, the context. Talk though about: how do we get better at that? How do people get better at understanding what will resonate in these kind of in-group experiences?
ADAM CHRISTING: I think it goes back to the unbelievable power of listening. I’ll give you a quick example of that. You were just talking about what I call in-jokes, and those would never play at a comedy club, but I was on stage at a convention one time and a gentleman… They told me, “This guy’s a lot of fun. If you’re going to do something fun involve this gentleman.” They pointed him out. I didn’t know his name, and I said, “What is your name, sir?” And he said, “Ki-en.” And I wasn’t sure I was hearing it right. He said, “Ki-en.” And what I didn’t realize was this guy was the president emeritus of this wonderful… It was a nonprofit organization, but I had heard he was a good sport. And so I said, “Ki-en, is that one or two syllables?” And everybody laughed and he laughed the most.
ADI IGNATIUS: I’m just Ki-en.
ADAM CHRISTING: It just… Exactly. But what happened was it became such a hit, he started calling himself Ki-en. He would exaggerate it, and then the event organizer changed the lanyard and rewrote his name as Ki-en. And it became such a hit at that gathering, that the next year when I saw him again, he brought the new lanyard with the Ki-en spelling of his name. Now, again, that’s not something that you’d ever see on TV or a comedy special, but in a group it creates a callback. And there’s something about callbacks that we human beings love. I haven’t completely figured out why that is. I think it makes us feel like we’re part of a very special community that has an exclusivity about it.
ADI IGNATIUS: I store callbacks. My own view is I’m funnier in a small group than in a big group because you pay attention to what’s already happened and try to deliver based on that shared experience that you have. I also… If a joke occurs to me, I kind of store it and know there’ll be a moment when I can throw it out and it will look like, “Man, that guy is fast and clever.” Should I be ashamed of that? Is that too manipulative?
ADAM CHRISTING: No, I think you should be proud of that. I think that… By the way, that’s exactly what Robin Williams did, arguably one of the top three greatest comedians of our time, maybe of all time. He carried a notebook with him that had hundreds of bits in gags and jokes. And he would be backstage before he’d go on, and so when an audience member heckled him or something came up, it looked like it was all spontaneous, but it was really planned spontaneity. So, I think one of the things leaders need to do is understand: what works for me, what has worked in the past and how could I repurpose the humor in different settings?
ADI IGNATIUS: The debate over telling jokes versus displaying wit. The funniest people I know cannot remember a single joke. Some of the least funny people I know memorize jokes and comedy skits and sitcom lines. Some people find it predictable and boring. What’s your advice on the best approach? Is it different approaches for different moments or do you have a view on that?
ADAM CHRISTING: I think it goes back to finding the funny that fits you. Some of the greatest comedians of all time socially are very uncomfortable. I’m personally more comfortable in front of 500 people than five people because, for me, it feels like this big audience and I’m doing my shtick, but with four or five people, I feel a little more exposed. And so I think it’s finding what makes you feel most comfortable. Maybe that is a performance piece. Maybe you memorize a sketch or a joke. Maybe you feel really comfortable more impromptu style. And so it’s find the funny that fits you and go for it. And as leaders, I think it’s also important to understand your colleagues’ laugh languages. So, that goes back to the power of listening.
So, if somebody you know just gets such a big kick out of surprise, well, you can spring some surprises on them intentionally. The most important thing of all though is: as a leader, what are people… When your name comes up and you’re not around, how do they feel about you? Do they smile? Do they feel nervous? Another thing that’s important for leaders is to use humor strategically. You want to lead your people from ha ha to aha. And so humor breaks up patterns and we laugh when a pattern is broken. And so sometimes we can help our teams get out of their ruts by breaking a pattern, and humor’s a great tool to do that.
ADI IGNATIUS: All right, so let’s get really practical. So, let’s say people are listening to this and they’re like, “Yes, yes, yes. I like this. I do want to have a better sense of humor and playfulness and fun in the work environment.” How do you get started? What’s the process?
