Search Results

Hi there dear readers. I think it has been 3 weeks from my last post. Life has a way of getting in the way. With the end of my semester, final grades, lots of travel and three boys with their own lives, well, I just didn't have the energy to keep up a weekly post with meaningful quality. And if there's one thing that I do not like, is putting out posts that are filler. I can't imagine having something particularly interesting to say about humor every week, but given how websites and such are evaluated, I better. One thing I did over that break was to give my final pitch for this business of mine. I was part of a cohort of 14 other companies in an incubator run by LaunchLab Greensboro. For 12 weeks we all met for two and a half hours every Monday to learn about everything from publicity, messaging, HR, and all sorts of topics related to business. For an academic by background, this was all subject matter I never had any exposure to. It was a language and style of thinking that as a philosopher I was completely out of my element. My cohort was filled with a number of interesting companies and earnest and engaged people. It was quite an enjoyable experience to work with them, be challenged by them, and see the growth that we all experienced. One thing I noted was that five or six of us were all companies focusing on wellness. The fact that around 40% of the startups in this batch were focused on wellness was surprising, but given all the numbers and information out there that show how wellness is becoming more and more an issue is something that I think we need to pay attention to. It seems that our work lives, and not just here in the USA, are becoming worse for us. I've noted the issues with retention and engagement before, but seeing how many people are trying new businesses that are focused on wellness really made me wonder why the work situations are so harmful to wellness. There's an idea out there about work that you can read in the Bible to Karl Marx. The idea is that the thing that makes us human, that which separates us from other animals on earth is that we make things, we create, we build. Marx said that humans turn "nature into culture." Modern "makers" movements and the proliferation of makers' spaces and collaborative areas in that model reinforce this. So it should be surprising and concerning that we seem to be alienating ourselves from our work (well not if you're a Marxist). If the trends continue, we will be in serious trouble. There's something interesting about all of these issues with wellness, disengagement, and work. We are working up against it now and we are beginning to see the toll that these trends are having on not just the bottom line of a company's spreadsheet, but in the toll it's taking on our persons. We're stressed, tired, pessimistic, and disengaged. I am hopeful, however that we can fix it. That fix will take some work. And what I am certain of is that humor is going to play a big role in helping us reset and change our work cultures. This is the challenge that we face, and we are up to that challenge. Here's to another year of posts, stories, and humor.

One of the biggest mistakes folks make when it comes to thinking about using humor at work, or actually using humor, is that they assume that the end goal is actually to produce real lol's. Nothing could be further from the truth. What you want to accomplish with humor at work or in your day to day activities is to produce what actually happens when we type 'lol' into our devices. We seldom actually laugh out loud. We are more often to be found cracking a lopsided smile, giving a quick exhalation through the nose, or perhaps even a hint of a chuckle. But rarely am I really laughing out loud. Why aren't we typically really laughing out loud? Well, for one thing we're often alone when we're on our device, or at least we're not interacting with those around us. Laughter is primarily a social act. Laughter is much more likely to occur when your with folks than when you're by yourself. Further, deep laughs, laughter that lasts for a long time is pretty rare. Laughter is usually just a sort of conversational marker helping us to navigate what's going on. So when you're trying to use humor don't write your jokes as if you were going to a comedy club, or as if you were performing for an audience. Find what you think is funny and share it. Find clever ways to say or write the same things. Use a meme here and there. Keep things light in your communications or poke a little fun at yourself. When you remove the goal of getting comedy club style laughs, you'll find that humor will come more easily. And just FYI, Laugh at work week is just about a month away, April 1st through the 7th of 2020. Get ready to bring a little levity to your life.

