Search Results

So let’s talk a bit about the Will Smith Chris Rock slap incident. While the meme game surrounding the incident is pretty strong, there have been quite a few social media posts, articles, responses, threads, tweets, tik-toks as well. Were I to link them all, I’d spend more time making hyperlinks than I would writing. Like the title says, I am approaching this as someone who researches humor and comedy for a living. One of the first things we need to get clear about is whether the joke Rock made was an attempt at humor or an attempt at comedy. This is really an important first step in figuring out what response one might give. So much of what I’ve seen written on the issue seems to ignore this. People say things like “If that had been my wife he’d made the joke about, I’d have smacked him too.” Or “Rock shouldn’t be making fun of someone with a disease.” But both these responses assume that Rock was doing humor and not comedy. You may be wondering what the difference is. Maybe one way to get at the difference is to note that comedy is a subset of humor, a subset of things we might call a humorous activity. Jokes with our friends, memes shared at the office, or simply laughing at something that strikes us as funny is humor, but not necessarily comedy. Comedy is something more like a performance. Comedians do comedy. Your office worker Nanette may be funny, may be the “office comedian” but she’s not doing comedy. Comedy is best thought of as humor done specifically as a form of formal entertainment. We go to the theater to see one of Shakespeare’s comedies. We watch a comedian perform on stage. We read comic novels, or watch sit-coms. These are all socially well-defined spaces. Humor can be done anywhere and can sometimes catch us off-guard. But comedy is not that way. We generally know when to expect comedy given the environment we’re in. So you might be thinking that I think that Rock’s joke was comedy, because he’s a comedian. And you’re right, I do. But that’s not the only reason. Rock made the joke on the stage at the Oscars. He and Will Smith were at an entertainment event. Rock was doing a bit for sure. Was the bit in poor taste? Possibly, was it not funny? To some yes, to others no. But this wasn’t Rock telling the joke at the after-party to Smith when he was outside of work or off stage. Rock was invited to the Oscars because he’s a comedian. Many of the recent Oscar hosts have been comedians. This was entertainment. It was theater. Rock was doing what comedians do. He was making a joke. If Rock was doing his job as a comic is Smith justified in hitting him? The answer is no. There is, obviously the whole issue of responding to words with slaps, and the general idea is that no one should hit someone for offensive language, but that’s a different issue. The reason Smith shouldn’t have hit Rock is because we don’t blame comedians for doing their job. Even if the job entails giving offense. Sometimes we even expect offense if we take in a show by an insult comic. Celebrity roasts are the same thing. But this wasn’t a roast of course. If Rock is acting as an entertainer, as a comedian, he has pretty wide latitude to make the jokes he wants. Rock is also a comedian who does push boundaries, he wades into topics that are tendentious and taboo. And let’s not forget that that particular joke wasn’t just something he came up with on the spot. He’s a famous, practiced, and adept comedian. He writes his material. He works it out ahead of time. He didn’t just ad-lib that and drop an offensive joke. This was a scripted bit. Again, all the more reason to think Rock was doing comedy and not just trying to be funny. Another way to think about this is to imagine what it would do to comedy in general if practicing comedians had to make sure their work didn’t offend an audience member enough that they took to slapping them. If I were an insult comic I would think twice about where or if I would do certain jokes if I had to worry that someone thought it was ok to hit me if they didn’t like the joke or were offended. Many performers have made this same sort of point. I think it’s a bit of a slippery slope to think that suddenly it’s open season on performers given what happened. However, there is a real worry that by failing to notice the difference between a person doing comedy and someone simply trying to do a joke, that some folks will think they have a right to express their offense by hitting a comedian who’s doing their job. As raunchy and foul-mouthed as an insult comic can get, people don’t hit them. And if you’ve never seen a roast, check them out. They are no holds barred. In my opinion, Smith should have left in the same way that a person who doesn’t like a sit-com stops watching, or a person who finds the jokes in a particular book not to their liking and stops reading. He had no right to hit Rock. Rock wasn’t insulting his wife, he was making a joke, and indeed making fun of Jada Pinkett-Smith. But he was doing so as the Chris Rock the Comic, not Chris Rock the friend or acquaintance. Humor is humor and comedy is a special form of humor that plays an important social role in almost every society. Smith’s actions showed that the difference between the two is fragile and we would all do better to try and understand the issues. As I end this, Smith has publicly apologized and I would wager personally apologized. I am not here to say that Smith is a bad person, I think that’s clearly false. He made a mistake. But with any act that has so much exposure, it has brought to the fore a host of issues that are important for us to be aware of. I can’t hope to cover them all, and there are ones I am not aware of that deserve attention. But as someone who thinks and worries about issues related to humor, this aspect of the situation deserved attention. I’ll leave the other issues to those who can write or speak more about them.