ADAM CHRISTING: I think the first thing is to say, “What is it that makes me laugh?” Because the goal is not to be funny. The goal, I think, is to create a culture that’s fun and inviting, and there are many ways to do that. And so I like this saying: the meaning of communication is the response you get. And so you want to reverse engineer it. What is the response I want to get from, say, a presentation?
If your goal is to create community, it might be to share the laughter, to have somebody tell a funny story, to have somebody else ask a provocative or a witty question, or even you might have in your own company somebody who’s great at playing electric guitar, or maybe they’re a amateur ventriloquist. It doesn’t really matter, but you’re creating engagement and participation. It’s really hard for people to feel bored when they’re seeing their peers sharing their talent and their style of humor.
ADI IGNATIUS: There is the reality now that we’re not physically in the office as much as we used to, that a lot of communication, a lot of engagement, a lot of meetings are done the way we’re doing this conversation right now, remotely via Zoom or whatever. I would ***ume that makes it harder to connect, to accomplish everything. You’ve been talking about this sense of fun, this sense of playfulness, this sense of humor. Have you thought about that, how we create the culture that you’re talking about when we are more dispersed and remote? And sure, a lot of people are coming back to the office, but a lot of people are not. What do you think about that? Is Zoom a barrier to pulling some of this off?
ADAM CHRISTING: It really is a barrier, and I think we need to be honest about that. In-person is always the best in terms of humor and connection, but I think you can still invite participation. I’ll give you an example. Yesterday I was giving a motivational presentation to a group of young women who are on a sports team. It was like a lecture situation where they’re sitting in a cl***room and they can see me on a computer and I just can barely see these silhouettes of faces in the back. And so I immediately thought to myself, “How am I going to engage them?” And so I invited them to stand up. I said, “Everybody stand up. Put a big smile on your face, even if it’s kind of a fake I have to be here smile. Put your hands up toward the ceiling.”
And so they were all doing that. And I said, “Now, do your best, while you’re smiling, while your hands are up, while you’re looking up, to feel bad.” And they started laughing because it’s hard to feel bad when you make choices with your body to feel good. Sometimes we can fall into this trap of, “Well, I’m getting ready to get ready to get ready,” but we are ready to connect with each other. So, if you’re doing a Zoom, look for ways to involve people, to engage them. It’s not… I really believe that we feel first and we think later, so we need to bring more feeling, more connection to our meetings. And that goes back to what I shared about what Jay Leno said. I think you want to increase your LPMs, your laughs per meeting. And that takes planning.
ADI IGNATIUS: It takes planning, and I guess it takes patience. Part of what we write about at Harvard about being a good leader is you don’t sit down and tell everyone what to do. You sort of encourage a kind of open discussion, rather than sort of my way or the highway.
ADAM CHRISTING: I want to give you a fun example. I have a dear friend, Scott Rummell, who’s probably Hollywood’s number one voiceover narrator. And so you’d never recognize him if you bumped into Scott at the grocery store, but he’s the guy who, say The Avengers movie or something, he’s like, “In a world that time forgot, one man…” He’s that guy. And so he agreed to do voiceover. And we took this company and they created their own little mini movie trailers, just like 30 seconds long. And Scott agreed to do the voiceover, and they had so much fun basically doing self-parody. “This guy is really into working out, so we’re going to make him Forrest Gump, this great runner. And she’s really into this, so she’s going to become Wonder Woman,” or whatever it was. So, it’s not your job as a leader to entertain your people, but I think it is your job to facilitate connection and fun and humor.
ADI IGNATIUS: So, then on the flip side, how do you know if something is likely to bomb or to offend? How can you avoid that before it’s too late?
ADAM CHRISTING: Well, this is a great point. I think being an orchestrator of the humor is more important than being the winner, “I’m the funniest person in the room.” If you think something is going to bomb, it likely will bomb. And so I tell executives to avoid three P’s: obviously avoid profanity, that’s going to offend some people, avoid anything that smacks of prejudice, and then the third P is avoid politics.