Writing with humor is often difficult. It’s even harder still to catch the humor when we read, as accustomed as we are to believing that what’s written is by default serious. I can attest to this because as an editor on a text about humor, I critiqued an author as saying something nonsensical only to find out a few lines later that I missed the joke. Talk about irony and a failing all at one. Reading for humor can be hard. But we needn’t give up all hope. If you want to write in a humorous way, then you just need to find some examples of humorous writers and have a look at them, study them, and maybe even borrow a few tricks. That’s why I was so excited to read the article linked here. Not only was it funny, it was informative, and enjoyable. What was the article about? It was about theoretical physics. Yes. That’s right, these two authors did a masterful job of using humor well to get their ideas across and keep their audience engaged. The theories surrounding modern theories of space-time are maddening. Even as someone used to dealing with odd ideas, I am a philosopher after all, some of the deeper theoretical positions in physics often make my head hurt as they seem to fly in the face of common sense. But that’s the beautiful thing about this piece. It’s able to relate the ideas in ways that I could understand, but do it in way that uses humor, and in ways that I was able to learn. So what is it that this pair of authors do well with regard to humor? One of the first things they do is they begin with a little humor. They follow up their initial sentence, filled with foreboding, with a snarky little shot at philosophers and physicists. As a member of one half of that camp, we’ve earned it—I mean really. We have. They have cartoons placed throughout that are visual plays on the ideas presented. Some foreshadow and others explain. And if you read it backwards, it will read the same. One of the other things they do well is that they address the clearly difficult and mind-bending ideas with hyperbole and some teasing. They know how hard this will be for folks who rely on more commonsense notions of space, so they use the humor, the asides, to get people to focus less on how odd the ideas are, and more on the humor. A spoonful of sugar and all that. But the truth is, we know humor makes difficult things less so. So why not use humor? The overall tone of the article is light and encouraging. They express they’re difficulties with the ideas and remind us that this is all heady stuff. Their examples allow us to be with them on the journey, rather than having them talk at us in the paper. Instead of using technical terms of art, they are constantly relying on concepts the regular person could be expected to know. But more than that, they use concepts in a very informal and comic sense. The use of “goo” to describe space is apt because it is a seriously unscientific word, and also one that’s a bit funny, and does an effective job. The juxtaposition of the word ‘goo’ with the heady discussions of space time is another little element in the playful repertoire the writers use. While our authors rely on humor to great extent, it’s not overdone. Humor works best when it accentuates things, when it comes in spurts, not when it is one long joke. The authors use a good bit of humor, but it never feels overdone. That’s one thing that good humorists know. They know when not to do too much. So read this article a few times. Enjoy it, play around with it. See if you can borrow some of their techniques when you have to write that next intimidating piece. You may find you’re a bit of a humorist after all.

In a recent article on Vox, Emily Van Der Werff writes an insightful criticism and reflection on the nature of political satire as seen on the now venerable comedy show, Saturday Night Live. While much internet writing and response tends to dive into criticism, I want to start with some positives and then urge it’s not so bad as the author would have us believe. For anyone who’s worried about the devolution of US political debate Ms. Van Der Werff’s article provides more grist to that mill. What she finds wrong with the satire of Trump SNL offers is that rather than using humor to explore a difficult topic, or the deep issues and threats that Trump’s approach to politics has on our society, SNL provides a caricature. Sure it’s making fun of Trump, it’s ridiculing him, but it’s not doing anything to point out some deeper flaws in the situation. As far as satire goes, A Modest Proposal this isn’t. It lacks the subtlety of good satire. What the humor largely relies on is the tried and true model of finding some aspect or character traits and then hamming them up. The debate highlights Trump’s lack of restraint. The comedy shows the only way to deal with that is the pause button—our updated deus ex machina. Take his well-known childish pouts and exaggerate them and show only that side of Trump. Take Biden’s beautiful pearly whites and have Carey flash that smile the same as when he lampooned TV sales folks in his sketches about the Juice Weasel. These sorts of tropes or techniques are decent comedy perhaps, but they’re not really satire. Ms. Van Der Werff’s main issue really isn’t that the sketch is a failure of satire—that’s secondary and related to her primary concern. Her worry is that because of the medium of the screen these depictions of Trump specifically, “normalize” his awful behavior. They make him a “cartoon game boss” who has only a couple tricks and can be defeated if you have the right approach or perhaps a cheat code (thank you again remote control pause button). Once Trump’s behavior is laid