If you’re reading this, that means you’re interested in leadership and are thinking that if you find read that next article, you’ll find some new nugget of information that will help you. You may, but do yourself a favor and don’t try too hard to follow all those lists. It’s a fool’s errand. Plus, if what I have to say about it below, these lists are incomplete in some basic ways. There are a number of missing pieces to leadership which we’ll get to in a moment. But do me a favor and do an internet search for “best leadership traits” and have a look. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. You have top 5, top 7, top 10, 12, 15, 25, and I even saw one that was 100 or more. They have a variety of similarities and some have some differences. But they’re all missing one huge item. Humor. Most leadership lists that appear in any search completely ignore humor and it has a lot to do with why you even bothered to look up leadership traits in the first place. When people have questions about what makes leaders effective, they start reading articles about effective leadership. Those articles are jam-packed with terms like “good communicator,” “smart,” “visionary” and other inspirational terms. Leaders are almost mythical beings who are haloed by the powerful words meant to engage people. The problem with this focus on the rarefied airs of leadership like the above is that it reinforces a basic problem that makes our organizational spaces so in need of leaders—it ignores the basic connections that people need to have with one another in order to build strong leadership. Leaders don’t just come in and lead, they work to build connections, to engage with those around them so that they are able to put into practice the visions they and those with whom they work have. One incredibly effective way to create and foster those connections is humor. Humor is a basic way we feel connected to each other. The people you laugh with, the people you share jokes with, send memes to, etc. are all people with whom you’re close. Of course a leader won’t be in on all the inside jokes that people have, that’s not the point. But a leader that cannot share a laugh with those they lead, who feels just enough removed from the people in the organization that they don’t feel comfortable sharing a joke, those leaders are less effective. They are less likely to help those around them feel engaged, or feel as if the leader cares about them. So if you’re looking for a way to build the sort of necessary connections to those around you, start by listening to them and finding ways to share a laugh, to find something funny together. When you do these sorts of things you are showing more of yourself than just being the boss. You’re actually starting to be a leader. We look up to our leader in large part because we connect with them. One of the easiest ways to foster that connection is through humor. Of course don’t make the mistake of doing what Seth Dozerman did. Leaders can demonstrate authenticity with their humor, or they can go the Dozerman route and have the humor create tension and division. If you’re interested in leadership, that’s a great start. Maybe start with a joke about how your first days as a leader have gone and see where that gets you. If that’s not a good place to start, then a little self-deprecatory humor is generally good. Whatever you do, start from a place that has you, your core values, your ideas and desires, and your leadership will be all the more effective. I have another few blog posts on this and related topics. Click here if you want to go back to that chain.

