Jennifer Aaker, a Stanford professor, and Naomi Bagdonas, an executive coach, say that, even in times of stress and crisis, leaders should use and encourage good humor and levity at work as a way of building employee morale and engagement. That doesn’t mean you have to tell jokes all the time. Instead, figure out what kind of humor works best for you and learn to pinpoint the opportunities for using it to best effect. They explain what makes things funny (hint: surprise) and the pitfalls managers should avoid. Aaker and Bagdonas are the authors of the book Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life.
ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard. Let’s start the show with a little communal laughter. I hope this clip from one of Hannibal Buress’s stand-up shows does the trick.
HANNIBAL BURESS: It’s weird working in an office because I don’t know how many times we’re supposed to say hello to people throughout the day. Because I keep seeing the same people. I’m like, “I saw you 45 minutes ago. Should I say hello or should I just grumble under my breath? I don’t know what to do.” I just made my rule, if I say hello to you three times on Monday, I say nothing to you on Tuesday. You’re helloed out for the week.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, yes. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, economic stagnation and in the U.S. and some other places, social unrest. It does not feel like a moment for comedy, but sometimes humor is just what you need to get through the day, especially the workday. Our guests argue that teams and organizations would be much better off if they made more room for levity and laughter. They want people to get more comfortable sharing funny stories and even telling jokes. They say good humor can be learned and spread through the workplace generating lots of positive effects.
Jennifer Aaker is a behavioral scientist and professor at Stanford University. Naomi Bagdonas is an executive coach. They’re also co-authors of Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life. Jennifer, Naomi, welcome to the show.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Thank you so much for having us.
JENNIFER AAKER: It’s so good to be here.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. You know that I have to start by asking one of you to tell me a joke.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Oh, my gosh. This is Naomi. This is a physical joke. I want you to lift your finger in the air, your pointer finger. I want you to hold it up. It’s not a joke, by the way. This is a really important mental exercise. Hold your finger in the air. As you hold it there, try and move it around in a circle. You’re almost tracing a circle on the ceiling that is over you. You want to do that faster and faster. You basically want to go as fast as you can with that hand.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. I’m doing it.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Okay. Now, knock, knock.
ALISON BEARD: Who’s there.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Woo.
ALISON BEARD: Woo who?
NAOMI BAGDONAS: That will get us ready and as excited as we need to be for this podcast.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. Now I am not going to try to tell a joke because I’m not good at them. I do try to amuse people with stories, a little self-deprecation. But as someone doesn’t consider myself particularly funny, it seems hard to bring humor into the workplace. Do we all need to be trying to do it?
JENNIFER AAKER: Well, we actually surveyed thousands of people about what holds them back from using humor at work and paramount was the belief that they are not funny. Similar to you, many people believe that they are not funny, but there are a few things backwards about this belief. First is the assumption that humor is about being funny. What’s far more important than cracking jokes, whoopee cushions, rubber chickens, it’s about this mindset of cultivating joy. Shifting your mindset and looking for reasons to smile.
The second is this belief that a sense of humor is something you either have or you don’t. Therefore, you’re either funny or you’re not. But everyone has a sense of humor, which is part of how you see your life, whether or not it’s expressed. In reality, your sense of humor is like a muscle. Even if it feels weak right now, the more you flex it, the easier and more natural it becomes to make yourself and others laugh.
ALISON BEARD: You also in the book delve into different styles or types of humor. Talk a little bit more about the different categories that you find among people.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: That’s right. We’ve run studies that show people tend to fall into these four broad humor styles, into one of the four. Those four are the stand-up, the sweetheart, the sniper, and the magnet. First, the stand-up. These folks are bold. They’re natural entertainers. They’re not afraid to cross a line or ruffle feathers to get a good laugh. What’s interesting about them is they often build intimacy through teasing. We’ll often hear these people say, “If I’m making fun of you, it’s actually a sign that I like you.”
Now opposite the stand-up is the sweetheart. They are more subtle and what we call affiliative, which means that they use humor that uplifts people. Sweethearts are earnest. They’re honest. They also tend to be understated. If you’re around a sweetheart, you have to really listen closely for the humor.
Third is the sniper. Snipers are, as you might expect from the name, edgy, sarcastic, nuanced, brilliant at the one-liner. They pick their moments really carefully. Unlike the stand-up or the sweetheart, these people often joke to make a point rather than to lift people up or tear them down. They don’t tend to seek the spotlight, but they also won’t hesitate to cross a line for a laugh.