out there in the comic world, his awfulness becomes less threatening. And this is not helpful given how truly toxic his behavior is. People become inured to histrionics, to the cavalier selfishness. The only difference between the reality and comedy is that Alec Baldwin puts on less make up than Trump. That’s what the real problem is. Since Baldwin’s impression really only takes Trump’s behavior and adds the clown face to it, it doesn’t do satire in a meaningful way because it makes the buffoonery seem less harmful. The satire should be focused on the awfulness of the behavior and then using comedy and humor to at once make fun of it, as well as draw out the ridiculousness of such behavior from any public figure, let alone the US president. What’s worse is that instead of being horrified, or perhaps using the satire to then work against the toxic behavior, people come to accept it. Hey, it makes for good, if not simplistic comedy. This argument is reminiscent of the critique often inveighed against the use of racist, sexist, or ethnic jokes is that they reinforce negative stereotypes that harm the groups. If the assumed stereotype is that a particular group is weak-willed, and I make a joke relying on that, then I reinforce the stereotype, especially if the joke gets the laughs. In order to get the joke, you have to know the stereotype. People won’t get it otherwise. TV’s reach makes this normalization problematic for an engaged electorate. Real satire helps to engage people with the ideas and issues, motivates them to interact, not laugh and forget. All this has the ability to make these sorts of racist or sexist ideas remain in play in our culture. Since they are objects that also help us laugh, we cherish them in an odd sort of way. I have to say this article has caused me some serious thought. To normalize Trump’s anti-social behavior is to further degrade our social and political lives. It makes the practice of engaged democracy harder. I am worried that Ms. Van Der Werff’s views are spot on. But then I watched the sketch with Jim Carey. I watched with this article in mind, for I had read it before I saw the sketches. While the criticisms have merit, I think they go, to borrow another philosopher’s words, “a bridge too far.” Carey’s spoofing of Biden is vintage Carey. It’s has all the trappings of what made him famous. Wild gesticulations, over-the-top caricature, and no small amount of good old fashioned zaniness. There is also something more reflective in the caricature. There’s the slow build of the frustration. The clear recognition in Carey’s portrayal of an individual who knows he needs to stay on message and not appear rattled, but really can’t do it, because of the narcissistic, childish bullying of the opponent—a bullying meant to take advantage of his stuttering. Biden can’t rely on accepted norms and protocols. There’s an ineffectual moderator that Trump simply plows right through in addition to the norms. He’s not a disruptor, he’s a destroyer. In the end, most any normal person would lose their temper and tell the guy to shut-up. This all comes to fruition when the sketch has Trump spontaneously stop mid-verbal diarrhea. The denouement, as Van Der Werff, notes does what many of us wish. Just stop for a while and let the work be done. Stop being so fragile as to demand that everyone pay attention to you. This does exactly what satire does. It just so happens that it relies on other comedy techniques to get there. It’s in fact one of the things that I appreciate about SNL’s approach to political comedy. They do not forget the importance of a good fart joke. They don’t forget, in part, because they need to appeal to a wider audience, but also because it adds internal richness to the sketch. The low and high work together for effect. Good comedy will work on and through a number of levels. High level satire offset with simple parody isn’t bad. It’s bad if parody is all there is. Perhaps the complaint is more of amount. Maybe SNL could be more satirical and rely less on the fart joke. I am not a practiced comedian, I can’t say. I think the structure, the use of all the “easy” forms of humor and parody build to a place where the pause button has its greatest effect. It highlights the nature of what we’re dealing with. Carey tones down the parody from finger gun flames to a less ostentatious, but still satirical message about karma and science. I happen to think that this is good satire. The normalization isn’t an evil of comedy, it’s an outcome of the medium-the screen and the odd ways in which humans deal with them. Ms. Van Der Werff’s issue is not with the comedy, it’s the medium. The comedy is good comedy. It’s the screens we need to figure out—he types while looking at a screen. There’s one other thing that Ms. Van Der Werff ignores in her article. The sketch, the comedy, and any satire, is in some part valued for its entertainment value. When I watched the sketch I admit that I began unhappy. I had only watched five minutes of the original debate and it was all I could stand. This was not a debate. Whatever it was, however charitably we try and evaluate the situation, what we had was detrimental to everyone that participated. But the humor and comedy made me feel less awful about the situation. At least I could talk a bit more about it, I could have a discussion whereas before I could only be snide. Humor can make difficult topics easier to deal with. This sketch did that. While the issues we face as a society are difficult, especially now, that we have comedy to help us do better, to help us get through some of the awfulness. This world would be less for its absence.