Recently humor became a focal point of another political imbroglio for possible presidential candidate, Joe Biden. The lead up to the joke was some individual women coming forth and telling their tales of discomfort and worry as a result of some of Biden’s physical contact with them. Biden has a well-known history of being physically affectionate or “handsy” and opinions vary as to the propriety of his behaviors. This post is not a way to weigh in on that particular controversy. I know far too little about the situations and the individuals involved. Further, I am not interested to evaluate his posted video response to controversy as a real or non-apology. I take no sides relative to those topics in this post. What I want to focus on is the joke he was heard to say at a union conference on Friday, April 5th, 2019. I want to explore how the joke worked or didn’t and attempt to explain why it did or it didn’t. Largely I think it failed to do as he wanted and this becomes a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to use humor to address controversy in the political realm or otherwise. The context and set-up for Biden’s joke is pretty clear. First, there is a controversy around his behaviors. Some individuals have explained their discomfort at some of his actions while others have not had the same responses. These issue come at a time when issues of personal space and violations thereof are being discussed more broadly and as a result of the #metoo movement. Women and others have become more comfortable raising their voices to show their particular situations and their responses to the acts. Powerful people from across a variety of societal realms have had allegations and charges brought upon them due to this increased awareness on issues regarding personal space and touching. Some have been brought to trials whereas others have faced little to no consquences. The specifics for Biden’s case fit directly into the overall cultural influences described and are in a sense emblematic of a particular cultural moment. The joke came as a result of his introduction to an electrical workers union where he hugged the individual introducing him, Lonnie Stephenson, a white male. I add those biographical bits, because as with most humor, context matters. The crowd was also largely white and male. As Biden began speaking he made a little joke, that “He had permission to hug Lonnie.” Laughs were had. But the joke did nothing but flame the fires of the controversy. It did nothing to put the issue at ease. Obviously Biden and his supporters would like this to all go away, and often, a well-timed and snappy bit of humor can cause an issue to evaporate. It worked for President Reagan when he fended off the worry about his age when he quipped he wouldn’t use the “youth and inexperience of his opponent against him.” As brilliant a line and move as that was, that was in debate where making points is expected and the venue is antagonistic. There was nothing like that here. Biden was campaigning, and he was campaigning during a time when issues of sexual harassment and such are forward in the cultural milieu. Age isn’t a character flaw, but touching people and making people ill at ease because of behavior might very well be. The former is what happens to us all, whereas the latter is behavior one can choose to or not to do. There are a couple of ways one could take his joke. One he was using the humor to indicate that he’s aware of the issue and will deal with it in a forthright manner. Another response is that he’s using the humor to try and cast aside the issue and in a sense say “It’s no big deal.” The danger in this approach is that it seems that he’s laughing off the issue indicating that he has a tin ear—that is, it’s not something he feels he needs to seriously address. He can also be taken to be joking about something that you just don’t make light of, especially in public and especially as a candidate who is to represent a large number of people, many of whom find this issue to be central and certainly not to be made light of. Being seen as insensitive and or unwilling to listen and understand is often problematic for political candidates. If part or the main of your job is to represent people, being unable or unwilling to hear and listen to folks, then this makes one unfit for the job. Biden did post a video attempting to address the issues which indicates that he is taking it seriously, but it seemingly fell flat. The problem with the joke, coupled with the video is that someone could conclude that Biden simply doesn’t really care about the complaints of the folks involved. He doesn’t make much of an attempt to deal with the thorny issue that women felt deeply uncomfortable with his actions even if he didn’t have creepier or lascivious intentions. And that seems to be the problem. Since he doesn’t deal with it, he doesn’t really think it’s a problem worth effort and attention. The fact that he jokes about the issue in the cavalier way that he does twice in the same venue, to a bunch of other men, reinforces that conclusion. Instead of using the joke to acknowledge the elephant in the room, he comes across as using the humor to try and make the issue seem less than important—something he needn’t talk about as an individual or a candidate. The historical silencing of voices of the abused is one of the reasons the #metoo movement has grown in the way that it has. The main problem with the joke as it relates to his political life is that it doesn’t help him. It seems at odds with his video apology that he is taking some parts of the issues raised against him seriously. What one would have hoped, or what I would have hoped if I had advised him to use humor, was that the joke would not detract from people’s perception that he was being serious about this issue and listening to people about it. This was not the effect had. In ending this, let me raise a couple of other points. I don’t know Biden, I don’t know his views of women. I have no idea the level of authenticity the man has given the words of apology he gave. I don’t know if he was being a calculated political operative when he made the joke he did, or if he was genuinely trying to use the joke to address the issue, but did so in a ham-handed way. Most of the rest of us opining on this likely do not either. So perhaps we need more information before we fasten our opinions. Perhaps we’ve all we need, or have all we’re gonna get. I don’t know. Another question I would ask anyone who finds his behavior lacking, is to describe what could he do that would be acceptable given the situation? How does he, or anyone, make this better? Politics is a strange, oft- irrational game, and very rarely does a politician issue a full apology. Maybe he should’ve started there rather than a joke. It would open up avenues for more voices to be heard and this seems to be in line with what we expect of those who represent us.

