Bringing Your Funny to Work in “Humor, Seriously”
Humor can be tricky – especially in “professional” settings. Some of us live in horror of the joke told at the wrong time or that gets taken in a way we didn’t intend. Others are hamstrung by pressure to be serious, authoritative, buttoned up, whatever. In Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life, Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas are on a mission to bring humor and levity to the workplace (and cure cases of “resting boss face” in the process).
According to their bios, Aaker won a dance-off in the early 1980s and apparently can’t stop talking about it (she’s also Dr. Aaker, an expert on how purpose and meaning shape individual choices, and teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business) and Bagdonas admits to regularly getting conned into treats by her foster dogs (she’s also an executive coach, lectures at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater). It’s worth dwelling on this back-cover-flap information because, well, it illustrates the point. Refusing to take ourselves so seriously makes room for serious work.
Aaker and Bagdonas combine evidence and case studies from behavioral science, comedians, and business leaders with a healthy number of anecdotes, light-hearted sketches, and memes to show the power of humor to persuade and motivate, build and deepen relationships, nourish creativity, foster resilience, and, frankly, make things more fun.
They start with upending the “Four Deadly Humor Myths,” which are what hold us back from using humor at work:
The Serious Business Myth: “Let’s pass the mic to President Eisenhower, who once said ‘A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done…’ If Dwight David Eisenhower, the second-least naturally funny president after Franklin Pierce, thought humor was necessary to win wars, build highways, and warn against the military-industrial complex, then you better learn to use it, too.”
The Failure Myth: “[It’s] not so much whether you’re actually funny–it’s whether you have the gumption to tell any joke (which signals confidence) and whether that joke is appropriate for the context, that signals status and competence.”
The Being Funny Myth: “The mere act of signaling that your sense of humor has a heartbeat is enough to make a big difference–especially if you’re in a leadership role… And it’s more often a bit of fun rather than full-on funny that makes all the difference: a moment of delight that leads to a smile, or an ‘aha’ rather than a ‘haha’ (or, if you work for a supervillain, a ‘mwahaha’).”
The Born With It Myth: “Humor is not some binary feature of our genetic code, but rather a skill we can strengthen through training and use, much as we would strengthen our leg muscles by working out at the gym, climbing the stairs, and walking to and from the fridge during video conferences when our ‘camera isn’t working.’”
All of this is to say that there are a lot of reasons that we think we can’t, or we can’t, bring levity or humor to work. But the reality is (and Aaker and Bagdonas have the science to back it up), humor is intensely aligned with a whole swath of professional needs and goals – from standing out and being remembered to strengthening bonds and accelerating trust to coping with stress (at Permanent Equity, our funny levels rise in direct proportion to our intense collective desire to bang our head against the walls, and we’re closer for it).
The question then becomes, how do you do it? The following highlights come from Chapter 4, “Putting Your Funny to Work.” A major part of this chapter focuses on communicating with levity. I write. A lot. So this bit was particularly interesting to me.
One example highlights Deloitte’s software, “Bullfighter.” Having found that consultants, as per the consultant covenant, had stopped speaking like humans, then CMO Brian Fugere committed to bringing that human element back to emails and slide decks. After writing a program that scanned an email or document to find “bull words,” it spat out a “Bull Index.” Egregious examples got feedback like this:
Diagnosis: you live in a rare, often irreversible state of obscurity. You are absolutely dependent on other advanced obscurists to understand anything you are trying to communicate. Sentences may be entirely devoid of dictionary-based words. Doctors at the Bull Institute would pay to study you.
It’s pointed, but still lighthearted. And it gets to an important about communicating with humor:
The change that Fugere and his colleagues experienced–in not just their language, but their behavior–harks back to the Star Trek Hypothesis. Scientists and linguists believe that words are not only a window into who we are and how we behave, they also play a role in shaping these things. Quite simply, if we write like corporate drones, then pretty soon we’ll start acting like them, too. But people? We know how to have fun.
Bringing humor into your professional communications is, notably, not just about being funny yourself, but about sending a message to others that it’s okay to have fun with things and opening up opportunities for others to respond with levity.
Today’s average employee spends close to 30 percent of their work hours on email and receives 120 messages per day. But online correspondence–whether on email, group chat, text, TikTok, or whatever new technology has already replaced all of these things since we wrote this sentence–doesn’t need to be soul-sucking. Instead, think of digital messages as bit-sized opportunities to invite genuine connection with your co-workers and partners. Even a touch of levity can start a chain reaction that shifts the dynamic.
So whether it’s an out of office message that makes your day (“I am backpacking in the Sierra Nevada without cell service through September 22. Yours will be my favorite email to respond to upon my return.”), a spiced-up sign-off (“Yours, heavily caffeinated,”), or a cute, desperate way of asking for a response, finding the small nooks and crannies to infuse your work life with humor, levity, and play – and inviting those around you to join it – is a superpower.
This is an exceptionally readable book. Yes, it’s actually funny, which is rare enough for a business-adjacent book. But it’s also packed full of real advice and strategies for injecting humor into business, a compelling argument for why you should, and stories on the power of humor in workplaces ranging from Pixar to bareMinerals to diplomatic summits.
By Sarah George-Waterfield
Book Referenced: “Humor, Seriously” by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas
More recommended reading from the Permanent Equity Team:
Lululemon’s First Private Equity Process in “Little Black Stretchy Pants”