When I write about humor I often write about how good it is for someone as an individual and or some organization. I focus a lot on what philosophers call instrumental goals. Those are the benefits that humor has for us. Things like an increase in stress tolerance, or improved health, or a better outlook all have a certain quantifiable outcomes. These are great, make no mistake. But one of the things that often gets lost in this sort of cost benefit analysis is something we all know, but often overlook. When we share humor with one another it's a kindness. And kindness, though we know it's important is something that we need more of. So that's the focus for today's blog: Humor as a kindness. When I think of some of the best times I have had with my colleagues, I tend to reflect on times when we shared a laugh. Whether it was my coworkers gently teasing me about race (I'm a white guy at an historically black college), or the time I told my wife that since our anniversary year was porcelain and maybe she'd like a toilet, or when my son beat me to a clever line, humor seems to be involved in some important way. I want to make them smile and get that feeling of mirth and share it with them. I want to help them have a moment or two where levity and playfulness reign. There's far too little of that in our daily lives--or at least it feels that way given how beset we are with deadlines, emergencies, and the rest. But the kindness isn't just about getting them to feel a certain way. When I share a joke or something I find funny I am inviting them to see the world as I do, to share with me something I find funny. If sharing is caring, and caring is a kindness, then so to is sharing humor. I am not necessarily interested in solving a huge problem, or making all the ills of life go away. I am interested in having some basic fun, of enjoying the world with you at that moment. I'm inviting you to enjoy the world as I do and that's a deeply personal thing to do. It's different than going to an amusement park (pun not intended). Roller coasters and fun houses are great, but sharing what I find as funny let's you see more about me than a simple enjoyment of loop in a coaster. It's a sharing an outlook from which I derive joy. And a shared experience, whether it's a roller coaster or a laugh at something, is so much better. So as you walk out into the world today, think about sharing some humor. Think about how doing so in an act of kindness. I guarantee that if you practice these acts of kindness the rewards will be double. Not only are you laughing, you're sharing your experiences with others and that's a powerful thing.

