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Key points
- Leaders can benefit from moments of laughter.
- Serious partners—married or not—need laughter, especially during tense moments.
- Laughing at one's own vulnerable moments can defuse them for others.
I recently interviewed[1] two professionals who have found a real place for humor in the work setting. Drs. David Fessell, former professor of musculoskeletal radiology at the University of Michigan, and Ed Hoffman, CEO of Knowledge Strategies and former CKO of NASA, spent an hour with me talking about humor and play in the workplace.
Humor and business
The discussion began with Ed talking about a senior manager at NASA who opened a meeting with a pencil up his nose. A simple way to bring humor, lightness, and humanness into a very serious meeting. It not only didn’t distract from the seriousness of the meeting and its topic, but it actually deepened the discussion. More ideas grew because participants were more relaxed — all from a simple moment of laughter.
David recommended that leaders laugh at themselves if they want to bring laughter and humor into the business setting. The act of laughing at something that can be funny means that laughter is allowed. As an example, he related a remarkable story of the Dalai Lama who was giving a speech. He said that he had three things to talk about and proceeded to talk about two of them. He then stopped and said to the audience, "I forgot the third thing." Whereupon, after a moment, he said, “Embarrassment. Embarrassment. Embarrassment.” And then he began to laugh — not a chuckle. It was a deep laugh that went on so long and so deeply that tears were trickling down his face. When he finally took a deep breath, his eyes brightened, and he said, "I remember the third point.” Then he finished his speech.
What were his three points? The strongest memory was of this august person finding the humor in an embarrassing situation — and naming it! It was certainly an embarrassment and a moment of real vulnerability. His choice was to laugh at himself — so hard that the audience began laughing and laughing as the joy of the moment permeated the audience as well as the Dalai Lama. And there was no loss of face to anyone.
I found this to be a wonderful example of how if we can take a moment to see the humor in things, the embarrassment can shift to joy. The tension can shift to creative thinking.
Humor and marriage
As I listened to these two professionals talk about how humor can set a tone or defuse a situation, I began to think of marriage. There are so many moments when a disagreement arises if only because you and your partner live in close and sometimes constant proximity. What if when this occurred, you stopped and thought of the humor in it. Would a good laugh defuse the tension? Would it open other possibilities for resolution? Considering these questions, I thought of my own marriage.
My husband and I have been married for a very long time, yet our relationship seems to continue to grow even today after so many years. Of course, we love each other, but we also laugh a lot. When things get tense, one of us will shift our voice and take on the persona of some favorite character from a book. We read books out loud to each other, and so we have many characters we both love — for example, Sam Gamgee from Tolkien’s work. We might use a typical phrase which would be in the case of Sam, “If you take my meaning.” That funny little phrase inspires a laugh and then opens the conversation.
Just like the Dalai Lama naming the feeling dispelled his disappointment and the audience’s confusion in forgetting his third point, a simple shift to the unexpected yet familiar helps my husband and I keep a great relationship growing even better.
Notice that in both cases, the humor was kind. Snide humor doesn’t create relaxation from concern or tension. As I write this, I realize this is one of the reasons that some comedians make me laugh until I cry and others I turn off almost immediately. If I want to be entertained, I want to also be dealt with kindly.
Is humor a sign of or a generator of hope?
As we were closing out the conversation, David said, “Humor is a sign of hope.” When we can laugh, it means that we see there is a future. When I look at the numbers of suicides and depressed individuals in this country, I am reminded that we rarely take the time to see the humor in our public discourse. There is nothing to laugh about after a mass shooting, but there can be something to laugh about when a politician says only their talking points instead of answering questions or lies in the face of obvious facts. Would laughing at them defuse not just the tension but also their power?
David also suggested that a good strategy is to have a Humor Club where you share humorous situations, jokes that were heard, or moments when laughter broke the ice. In this way, we can become more aware of the role of humor in our lives and begin to recognize them when they happen. For me, those moments are almost always a funny video on Twitter of a cat protecting a child from climbing into danger or perhaps where a dog allows a cat to groom them or where a mother calms a temper tantrum by squirting whipped cream into the yowling mouth of her child. As I watch, they are moments when laughter bubbles up.
Children are good at this. Lots of things are funny to them, and when they laugh, we tend to laugh with them. Just imagine if more people could laugh out loud.
References
1] The interview was conducted on Unlocked, a television show on e360tv hosted by Madelyn Blair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNZ9x5RTwHE&t=940s