In a recent article, author Alison Green bemoans meetings and the negative effects they can and often have. They're too long. They wander aimlessly. They bog down in irrelevant minutiae. They're wastes of time. And that's not all! The short term results create frustration, disengagement, and boredom. A side benefit is that some people catch up on their social media feeds. The long term, and often more harmful effects of chronically bad meetings, is that the very idea of meetings becomes stressful and annoying. I have a colleague, who shall remain nameless, and whom I deeply respect, who can take a 30 minute meeting and turn it into a 90 minute one. While what my colleague has to say is generally relevant, and important, man, please wrap it up already! Meetings don't have to be awful and sometimes they're necessary. Even long meetings are good, because if we don't sometimes get down in the weeds and slog through the issues, we will end up paying for that avoidance later. So how can humor help with meetings? Can humor help us enjoy and get more from meetings? The unsurprising answer is yes. Let's look at some of the sins of bad meetings that Ms. Green elucidates. Meetings are disorganized, become proxies for social activities, meetings are univocal and unilateral. If one person is providing all the content, why not use email? Why set up a lecture session? We left college a long time ago. Other complaints about meetings include them being too long, people are late, or the meetings never add up to anything. That is, there is never a deliverable from the meeting, and hence one wonders what the goal of the meeting is. As someone who has run meetings in the past, and who's been complimented on the way I run meetings, I can say that humor is effective. But before that, as many of the articles you can read will say, organization is key. Why are we here? (and not in the existential sense) What's to be accomplished? What can we expect happens as a result of this meeting? My meetings were typically ones to bring the office staff together, talk a little bit, let people know what the other was doing and the challenges and successes had, what was on the horizon, and to communicate what some short and medium term projects were. I rarely had an agenda, but that became the default agenda for our regular meetings. It was set via repetition. I had a sense of what I wanted to do from the first meeting I did as the director, and set on about accomplishing it. One thing that I always asked when I began my meeting was if anyone had any interesting or funny stories to share. I do this in my classes as well. They could be funny-gripe stories, an "I heard that..." sort of thing, whatever. The point was to get everyone to feel as if they could speak about something not work-related. But also that they could speak up. I tried to always have a funny story from class at the ready. Not everyone chimed in, but the openness and warmth was appreciated. Make no mistake here, humor of the right sort makes people relax, engage, and feel good. Too much and the humor is contrived, but absent, it makes the folks disengaged. The sort of humor, in general, you should use in your meetings should be what's typically called inviting. That is, try not to be making fun of anyone directly, or ridicule anyone. That's not going to work in the long run. You can of course make fun of meetings. But if you do, be sure that your meeting violates what you're making fun of. It's a sort of call back, and it will help you be more organized in your meetings. So not only can humor help people warm up and feel engaged, it can act as a way to help you create a good meeting routine. Two birds, one joke! One of humor's under-appreciated aspects is that Ha-Ha and Ah-Ha rely on the same parts of the brain. Getting a joke is like solving a puzzle or making a discovery--and those are inherently rewarding. From experience, I can say that when I can find funny ways to exemplify a point in my college classes, the students generally remember the point better. Apply that to meetings where points or new information has to be made readily apparent and memorable. Wrap that point in a joke and people will remember it better. It will also cause you to think more about how to present that material more effectively. Again, two birds, one joke. If a meeting is going to run long, if there are a lot of details and chock full of information, everyone, even the most practiced of lecture-attending students loses focus and their attention fades. It's just how we are wired. I am not saying to put a joke or witticism in every 10-20 minutes (about the average time people can stay focused), but inserting something that will make them refocus will help overall. Try and say something in an unusual or witty way. I often refer to myself as the melanin challenged member of the class. I teach at an HBCU (historically black college or university). This will get a chuckle. I can't always use it, but the idea is there. Thinking hard about what you say and how you want to say it is important. There are yet more ways humor can help, but I might wait till next week to go into more depth. Have a good week and remember to smile a bit more.