Albert Einstein once said that “Creativity is intelligence having fun,” and Andrew Carnegie said “Where there’s little laughter, there’s little success.” One of the challenges I face as an organizational humorist and stand-up philosopher is convincing people that my services are something they should invest in. Often I hear complaints that there’s too little humor in our day to day or that their work life needs more humor. But they’re unwilling to bring me in to their organizations. I suspect the reason for the hesitance has a lot to do with the basic belief that if we’re laughing, smiling, or enjoying ourselves, we must not be being serious; we can’t be doing real work. But that’s just false. Sure work can be hard, can be less than enjoyable, but aren’t we told about the importance of doing what we love so we won’t “work” a day in our lives? Isn’t one of the things that make us uniquely human is that we do work and create and spend a great deal of our time willingly do so? If you answered yes, then you know work and laughter and mirth aren’t opposites. In fact, they’re teammates. Think of a time when you were working and enjoying it. Was it a time when the work was hard but fulfilling? I am sure there have been times. Have you ever been doing some work that was difficult, almost drudgery, only to have it improved when you and a coworker started laughing about something? Didn’t it make the time go by quicker? Again yes. Have you ever really been dreading doing something, or have been putting it off, only to get to it when you’ve had your attention drawn to another more enjoyable event? Yeah, probably. Humor, mirth, and laughter are necessary components to a good working environment and you know this. Why is humor necessary? Because of the enjoyment it brings; because it’s restorative both in physical and mental health. One of the reasons disengagement is so high across the global workforce is because we’ve had reinforced this notion that enjoyment is not part of work. I had a boss when I first started working that loved to say “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.” I remember the looks that managers gave us when we were laughing or sharing a joke on the job. It’s not as if we weren’t working, we were. Sure, there is a time to clean and stay focused, but there is also a need to pause our focusing and refresh our mental browser with a smile, a joke, or a laugh. Just like our attention wains and needs to be refocused, so does our work. One of the best ways to refocus our work is to hit us with a little humor. These added elements not only help us cruise through our work better, but it is literally enjoyable. And those things are not to be seen as anathema to work, they are rightly seen as partners in the project. I encourage you to find ways to add humor to your day to day at both work and home. Trust me, you’ll like the way you laugh.

The Beginning in my End. A couple of days ago I took a run with my middle son. He runs track and while he kicks my butt, it’s nice that he’s helping me try to stay in shape. We run a trail near our house and as of now I can make it about two miles (my knees are a mess). At just about the two mile mark there’s a wooden picnic table so I decided to stop and stretch there. I was recovering fine, not gasping for air, stretching the hammies, when, as I was turning to stretch the other leg, I felt my shorts catch and then that sudden stinging feeling: a feeling unmistakable for those who work with wood. I knew right then and there that a splinter had temporarily squatted in a most unfortunate place. Yes dear reader, I now had a nice sliver of wood poking right into my gluteal fold—that space where the hamstring and the glute meet. I tried to work the splinter out by gingerly tugging at the piece that was still in the shorts, but that wasn’t helpful. The splinter broke and I still had a mile and half to walk back to the car. I never knew how much my backside moved while I walked. Happily, my son wasn’t taking video at the time. My wife was with us that day and when she reached us, I sheepishly announced my condition. She ass-ertained the situation and her response, as any good life-partner would, was to laugh at me. My son alternated between a suppressed laugh and trying to avoid eye-contact in the hopes of keeping that laugh suppressed. The walk back was uncomfortable, as was the drive. I told my partner that since I lacked the flexibility to put my head up my own arse, she was going to have to help me out. She agreed, with an encouraging laugh, a shrug, and few shakes of the head. By the time we got home, I knew the splinter was still there and soon my other two boys would know too. Of course they laughed at me; with my boys I’d expect no less. Watching Dad gingerly walk about and try to sit down has got to be hilarious, if not laced with a little schadenfreude. My wife and I made our way to the bedroom, found the required splinter-extraction materials, and commenced to try and surgically remove the cellulose residing in my bum. Let me first say that my wife’s eye-sight is not that great. Also the lighting in our room is not surgical grade. Usually when one has a splinter they will find a way to dig it out. A safety pin is my go to, so my wife grabbed it, a pair of tweezers and commenced to excavating the area. You may not know this, and it came as a surprise to me, but the skin around your butt is sensitive. At first my wife was slowed in her treatment because I couldn’t stop laughing. Here I am out exercising, trying to avoid the COVID-19 weight gain, help my knees deal with small amounts of running and the next thing we know I am bare-assed on the bed with my wife and not in the good way. So when my laughter stops, my butt no longer bouncing, and I’ve steadied myself for the upcoming antics, she proceeds