Last is the magnet. Magnets are, as we call, affiliative and expressive. These people are outgoing, this big personality who gets everyone laughing in a really positive way. These people avoid controversial humor. Again, they’re using humor that’s bringing people together and they are really radiating charisma as they do.
ALISON BEARD: It sounds like some of those would work much better in a workplace setting than others though.
JENNIFER AAKER: Absolutely. There’s risks associated with humor and certainly with certain styles. For example, stand-ups and snipers, they are at the greatest risk of offending or alienating. Sweethearts and snipers, they’re often at the greatest risk of taking away their own power through self-deprecation. That means something, especially if you’re looking at gender differences through the lens of humor.
For example, many male leaders who we study or talk to, they typically self-categorize as stand-ups and snipers at work. Whereas some of our female leaders tend to self-categorize as sweethearts and magnets, which means men in general are more at risk for offending. Whereas a female leader is more at risk for over self-deprecating and undermining their own power.
ALISON BEARD: There are risks, but in your research, you’ve also shown that there are really big benefits to being funny or using levity in the workplace. Talk about some of those findings
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Humor has enormous benefits for mental wellbeing, for physical health and even for your bottom line. We think of humor as this thing that’s sort of fun, frivolous and what we do on the weekends. By the way, the data supports this, that we’re laughing far more on weekends than we are at work. Yet, humor is incredibly powerful at work. It is this sort of under-invested under-leveraged asset.
A couple of things to consider. When people use humor at work, and this doesn’t even have to be good humor, just not inappropriate humor, the bar is very low, they are 23% more respected by their colleagues. They’re also seen as more competent and more confident. This is particularly powerful for leaders, because we know that employees who rate their leaders as having a sense of humor, again, any sense of humor, report being 15% more satisfied and more engaged in their jobs. They also rate those leaders as 23% more motivating and more admired.
JENNIFER AAKER: Even if you don’t want to be motivating or admired or have engaged employees who have high-performing teams, there is still a role for humor in your cold, cold heart. I’m not saying, Alison, that you have a cold heart, but it does translate into more negotiating power. There are studies that have shown that adding a simple, mildly funny line to the end of a sales pitch like, “My final offer is X and I’ll throw in my pet frog.” That increases customer’s willingness to pay by 18%. Remember, that was not even a funny line. That was a mildly innocuously funny line.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Right. It’s true for individuals. It’s also true for teams. There was a study of over 50 teams where researchers videotaped hour-long team meetings and then they analyze the supervisor’s readings of the team performance to get to that question, “Is laughter actually translating to better performance for the team?” What they found was that the teams that had humor, that teams that laughed together during these one-hour team meetings, demonstrated better communication and problem solving. They performed better as a team, both during the meeting itself and also over time.
ALISON BEARD: You keep saying, it doesn’t have to be good humor. It doesn’t have to be funny. It just has to be any sense of humor. But how does that work? Because everyone does have a different sense of humor and think different things are funny. How do you figure out what’s going to work and be effective and what’s not?
JENNIFER AAKER: Yes. The bar in business is so low. There’s a large scale Gallup-based study that shows that when people are asked the very simple question, “Did you smile or laugh yesterday?” The answer is yes at 16, 18 and 20. It plummets, there’s a gigantic humor cliff at around age 21, 22, 23 when people enter the workforce. People think they’re serious and take themselves seriously and basically stop bringing that sense of humanity and levity into work. As a result, the bar is incredibly low. You are correct. It doesn’t even have to be sophisticated.
One of the things we do, both in our class as well as in our book, is we bring in sort of secrets or tips and techniques from comedians like Sarah Cooper and Seth Meyers and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, along with leaders who use humor in really strategic, thoughtful ways. One of the tips that we talk about is simply observing. Humor isn’t about inventing this perfect one-liner from thin air. It’s about noticing what’s true in your life. We have our students at the end of the day just write down five observations from the day. Simple things like how excited your dog is at dinner time or how you take a walk around the block every afternoon to break up the day or how you actually took a work call today in your underwear as we all know-
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Guilty as charged.
ALISON BEARD:
Pajama pants, maybe. Underwear?
NAOMI BAGDONAS:
Yes.
JENNIFER AAKER: But then, try using the rule of three by creating a simple list where the last item is a bit unexpected. I miss so many things about office life, going for a spontaneous coffee chats, getting supportive eye contact from colleagues and wearing pants. It’s simple. It’s, again, not hilarious, but it does the trick. It helps diffuse tension and it basically closes the distance between two people.