Mel Brooks once said that “humor is just another defense against the universe.” I find the ability to laugh off difficulty, to approach the craziness that is our world with a smile, to be fascinating and a source of endless reward. So many people I admire have found ways to use humor in the most difficult of times. There’s something so completely final as a good laugh in a tough spot. It’s this beautiful pause that restores and rejuvenates us as we move on. I am an amateur woodworker and often it’s a challenge for me to think in a visual way. As you can imagine, that makes woodworking, so dependent on good visual spatial abilities, can cause me fits. I have progressed much slower than many. I imagine if I’d been employed in a woodworking shop, I’d have long ago been asked to leave. So one day I was working on a big project and there was a failure that I had never contemplated. It was a biggie. My wife said that I looked as dejected as she’d ever seen me. After I sort of processed the calamity, I posted about it on Facebook. A woodworking friend of mine made a joke making fun of the situation and then quipped as a sort of apology “Too soon?” In truth, it was funny, and then I realized that it wasn’t too soon. Rather it wasn’t soon enough. I should have been moving on. The failure wasn’t going to change, only my attitude towards moving forward. And that joke helped me change my attitude. That’s beauty of a good joke or quip. They remind us of the finality of the situation. No amount of anger or sadness was going to change the fact that my build was messed up. What’s more, my bad feelings were keeping me from doing the most important thing—standing back and figuring a way out of the situation. It took the humor, the joke of a friend to rouse me from my melancholy. The laugh helped me to not only feel better, but also see beyond the issue to begin figuring out how to solve the problem. And that was and still is huge. So I recommend that even in the most difficult of times press yourself to find something funny. The world is full of crazy, laughable things. You’ll get on all the better for it when you tap into humor in such times. I did and I am forever grateful to my friend for making the joke he did.

Take a look around at any lists of the qualities any leader needs to have. You’ll be sure to see words like intelligence, integrity, inspiring. Lacking other suitable ‘i-words’ you’ll also find more descriptions like creative, humility, good communicator, and resilience. Some lists are at 10, others at 13 (an odd number really), and others that go all the way up to 100. I couldn’t read a list that long--wouldn't want to truth be told. And it's not because my internet attention span is so short. While many of these qualities are admirable, it’s doubtful that any one leader could ever be all those things. But more importantly, the list is incomplete and also partially false. Of course if you’re reading this you probably have guessed that what’s missing is humor, or wit, or lightheartedness. If you guessed that any of those terms were among the missing ones, then you’re spot on. Adding humor or wit to the list isn’t like adding one more to a list of 50 or 100. It’s not even close. Having a sense of humor should appear on a top 10 list, and definitely a top 20 list. Any list that misses them, any list that doesn’t have them is not just incomplete, it’s promoting a false and damaging view of leadership. Ask anyone you know, heck, ask strangers if they think they have a sense of humor. Dollars to pennies that they say yes. Ask them if they think having a sense of humor is important. Again, yes. Would you like having people say you lacked a sense of humor? I’d wager you wouldn’t enjoy being described as humorless. Lot’s of betting in this paragraph—sorry; I’m just that sure of myself here. Truth be told, you know it too. People are fine being told they lack the ability to draw, or dance. There isn’t much of a drawback to lacking them. While having those talents can often be beneficial, not having them will not bring some form of admonishment. I can’t draw at all, but I can dance. No one looks at me sideways for being bad at drawing but they surely would if I admitted I didn’t have a sense of humor. Here’s my question for you to think about. If very few people would ever admit that they lack a sense of humor, they wouldn’t like to be described as humorless, that most of us would find it insulting to be described as humorless, and most people find having a sense of humor to be something attractive in another person, why do we not value that trait in our leaders? Why is something that is so important to our normal interpersonal interactions so noticeably absent in our thoughts about leaders? Why are those lists lying by omission? I won’t provide answers yet. I’m going to give some answers in some later blogs. Things you can do while you wait, is think to see if leaders that you respect, admire, enjoy working with, etc. have a sense of humor. Was that humor valuable for that leader? How did they use it? Don’t worry too much over it, just some passing thoughts here and there. Till next time folks. Laugh often and much.

I've been sparse in the postings lately, but that's due to parenting stuff, work-life (who knew having a full-time job and trying to get a business off the ground was so tough!?), and the rest. But things haven't been slack here at Mirth Management. I've given a talk on humor and health to the Wake Forest AHEC group. I have given a talk on humor and politics at Elon University. I also gave a talk at the Lighthearted Philosophers' Society on self-deprecatory humor. I also received good news that a short article I wrote on humor and the classroom will be featured on the Teaching Professor blog in a few short weeks. I will add a link soon. I will also be adding some new content and have been thinking of doing a Podcast or V-log on humor in the workplace. Maybe just a way to talk about how humor is used well in the classroom. If you're interested let me know. Have a good week and have a few laughs at work.