to needle around. The pain was fantastic! It was a cocktail of embarrassment, anger, laughter and sharp pain. Of course, a few regrettable words of were used, and my wife apologized for the ordeal. It was literally a giant pain in my ass, but it wasn’t her fault. She’s a champ but she was hampered in trying to hold her cell phone in one hand to light my butt (Don’t try this at home friends) and use the other do get at the splinter. Did I mention that her eyesight isn’t the best? To make matters worse, the area had swollen like, like I’d been stung...on the butt. She really couldn’t see anything. After what felt like a long, long time, but was actually five to ten minutes, we graciously concluded our butt-play. (Hey censors, don’t disappoint me, that’s a good line). So, it’s Friday evening in the middle of a pandemic, I am vacillating between writhing in pain and laughing (but not my ass off), and thinking that I need to avoid medical facilities. What’s man with a splinter in his behind to do? I decided that instead of broadcasting to Facebook the need for someone to help me get a splinter from my rear, an act that was sure to cost me a few friends and possibly blocked as a user, I decided to head to the Urgent Care in the morning. My sleep that evening was punctuated by twinges of pain as I tossed and turned. I wish I could tell you I dreamt of the land sung of by Sir Mix-A-Lot in his ode to behinds, but I didn’t. I woke up early the next morning with a pointed reminder of my run.

Responding with Humor: A Choice YouTube can be such a wonderful place to spend some time. Of course, it’s also a deadly time suck, so watch out. But the following video illustrates a point about humor, especially humor in situations where we could be angry, annoyed, or even threatened. Humor has been used by people facing the most difficult of circumstances like concentration camps or forced marches. Sometimes our ability to use humor, to play with even the most awful of situations is what marks as human. I love the video above cause I can imagine a couple of neighborhood fellas or a couple of garbage men just watching in disbelief as the cans roll down the street in the stream. Dealing with that, the trash that might be strewn about, and just getting the cans back up that hill is an extra part of the day and certainly no fun, but it’s going to need doing. I would prefer someone laughing about it and looking over at me as if to say, “Well, there’s nothing more to it. Let’s get at it.” Laughing at the ridiculousness of it, sharing that laugh with me, inviting me to enjoy the absurdity, all while knowing the work to come makes the thought of all the mess so much easier to bear. I could be mad at Mother Nature for the cruel joke, and I could grumble and complain about the work to come. But the work will come. I think laughing at it and sharing the absurdity just makes the world better. Choose to find humor in situations and the word will come easier. Often humor or incongruous responses can be used to diffuse a situation. For some reason, when we encounter a particularly clever joke, or bit of humor, we tend to focus on it, the enjoyment of it, and our negative feelings that may have existed prior to that seemingly disappear. Sometimes they’re gone for good, other times, the bad feelings are just temporarily ignored. I used to have a joke at the ready that if ever I had a date that was starting to get dull, or it felt off, then I would bring up the fact that all cheese that’s yellow is dyed. Most folks don’t know that and for some reason, the “out of left field” comment just stops whatever preceded it, and acts as a sort of restart. I can imagine using a ploy like this when a discussion is simply not going well. Drop this one and see what happens. Or choose your own unique fact and see how it works. Humor can also be used to diffuse potentially violent situations. There’s a video of an older man teaching some younger fellows Krav Maga. In it he cautions the class not to seek out conflict. He mentions that they’re younger and may be more apt to take a situation into a time of physical conflict. Instead he offers that when I guy looks at him and says, menacingly, “What are you looking at!?” he will try to respond with something like, “That shirt. That’s a great shirt! Where’d you get it?” Sometimes this completely unexpected response avoids the conflict completely. Check out this Aikido story in this link. It’s something of the same approach. One way to see how humor works, or to visualize it working is like sudden change in direction. Think of anger and aggression as straight-line energies. Anger and aggression are directed at a target and typically targets can either get hit, as with punch, or the target can dodge it. As I teach my students in self defense classes, the best way to avoid a punch is to just not be there. Another way to meet that energy is to simply engage it a different way, through humor, or lightheartedness, sort of like the way that the man teaching Krav maga, or the student in the Aikido story. When one approaches issues with the light heart, or uses humor, the aggression doesn’t find the target. In using humor your denying the anger it’s focus. When I get hit or dodge the punch or the harsh words of another, I’ve accepted, tacitly or explicitly, that this action is intended to harm and the person performing it is at odds with me. When I respond with a joke, or with the light heart, I don’t see the other as opponent, I see the other as another person I want to engage in a friendly and even frivolous manner. Anger asks for a fight. Mirth asks for a dance. Humor won’t always work; not every strategy is foolproof. But investigating and being open to humor as a way to resolve conflict is something that may help you more than you can appreciate at the moment.