ALISON BEARD: I talked in the intro about this being a pretty stressful time. At the same time, it’s been this weird shift for many of us in that we are showing sort of more of our personal lives and more of our authentic selves to our co-workers because so many organizations are working virtually. Has our current moment sort of helped or hurt humor as an organizational imperative?
JENNIFER AAKER: Both. The reality is that the more technology mediated our communication becomes, the harder it is to bring our humanity and sense of humor to work. But, it also becomes more important. We see data that suggests that mental health is on the decline in a very significant way. You think of laughter, joint laughter, which basically has this significant neurological impact on us as being almost like a magic pill, which is free. When you show that teams actually just like laugh together before a meeting, or even as we did before this exchange, they’re more likely to self-disclose, they’re more likely to trust their teammates, more likely to be more creative and higher performing. The question becomes in this new remote work lifestyle that we’re living in, how do you bring that humanity and sense of humor to work?
One of our favorite stories is actually by a CEO, Connor Diemand-Yauman, who also teaches with us at Stanford. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He recently joined a large nonprofit called Merit America as their co-CEO. His first all-hands Zoom call with this organization was scheduled amidst this incredibly challenging time for the world, and a particularly divisive time in the U.S. Connor wanted to acknowledge the hardship of the moment while signaling care and reassurance.
During this call, he was sharing his screen. When it was time for someone else to speak, he pretended to leave his screen share on accidentally. As everyone held their breath watching him, he went into Google and typed in, “Things inspirational CEOs say in hard times.” Everyone lost it. It was this beautiful moment of levity and signaling vulnerability in this totally unexpected and funny way. But here’s the thing, it was intentional. It wasn’t hard and it was free. It had this very real upside for Connor. Understanding how we can bring this sense of humanity and a sense of humor, even in the context in which we’re all living right now, is incredibly important.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. A lot of us might think it’s hard to come up with something as funny or creative as that example or to even tell a joke in a meeting. Are there some easier, less risky ways that sort of those of us working in middle management or on the front lines can use to be funny at work?
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Yes. Alison, I’m going to play back a tip that you taught everyone today. That is find something you genuinely find funny and share that with your team. You kicked us off with that excerpt, right, of comedy that you found to be funny. This is something we’re seeing executives do as well. They’ll kick off meetings with a short clip or they’ll include something in an email that’s work appropriate and that’s benign, but really that signals that they have a sense of humor, that they’re open to humor, and that it’s welcome here.
Another thing that we see people do, and particularly people who are in leadership roles and don’t quite know how to use humor, deliver a one-liner by themselves, is those people are already having fun with some of their colleagues behind closed doors, right? The co-workers that they work most closely with, they probably have some banter. They’re probably having some lightheartedness together. It can feel most natural to just bring some of that lightheartedness to the forefront.
Dick Costolo, the former CEO of Twitter, was great at doing this where every all-hands he would invite one of his other leaders from Twitter to join him on stage and they would co-present together. Part of that was the natural banter that would come out. April Underwood was one person who he did this with. April has a sharp and biting and wonderful sense of humor. She would essentially stand on stage with Dick and she would just tear him down, make fun of him and they’d be laughing together on stage. It was a way for Dick to showcase A, his own sense of humor and his ability to take a joke, and B, the sense of humility that comes with one of his co-workers sort of poking fun at him.
ALISON BEARD: In one way, it seems like leaders have license to try humor a little bit more, be more casual about it, but at the same time, they also have to be really careful, right? How do the executives that you’ve observed or work with manage that balance?
JENNIFER AAKER: Yeah. There’s a couple of ways to think about this. One, some of the ways to bring about humor are basically risk-free. For example, if you think about a callback. A callback is where you create a laugh line or someone else in a meeting might actually cause others to laugh. For example, in one meeting, you can imagine someone saying like, “I’m a recovering CFO.” Everyone laughs at this. It was a moderately funny joke. Then you kind of note it down. Then later in the meeting, when it’s important to either diffuse tension or be able to kind of bond the group, you do a simple callback, which is anchoring on that first laugh line. For example, you might say, “I’m an aspiring recovering CFO.” All you’re doing is you’re taking someone else’s joke and you’re basically reframing and repeating it.