ADI IGNATIUS: Are there specific leaders who you would call out, let’s say business leaders, not entertainment people, who do what you’re talking about well, that they create this environment that they are funny in an effective way? Any models that come to mind?
ADAM CHRISTING: No specific person comes to mind, but I’ll give you one example. There’s a company called Insperity, which is a HR sourcing company, and they do something brilliant. What Insperity does is they’ll have an event where they put the spotlight on their people. For example, one time they did a spoof on The Tonight Show. And what blew everybody away was Jay Mincks, who at the time was the VP of Sales, he enlisted people to show off their kinds of talent. And the audience, the employees absolutely ate it up because they said, “This guy’s in the legal department, I didn’t know he could play b***. She’s the Head of HR, I had no idea that she could sing.” And so we want to put the spotlight on other people. I think sometimes as leaders, we think we have to be the star, when really we want to be the cement that glues people together.
ADI IGNATIUS: So, if you’re under pressure, and somebody says, “Tell a joke, make me laugh,” do you have a go-to joke for… that works at almost any occasion?
ADAM CHRISTING: It’s funny, I will sometimes say, “Throw out a topic and then I’ll come up with something funny.” So, if you want to try that, throw out a topic.
ADI IGNATIUS: Humor the workplace.
ADAM CHRISTING: Okay, next question.
ADI IGNATIUS: All right, that works.
ADAM CHRISTING: No, so I think you want to have your go-to kinds of things. Find a story that you love to retell. My parents were on a flight to Hawaii from Los Angeles, and my mom and dad were excited to go. And they got into this argument about how you pronounce the word Hawaii. And my dad said to my mom, “Honey, it’s just simply Hawaii.” And my mom said, “No, it’s Avai.” And back and forth they went. My dad said, “It’s Hawaii.” My mom said, “It’s Avai.” And finally, to settle the debate, my mom reached in front of her, in the seat right in front of her, she tapped this elderly gentleman on the shoulder, she said, “Sir, I’m sorry to bother you. I think the state is pronounced Avai. My husband says Hawaii, what do you say?” And the older gentleman said, “Avai.” And she said, “Well, thank you very much, sir.” And he said, “You’re velcome.”
ADI IGNATIUS: We should have had a warning sign saying, “Caution: dad joke coming.”
ADAM CHRISTING: Caution. Hey, you know what? I’ve noticed that dad jokes are hot. They are actually hot. In a corporate setting, people are into dad jokes. And so sometimes if I’m doing a keynote speech, I will distribute four dad jokes. And these are so bad, they’re good. And we’ll have someone do kind of a fake rimshot at the end, ba-dum-bum-ch. And we’ll see who can get the biggest groans. And you wouldn’t believe how corporate managers are eating this up.
And so I have no shame in telling dad jokes. Puns, for some people, wordplay might just be their laugh language, but there are other great humor tactics. One that we didn’t really get to talk about much that I think is so powerful I call amplify. And this is where you take the pain in your life or in your organization and you just put it on steroids. You exaggerate whatever’s happening. And so I encourage your listeners to really think, “What is my laugh language?” And maybe more importantly, “What is the laugh language of those around me and how can I spark humor with them?”
ADI IGNATIUS: Well, I’m glad to hear dad jokes are hot. I’m set. So, Adam, I want to thank you for being on IdeaCast and sharing your thoughts on how laughter can help you in the workplace.
ADAM CHRISTING: Well, I want to thank you for some of your Adi-isms. I like them.
ADI IGNATIUS: I’ll take it.
That’s author and speaker Adam Christing. He wrote the book The Laughter Factor: The 5 Humor Tactics to Link, Lift and Lead.
Next week Alison speaks to Elsbeth Johnson about why you might still be having trouble delegating and what to do about it.
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Thanks to our team, Senior Producer Mary Dooe, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox, and Senior Production Specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Adi Ignatius.