How many times a day do you make a quip? Are you a quipster or more frugal with quips? Me? I love quips, I try to use them as much as I can. As a teacher, I have found that a good quip does wonders for attention and engagement. It helps bring people back into the conversation because they have to process a bit more info and figure out the quip and its meaning or relation to the topic at hand. A good quip is a powerful tool. Often times quips or smart-ass remarks are given short shrift. My mother always used to say that no one likes a class clown, but that statement never seemed true. My classmates always seemed to like me. A couple even commented at a reunion how they remembered me as funny. My teachers could have probably dealt with fewer remarks from me. As I have grown older and tried to understand how to best use quips in work and with others, I have found that the well-placed quip does quite a bit for helping people stay attentive and engaged. It provides a momentary break, but a break related to the subject matter of the moment. Quips engage us, refocus us, and lighten the mood. Quips are a form of humor. Smart-ass remarks, call-backs, or witty observations rely on the basic mechanisms that make humor work. Generally, humor is the perception of an incongruity that causes our minds to seek to make the incongruity fit. They are sort of like riddles, but instead of being a difficult puzzle, the idea is to give our minds a sort of cognitive treat by making it work but not too hard like a riddle. Since so much of what humans do, for better and worse, is upstairs in our heads, we have evolved to enjoy brain teasers and incongruities. We want to make the world fit together. Humor shakes our mind out of its habitual paths causing us to see the world in new ways. When a quip alerts us to the funny ha-ha and sometimes the funny strange as well, we are motivated to explore the conditions that gave rise to the incongruity and figure it out. Take the title of this article. Clearly this is a play on the Devo song “Whip It.” But more than simply being a play on words, the quip does more. That song isn’t simply a title I use to make a pun—that’s pretty weak as far as humor goes. That song, the video, the uniqueness of it as music, and the way in which the song title itself has taken on a life beyond the cultural moment in which it arose (I can’t say there’s much about 80’s music I recall), are brought to bear, cognitively, when the reader reads that title. The title, as a pun, invites the reader to enjoy and learn. Maybe you like the pun and maybe you don’t. But either way, thinking about it and reacting to it gets you more invested in the article. You see what I did there right? Sometimes the best quipsters, a far more jovial group than the homonymic hipsters, don’t really know how they do what they do. For them it’s effortless; for others, quips are almost a foreign language. They understand them, but they’ll be buggered if they can’t quip well. Their timing is off, they seem to say the wrong things. But don't despair. We can learn to quip just as we learn any skill. Reading sheet music was and still is a mystery to me, but I think if I settled down and paid more attention, focused, I could learn to do it. Good quips do a lot without seeming to do anything. That’s why they are both so helpful day to day, but also so very interesting to understand. Quips aren’t all just clever remarks and witticisms. Sometimes we quip and tease in negative ways. Sometimes our quips are dressed up bullies. When I make a passive aggressive quip about someone’s idea, a quip that is sarcastic, I can harm that person and come across as a “funny” guy. The cost to me is little and the benefit can be socially positive. The target of my bullying quip might face unwarranted skepticism and seem less valuable in the eyes of her coworkers. This is when quips are bad. If the intent and or outcome of such quips are harmful to the group, then I would say we need to look at our interactions and see what the issue is and explore. As my teachers probably told me, we like it when you’re funny but don’t make this the entirety of your day. Be serious sometimes. Quips aren’t always bad. If I am in an office or classroom where the atmosphere is tight and unfriendly it may be that quipping, even quipping it good, is less than welcome. For anyone in a situation such as this, I would advise trying to figure out why. An environ where quips don’t make it into the normal ebb and flow of conversation and interaction, is a place where creativity is stifled: where engagement and enjoyment of work are absent. If that’s the case, then steps need to be taken to introduce some levity and enjoyment. Perhaps you can start with a quip.