You’re doing two things when you do this. One, since everyone in the team laughed at the first time, you’re basically making that original person who made everyone laugh feel good, feel valued, feel listened to, which creates a really inclusive sort of environment or culture. Then the second thing is you know they all laughed the first time, they’re going to laugh the second time. A second thing that we talk to our leaders and students about is simply having essentially a signature story bank. Which is, you know you have a set of stories or one-liners that makes everyone laugh. You just write down those stories or those jokes that get that laugh. Then you have a little list. Ronald Reagan actually used to do this and kept a little list of his signature jokes or stories with him at all times.
ALISON BEARD: When you’re a leader, how do you know if people are laughing because it’s funny or laughing because you’re their boss?
NAOMI BAGDONAS: That is a really important question. In part, because laughter is tied to status. When we rise in rank in an organization, we tend to lose our calibration of what’s funny. Because people are laughing not necessarily because we’re funny, but because we’re higher in status. One thing we talk about is leaders keeping a set of trusted testers. If you are going to use humor publicly, you have to have people who are going to tell it to you straight and be really honest about whether your humor is working or whether it’s not working.
More broadly, we talk about these risks of humor. There are the obvious risks, right? Being overtly offensive or saying something that is off base, but there are these two ways of thinking about risk that people tend to miss. The first is risk by rank. As you were saying, rising in the ranks of an organization and not knowing why people are laughing. Another aspect of risk by rank, by the way, is as we rise in status in an organization, what we can joke about shifts because there’s this concept in comedy that says never punch down. You never want to make the target of your humor someone of lower status than you. Of course, if you have a CFO, everyone in the organization is technically lower status so you really have to look for other places for humor.
In addition to risks by rank, we talk about risks by style. What people don’t necessarily think about is their humor style is one key to understanding how they can mitigate risks at work. As Jennifer shared earlier, sweethearts and magnets will tend to over self-deprecate. Their risk profile looks very different than stand-ups and snipers who are making jokes that could offend or alienate. Really getting under the hood and understanding what are unique preferences and tendencies when it comes to humor, can be a really good tactic for mitigating risk as well.
ALISON BEARD: What if you don’t work in an organization or on a team that embraces this idea? They’re not lighthearted, maybe they’re doing very serious business. Banking, hospital comes to mind. Where you might work with colleagues that just feel like there’s no room for this. How do you make a change?
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Yeah. Quit your job. No. I’m joking.
ALISON BEARD: Sometimes that is the answer though.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Right, totally. John Gottman, who is an expert in the science of relationships and creating meaningful long-term partnerships, talks about bids. Bids are the smallest unit of emotional offers that we make to people, right? They can be a small smile on Zoom. It can be a Post-it Note that you leave on the fridge with a little heart on it. They are these little bids that we make to people to connect and really to play.
One thing you can do is start making these little bids to your colleagues. Maybe it’s a lighthearted sign off on an email, yours with love and Lysol. Or maybe it’s a light-hearted video that you drop into an email exchange or into a Zoom. But we find broadly is that people want more joy at work. We know that we’re not laughing at work like we’re laughing outside of work.
By the way, one thing we haven’t talked about is that humor changes our physiology. That when we laugh, our cortisol goes down so we feel less stressed. We release endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin. It physically feels good to have humor with our colleagues at work. When we make these small bids of our colleagues, what we find is that more often than not, they’ll accept those bids and they’ll return them.
We talk about if you don’t have humor in your organization, start really small. Start really incremental and you’ll start to find that people reply in kind.
ALISON BEARD: When can we start making pandemic and coup jokes?
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Oh, my God. Immediately and never. I mean, humor is so context-dependent. In our course, we share a framework from Anne Libera, the director of comedy studies at the Second City. That framework is truth, pain and distance. That every bit of humor has some combination of these three things. Understanding those levers for yourself and for your audience will help you understand things like, “Is this too soon to joke about? Is this joke too stale? Has it been too long? Am I too far from this experience to truly understand the pain of it and therefore, should I not be joking about it? What is the truth that I’m illuminating here? Is that the thing that I am really aiming to joke about?” Right?
It’s really quite nuanced, but understanding what is the truth that you’re illuminating? What is the pain, for whom and how great? What is the distance from that pain? This distance can be either temporal, how long has it been? Or it can be how close is your personal experience to it.
ALISON BEARD: Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I hope that we can all bring more humor to the workplace, whether it’s in person or virtually. Thanks so much for being on the show.
JENNIFER AAKER: Thank you, Alison.
NAOMI BAGDONAS: Thank you for having us.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, co-authors of Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Adam Bucholz is our audio product manager. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Alison Beard.