Did you hear the one about the Spanish-speaking magician?  He told the audience he would disappear on the count of three.  “Uno.”  “Dos.”  But he disappeared without a Tres.

That may not have made you laugh (except maybe for its corniness), but laughing is good for us.  Humor acts a mood enhancer and a kind of grease that soothes friction points between people.  It’s like WD 40 for the soul.  Reframing a negative event in a humorous light acts as a kind of emotional filter, preventing the negativity from triggering depression.  In fact, studies have shown that it actually helps people who suffer from depression from relapsing and those at risk of depression from having a depressive episode.

The benefits of laughing are not just mental and emotional.  We actually change physiologically when we laugh. We stretch muscles throughout our face and body and our pulse and blood pressure go up. We also breathe faster, sending more oxygen to our tissues, almost like exercise.  It takes ten minutes on a rowing machine for the heart rate to reach the level it would after just one minute of hearty laughter.  And, we actually burn about 50 calories during 10-15 minutes of laughter.  Laughter also increases blood flow, generates an immune response in the body by raising the level of infection-fighting antibodies and boosting the levels of immune cells, and lowers blood sugar levels.  It also improves relaxation and sleep, and raises one’s ability to tolerate pain.  A sense of humor has even been found to help overcome disease.  Numerous medical studies have shown that patients with cancer have improved their circumstances by incorporating laughter into their lives despite the diagnosis. Laughing makes us feel good and actually makes us healthier.

It makes sense, then, that 90% of male students and 81% of female students reported in one study that a sense of humor is the most important quality in a partner.  Being funny helps with personal relationships. Life can be hard, and having someone who can find the humor in a challenging situation can be a saving grace.  Being funny and being around funny people makes life better and perhaps even longer.  But does having a sense of humor benefit us professionally?  Does it have any relationship to career success? Can humor help business?  The short answer is yes.

Humor is A Productivity and Loyalty Booster

A good sense of humor has been found to improve the workplace and drive success in multiple ways.

In a study from the Journal of Applied Psychology, just one joke or humorous comment in a work team resulted in improved performance not just immediately, but up to two years later.   Laughter also improved recall.  It was often found to be the shortest pipeline to being memorable.  Even the stuffiest boardroom will appreciate well-timed levity and even the dullest interview can be rescued by some tasteful humor.  Most importantly, a humorous atmosphere encourages innovation, smart risks and increased productivity.

A survey done by Robert Half International showed that 84% of executives felt that people with a sense of humor do better work. Whether people with a sense of humor actually did better work or were just liked more by their bosses — and thus their work was viewed more favorably is unknown — but it has been proven that people who are liked by their bosses do advance in their careers more quickly and to higher levels – even if they aren’t the most competent, qualified or capable people available to do the work.  Basically, people with a sense of humor are often more well-liked, and thus promoted regardless of their work product.  But is sense of humor really just translating into professional likeability?  Actually, no.  There are several other ways humor can be a powerful business tool.

Humor creates mindfulness, perspective, and balance.  Laughter at work reduces nail-biting anxiety and fear. It relaxes people.  The process of laughter causes a release of serotonin and oxytocin similar to aerobic exercise, and allows people to breathe deeper and feel better.  So a manager who makes people feel better and function better at work is bound to get better work from those employees.  And that manager is, thus, more likely to get promoted and move up the ranks.  After all, at its most basic, leadership is about the ability to persuade others to do what needs to be done, and sense of humor is an invaluable tool to facilitate that process.

Humor also builds workplace culture.  Laughter promotes a sense of unity and shared culture in most any place of employment, even a hospital or morgue.   People who laugh together are more likely to keep working together.  It boosts their ‘esprit de corps’ and builds corporate loyalty.  A leader with a sense of humor is likely to have employees who are more steadfast, cohesive and team-oriented, resulting in a lower turnover rate.  As Leigh Buchanan described in “Why Funny Leaders Are Better Leaders, According to 2 Standard Professors” in Inc Magazine, humor is a social lubricant… “a gateway drug to broader aspects of authenticity and vulnerability.”  It helps increase employee engagement and build resilient cultures.

And, humor inspires creativity.  The physical and emotional benefits of laughter opens employee minds to the absurd and impossible.  It is one of the few things that elicits ingenuity and imagination in a way that is similar to dreaming.  It encourages playing with concepts and taking risks.  It allows employees to be open to the silly and ridiculous things that their minds would otherwise reject.  It is in moments of levity that sparks of inspiration can strike.

Last, but not least, humor humanizes people, especially leaders who are often perched on pedestals.  It helps make leaders more accessible and fosters the belief that “we’re in this together.”  For leaders, this can help them motivate a team to work together toward a common goal.

But Work Is The Humor Desert

Unfortunately, most working adults live in a laughter drought, and thanks to Covid, it is even worse. Before Covid, a study found that babies laughed, on average, 400 times a day whereas adults over 35 laughed only 15 times a day.  Laughter starts to decrease around the age of 23, right around the time that student graduate college and start working full time.  In fact, a study of Gallup data for the U.S. found that people laughed significantly less on weekdays than on weekends.

Except for people who work as comedians, work has generally been a sobering endeavor, despite the benefits.  However, humor – along with a number of other important workplace behaviors – has decreased significantly since Covid.   In addition to a decrease in creativity, innovation and motivation, work-from-home employees are also far less likely to engage in humor with colleagues during video conferencing meetings or phone calls.  The need to “be productive and focused” (or at least seem that way) is pushing coworkers to finish a Zoom session as soon as possible.  Gone is the type of water cooler, break room and hallway humorous banter that coworkers once shared.  So even the limited moments of workplace levity from pre-Covid times have vanished.

While that might seem like a positive for employers (as employees are ‘wasting less time’), it is the very interactions of humor where bonds were formed, connections made, and workplace loyalties forged.  Workplace levity was an adhesive that glued people to their employers.  No longer.  Indeed, according to a survey by Eagle Hill Consulting, a quarter of employees say they plan to quit their jobs once Covid is over. Millennials and working parents were the most likely groups planning to leave their current job in 2021.  The majority of employees cited burnout as the main reason for wanting to quit.  Another study by Achievers found that 71% of respondent were more disengaged in 2021 than they were at the beginning of 2020, and 46% of employees feel less connected to their company or colleagues since the start of the pandemic.  Growing disengagement and disconnection are part and parcel of drier, dour relationships.  And no employer or manager needs to be reminded of the huge cost and impact of employee turnover on the bottom line.  That is definitely not funny.

Next week, we will look at what constitutes appropriate workplace humor, ways for leaders to improve their sense of humor at work and for workplaces to add more laughter into the workday even if most employees are still working from home.  Stay tuned.

Quote of the Week

“A sense of humor… is needed armor.  Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.” Hugh Sidey

© 2021, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.