One of the common bits of wisdom for anyone taking a new position or heading a new team, is not to lead with a joke. The audience is probably too full of questions, apprehension, and plain old wonder to get a joke. The words you’ll say will be scrutinized, your body language picked apart, and any ideas you may proffer, put under a skeptical lens. Imagine being the CEO following Bill Gates, or inheriting a troubling situation like Uber a few years ago amid the fury of the frat boy culture. Jokes in these situations may not be the best strategy. But perhaps they can be. Actually, they are more than possibly good, it can be just what's needed to get moving and get moving quickly. Like many of our social rules, the rule to not lead with a joke isn’t hard and fast. Sometimes humor might be the only weapon one has in her arsenal to dispel, or put on hold all the apprehension and nervousness. If you’re being introduced to a new group because of some difficult circumstance, why try and fight it? Note the elephant in the room, maybe play on it with some word-play, and move on. If the joke is light enough, you’ve acknowledged the issue, and very quickly moved past it. But be careful not to use the joke to brush it off. Many politicians can be seen to do this. Looking at you Joe Biden. Since humor causes the mind to focus on a different set of concepts for a moment causing a moment of good feeling, this will do more to dispel the negative emotions than any amount of hand-holding, or careful wordsmithing might. The joke immediately acknowledges the issue and given the rapid switch to resolving the humor, the mind doesn’t linger on it. The mind moves to the enjoyable trick the humor brought to light. And with that in play, the subsequently more difficult task of starting with the new group is all the easier. It’s important to see how the rapidity of humor works to the speaker’s advantage. The listener is invited to think in a certain way. But the humor plays off of that and makes the listener focus momentarily on something else. This focus engages us to solve the puzzle. How does the new bit of information fit into the situation? What’s going on? Did he really just tell a joke? Once the mind resolves the issue there is a reward, the humorous mirth. This feeling will counteract all negative emotions if only for a bit. But that bit is more than enough. If the joke lands, then the remaining part of the meeting can proceed less encumbered. So that’s the cognitive part of the process. The hardest part, by far, is getting the joke to land. How do you know if the situation is going to lend itself to a joke? Maybe the air is just too heavy? There is no easy answer. There are a couple of important things to note. Humor needs to start from a place that’s authentic. If your audience thinks you’re not fully behind the joke, then you’re done. You have to own it. A half-hearted joke can land you full-throated criticism. The joke also needs to be easy enough to process, but not so difficult that it causes deep thought. “Deep” jokes don’t work here. A good leader can also sense what the room needs, what the audience wants to hear. If you’ve been invited to take over a situation, then you’ve worked with enough people to be able to read the room—that’s assumed. What’s that read telling you? Are you holding back cause you’re nervous? They are too, or maybe the audience is jaded. In either case, the well-placed joke can work to your advantage. Showing a sense of humor amidst crisis makes you seem confident, provided you're still actually leading and not ducking behind the joke. People like working for and with someone like that. If that’s what people want, then by all means give it to them. Try to lead with a joke, both when you first meet and later. It can’t be all the time, lest the humor lose its meaning. But it most certainly can make for better work and you'l be a better leader for it .

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.