One of the hardest things any teacher, speaker or presenter has to do is keep their audience engaged. We well know and have all experienced losing focus. Sustained attention is just difficult. Even in classes where I wanted to be there, that I really wanted to learn, I still lost my focus at times. Hopefully I haven't bored you already. But that last sentence is a bit off the mark. I may have bored you (no really, I am way too interesting for that to be true), but the truth is, every five to ten minutes people lose focus. So if you're trying to get a message across in a training session, in a classroom, like I often do, or in speech or address, it's best to regularly place attention grabbers in your presentation. There are any number of ways to grab folks attention. Drop a seemingly irrelevant picture into the blog post. It was an attempt at playing on the "clever girl" line from Jurassic Park. Did it work? Did you stop and think a bit? If you did, that's good for me. You'll have to tell me whether it worked or not. Other examples I have come from my role as a teacher. As you may know, I teach philosophy and the resounding, repeated, and somewhat accurate complaint is that philosophy is boring and the readings too long and too ponderous. There's little I can do to change that so I try to use wit to keep students engaged. I work at an HBCU (Historically Black College or University) and I am not black. So often when my color comes up, I say that I am "melanin" challenged. The students have to work on that for a moment, but only a few, and they usually chuckle or give me a wry smile. Regardless, that different way of saying "I'm white" makes their minds work just a little bit to decode what I said. That feeling of figuring it out and the recognition that I was using wit is motivating. Sometimes, when talking about student success, I tell folks that they are more than willing to have a look at my undergraduate transcripts. One of the first things they'd notice is that the first two years of grades "don't have a lot of vowels in them." This one takes a bit longer to process, but people figure it out and as a result I usually gets real laughs and wider smiles. Being witty also has the added benefit of telling them that grades aren't the end all and be all. But in any case, they're back into a heightened attentive state. Finding clever or witty ways to make the same statement will do wonders to help keep your audience engaged. It also has the benefit of making you feel better when one of your "jokes" lands well. No matter how many times I use that line about grades, it rarely fails and I enjoy watching the reaction. Engagement works in two ways. And and engaged presenter is more likely to move the audience. Here are some tips on places where witty rewording will work. Is the idea or phrase something you say often, or repeat in a talk? If so, try to find a way to add some wit. Is there a place where people typically zone out that is content rather than time related? Go for clever. Find ways, every seven to ten minutes, to add a witty phrase. Mind this one. If you are robotic about it, the wit will lose force. Try and be sensitive to your audience, and that comes with time and practice. People aren't born with silver tongues, they develop them. Have you any clever ways you say the same old things? Witty ways that you talk with folks? If you do, I'd love to hear them. Please leave some comments, or send me an email.

Last week’s post set up the idea that many of those leadership lists are either incorrect or incomplete, or they’re pedaling a falsehood. It may be nicer to think that those lists are incomplete, but I think more often the case that the reason we don’t think that humor should be on the list of leadership traits is because we cling to the bad belief that humor isn’t serious, and work, above all things is serious. It’s not too hard to see why humor is so important to humor. One of the hallmarks of the funny is some sort of incongruity. In order to recognize something as funny we have to see the funny thing as out of the ordinary. We need to see the mismatch. Almost as important to recognizing the incongruity is to resolve the mismatch. Take the following joke…please. “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” This joke, generally attributed to Groucho Marx, plays on the ambiguity of the words ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ In the set-up portion of the joke ‘outside’ is taken to refer to a sort of relationship of things in a non-spatial sense. The incongruity comes when we read ‘inside’ in the punchline and then interpret it to be a much more specific place designation—inside of the dog. We then reinterpret ‘inside’ and thereby get the joke. When we learn to see incongruities, when we see more of them, we are exercising our brain. There’s a reason we often refer to people as sharp when it comes to wit. Not only is wit indicative of intelligence, but being witty fast is further indicative of intelligence. If you want to increase your knowledge, understanding why and how jokes work is going to be a great way to boost your mental prowess. Not only are you looking for the reasons the joke works the way it does, but in so doing, you’re learning about different ways people think about and conceptualize the world. This has the added benefit of making you pay more attention to others and how they think. This is surely a good thing for a leader to do. So take some time, look around at the humor you see being used. Try to find out more about it. Push yourself to see more things in the world as incongruous. Challenge yourself to look deeply at our normal ways of understanding the world. Who knows, you may end up writing your own jokes. You’ll definitely have more fun. But you’ll also start increasing your intelligence and if those lists are to be believed, that’s an important trait to have.

