Humor At Work

Your sense of humor can take your career to the next level – and it’s 100 percent recyclable.

By Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant

Fiona Macleod Butts, director of talent at Southwest Airlines, knows how to use humor to tackle business issues head-on. New to her job in August 2006, she decided to find a funny way to deal with what is known in many circles as the “BlackBerry prayer” – that is, when employees bow their heads to check or send messages instead of paying attention in a meeting. “I posed photographs of people who were clearly in the throes of vigorous debate and dialogue juxtaposed them with shots of the same people sitting around a table with their heads down,” she says. “You could see how the energy was sucked out of the room. I talked about potential problems of BlackBerry addiction: being distracted while driving, ending up dead and being forced to explain to St. Peter how you died.”

Butts says, laughing, “I made my point in a way they won’t soon forget.” Butts honed her natural sense of humor by taking an improv class. “I found it helped me relax during discussions, prepare for the unexpected and capture the attention of an audience,” she says. With dozens of studies showing that humor can be an important managerial skill – boosting creativity and productivity, helping communicate difficult messages, reducing hostility and tension, as well as improving employee morale – more women execs are incorporating it into their leadership styles.

Wayne Decker, Ph.D., professor of management at Salisbury University in Maryland, has studied managers and humor. “The interesting thing,” he says, “was that women using nonoffensive humor at work were rated the best on leadership measures, above men who used or didn’t use their sense of humor. Females not using their humor skills were rated the worst.”

Zonya Foco, a nutritionist and CEO of Zonya Health International, knows how helpful a few one-liners and funny props can be in helping her get across messages that might otherwise fall on deaf ears. “I have a [pretend] human G.I. tract in a cooler,” she says. “When I’m giving a talk, I bring people up on stage and have them put on latex gloves and reach inside the cooler. As they do, I say, ‘It’s really easy to get a G.I. tract from your local teaching hospital. Have you ever tried?'” Needless to say, Foco’s message about the impact of certain foods on the gastrointestinal system stays with audiences much longer than a PowerPoint presentation ever could.

Pam Young, co-founder of Sidetracked Home Executives, a company that produces books, tapes and other products to help women get organized, has made humor an integral part of not only her products, but also her approach to marketing. Young has appeared on major television talk shows such as Donahue, Oprah, Geraldo, CBS Morning News and Today. “At first we didn’t even think to use humor in our marketing efforts, especially when approaching television stations. We thought we had to be formal and serious to get their attention,” she explains. “Later, we realized that it was our sense of humor that got us on TV and kept them asking us back.”

In general, women managers tend to be more reluctant than men to tell funny stories or focus on humor in business. Gina Barreca, Ph.D., author of Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Co-Education in the Ivy League (University Press of New England, 2005) and They Used to Call Me Snow White… But I Drifted (Penguin, 1992), notes that “Even as women assume greater leadership roles, humor is often the last thing we add to our business skills because making a witty remark is somehow still associated with being a flirt.” But, as Barreca points out, humor gets you ahead in business and in life. “We need to challenge the stereotype, recognize the importance of using humor as a business tool, and remember that a sense of humor is also associated with intellect, skill and the ability to think on our feet.”

Women running for political office certainly recognize the importance of humor in boosting their acceptance as leaders. Presidential contender Sen. Hillary Clinton noted in a press conference last winter, “There will be more stories about my clothes and hair than some of the people running against me.” Amid the audience’s laughter, she sent the clear message that she knew what to expect and was ready to take it on.

Humor also can help resolve conflict, as Pamela Cournoyer, president and CEO of Corporate Leadership Accelerating Success Strategies Inc., has discovered. “I’ve found that I can defuse tension around a difficult situation simply by saying something funny, such as, ‘You know, it’s all about me.’ People laugh, then they realize how they’ve been behaving, so they change.”

M.P. Mueller, president of Door Number 3, an advertising agency in Austin, Texas, understands that humor is a vital way for women to deal with personal stress so it doesn’t stand in the way of professional goals. Diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2003, Mueller sent out Easter cards featuring her bald head as a decorated egg. This very funny approach to life is part of her business model too – from a boardroom featuring surfboard tables to occasionally resolving conflict with leg wrest ling. Her approach works. While she was laughing her way through chemo and radiation therapy, her company grew by 69 percent and landed 12 new clients.

Even when you have to get down to serious business, a sense of humor can almost always make the job more fun.

Humor Helpers

1. Focus the laughs on yourself. Doing so helps humanize you in the eyes of others, thus increasing your likeability. It also reduces the chances of accidentally hurting feelings.

2. Drop the sarcasm. Remember, sarcasm is mean-spiritedness masked as humor. If you think there’s even a chance you’ll wish you hadn’t said it, don’t.

3. Poke fun up, not down. Never make fun of anyone with less power than you, or focus on characteristics over which someone has no control, such as age, gender, ethnicity or weight.

4. Balance “alpha female” body language. Don’t just lighten up your words. Be sure your face and body carry the same playful message.

5. Never tell anyone, “That’s not funny.” This implies your sense of humor trumps everyone else’s. To stop humor that is hostile or insensitive, use those words instead.

6. Practice makes perfect. When it comes to your delivery, pay special attention to your timing and your enunciation (they won’t laugh if they can’t hear what you’re saying).

7. Remember, the funny part always goes at the end. Keep your audience engaged and build up to the final payoff. And always leave them wanting more!

This article originally appeared in the October 2007 issue of PINK Magazine.