Career Advice - Humor in the Workplace

Business Etiquette - Laughing On The Job

By
Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

I love my job and my co-workers, but sometimes I feel like my work environment is so serious. It's good that we get a lot of work done but I really wish people would lighten up a bit and learn to laugh. I think this would help us get even more work done! Do you think humor is good for the workplace and how can I help to implement more of it?

Thanks,

Working With Serious Sallies

Dear Working With Serious Sallies,

I definitely think that humor is great for the workplace and can have many amazing effects on the amount of work that gets done and how people get along. Here are some answers to the top questions many people have about why and how to bring humor into your workplace.

1. How can humor have a positive impact on the workplace?

It feels good to laugh. Laughter is a stress reliever. And whenever stress is relieved, creativity and productivity are increased. Anyone know any knock knock jokes?

2. How can managers incorporate humor in their workplaces?

This is easier to do than it sounds. Laugh a lot. Find the humor in everyday life. Laughter and humor are contagious. Once one person starts finding things funny or making things funny, others will join in.

As a manager, if you find humor and exhibit humor, you will be leading the way for similar behavior among your employees.

3. What are the benefits of adopting a light-hearted attitude?

Crises are often averted when gloom and doom are not the ordinary nature of the day. Lots of time situations spiral downward when the mood is depressive rather than light-hearted. A light-hearted attitude can take what might have been a crisis out of a tailspin.

A good laugh and a light hearted attitude is infectious and if you're selling, you're going to close the deal much more easily with a light heart than a heavy hand.

You'll attract people more with a light-hearted attitude than a heavy, dark attitude.

Whenever you change your environment or your attitude, you allow yourself the opportunity to look at things a different way. This is crucial for business.

4. How can humor relieve stress?

A good laugh breaks tension the same way a yawn or a back cracking makes you feel better afterward. Humor makes you realize your problems are not the only thing in the world. Tension is a cause of stress, and humor relieves tension. It's impossible to flex or strain your muscles when you're laughing -- try it.

5. How can someone gauge the right time for humor?

Timing is everything in comedy and it's the same for humor. Knowing when to be funny and when not to be is an art and a skill. Knowing when and when not to use humor you have to watch the people around you. Humor is social and it relies on social cues and social perspectives. Certain jokes don't play when there's a language barrier or a cultural difference because jokes rely on everyone understanding what's funny about the joke.

That said, making a joke is always taking a risk because you don't know your audience all of the time, and you don't know what kind of a mood they're in. Sometimes people just aren't in the mood to laugh. And sometimes they think they're not, but don't realize that they are.

6. Discuss why all work and no play isn't a good combination.

Can you spell burn out? It's important to have balance in life. Balancing work and play is crucial to optimum health and productivity. And if you don't believe me, try an experiment: do too much of one or too much of the other over a prolonged period of time, and you'll see I'm right!

April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.

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