Not a joke: leveraging humour at work increases performance, individual happiness, and psychological safety

Why are workplaces often devoid of humour, if having a good laugh brings many benefits to people and organisations? Teresa Almeida and Cecily Josten look at the research on workplace humour and write that having, and showing, a sense of humour is a way to demonstrate authenticity and come across as more human. They argue that more experimental research is needed to test the benefits and downsides of humour interventions and how to best leverage humour to achieve positive work outcomes.

 
An average four-year-old toddler laughs 300 times a day. In comparison, it takes the average 40-year-old two and a half months to laugh that many times. Two researchers at Stanford University, Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, report on this “humour cliff” in their book, “Humor Seriously”. In a 2013 Gallup study, 1.4 million people across 166 countries were asked a simple question: Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? For those between 16 and 23 the answer is yes. After the age of 23, the answer becomes no. In fact, we do not start smiling again until the age of 70 or 80.

This age timeframe has a striking correlation with the average working age and lets one wonder to what extent work makes us humourless. Aaker and Bagdonas argue that humour is an understudied topic but can be a key skill for teams and business leaders to, amongst others, improve work outcomes and benefit individuals intrinsically. With teamwork and task complexity increasing constantly, having, and showing, a sense of humour is a way to demonstrate authenticity and come across as more human. And during a global pandemic, laughing seems an essential (and potentially the only) tool for successfully juggling everyday work and private life.

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Πηγή: blogs.lse.ac.uk