Recently some colleagues and I have finished up and submitted for review at a journal (fingers crossed) a research article on humor and its influence on the relationship between supervisors and employees. What we found, after crunching the numbers, much like the picture below, was interesting, especially when it comes to the relationship between humor and supervisors and employees. The short answer for those who don't want to read is that if you have a supervisor that you think is funny or has a good sense of humor, you will feel nearly 25% closer to that person, emotionally speaking. Also, nearly 10% of how burned out you feel as an employee is influenced by how humorous you find your supervisor. That is, nearly 10% of your level of burnout is tied to your boss. If your boss is funny, you're nearly 10% less burned out. Imagine that. You're a supervisor that's either seen as funny or as having a sense of humor is going to have people feel closer to you by nearly 25% over a boss that isn't funny. A couple clever little jokes, or some funny comics, and your well on your way to creating a better and more effective work environment. Those are pretty big numbers. But more importantly, this evidence adds to the chorus of voices and the data that shows how important humor creating and maintaining a good work space. So if you're thinking of ways that you can improve as a boss, then look no further than humor. Well, there are other things you need to look at of course, but humor is not difficult to do. You have a sense of humor and you can find what other people find as funny, so look into it. Pay attention to what the people you work for, with, and who work for you find funny. Ask them to send on a funny meme or comic. Are you part of a job that has well known jokes that people in that profession share? Nurses and doctors have lots jokes, your profession likely does. The interwebs are a great place for that. I tried to graph the numbers, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I found this instead. There are lots of reasons to use humor at the office and in your organization, like your health and your ability to feel closer to those you work with. But now there are even more reasons why you should use humor. You're going to help those you work with feel closer to you and help them to feel less burned out. So go out there and sow the seeds of levity. Mirth will bloom shortly after that.

In my quest to document and find all the different ways workplaces and spaces use humor, it was nice to find a few pics of the bathrooms at Jimmy Johns sub shop. I can't say that I've ever used the restroom at Jimmy Johns, but these pictures of what the corporation has done to their bathrooms is great. Most bathrooms are not places you want to hang out--well except in certain times. But Jimmy Johns took the bathroom experience to a totally new and humorous place. I am sure that it took some convincing to go with this rather direct decor for the water closet, but I would have to say it's more than worth it. If we remember more how we feel about a place, having good food and a few smiles while there surely will make us want to come back. I happen to have learned a lot more about toilets than I ever did before. It even caused me to look up why the toilet is called a 'head' in boats. It has to do with its placement on the ship back when. Hat tip Wikipedia. I learned even more about Uranus. I especially love the foot placement minders for optimum reading effectiveness. Some may find this humor juvenile and it is. But it doesn't mean it's not clever and fun. To get this through corporate boards and into a style probably took some creativity and will. I for one am happy they did.

When tragedy strikes us, whether it come on suddenly like a tornado, or is more insidious and wide spread like the current pandemic, one of the ways that we cope with it is through humor. We instinctively know how much a laug shared with friends or even strangers helps us persist. Sometimes we see the best in humanity covered in a laugh. Regardless of how hard we may be working, how worried we may be, or how worn out we become, there are wonderful moments of humor that help us get through the difficult times; the humor that allows us to see and be reminded of what we share-how our shared love of laughing together, in the face of tragedy, is a powerful thing. Sharing e humor that shakes us from the grim reality when we see our belongings covered in muck, dripping and oozing heaven knows what, and no longer what we need or want them to be. Humor in those moments remind us that no matter what the tragedy, the important things, the people with whom we share our nights and days, our ability to laugh at even the most difficult of situations cannot be washed away by hurricane, or eroded through a pandemic. Below are some wonderful pictures of folks dealing with hurricane damage a few years ago. One of the things that interests me so much about these photos is the fact that it’s humor we turn to in these horrible times. The simple explanation is that there isn’t much we can do about this calamity. We can be brought down by it, run away, or ignore the problem, or we can face the problem head on. Humor helps with the latter. After we’ve seen the situation and taken it in as best we can, and we realize there’s nothing left to do but begin the long process of recovery, that’s when humor kicks in. I've already seen humor popping up and so have you. From the fun people have in Zoom meetings with new backgrounds, and the memes all about helping us with masks and PPE, there's lots of humor. I've seen some folks "prank" a person in a regular Zoom meeting by having all but that one person where a funny mask. That's great. I encourage you to look for ways to bring levity to you day to day. It will be helpful and make us more resilient and more willing to tackle the obstacles ahead.