Hey, this is Christ with Hacking and Leadership. On today's discussion on employee engagement. I want to talk about engaging employees through humor, and I want to talk about this specifically because I think I think this is something that Lorenzo does really well.
He has for as long as I've known him.
And there's kind of been this rise a little bit in leadership training development programs that have tried to kind of propose that leaders should be more humorous and almost trying to train them on being more humorous. And while I don't think that they are necessarily that necessarily have zero effectiveness, I think that they are kind of very narrowly focused on. You know, there might be very specific situations where it works for one person, but not necessarily broader.
And I think that leaders who are not incredibly witty or humorous to start with, they potentially could lose some of what they do have, which is just their their authenticity or the feeling of authenticity they have with their teams if they try something new thinking that it's gonna work out well for them, and then it ends up
not working out well for them. But that doesn't that doesn't stop me from knowing that humor is it can be a very very effective leadership tool when used correctly in the right circumstances and with the right people.
Yeah, I mean I'm a you know me, I'm a huge proponent of humor, maybe even in parts of my career where it was overused, right, maybe continues to be sometimes. But I think that we talk about like having fun, having a good time, opening up, not you know, taking our work serious, but not taking ourselves too serious like that for me is the underlying element of like humor.
If it's not like maye go up here and do a five minute stand up set for my team, right, it's like, let's laugh at ourselves, Let's have some fun, Let's have some healthy banter amongst each other that allows us to be able to know that, like, you know, we can be we can be human, we can be you know.
We can we can be.
We can be personal in a in a way that doesn't feel like it's just completely highly focused only on getting work done and just really dry and everything. Now to your point, like, I think that there's a lot that has to be considered there and you have to be very conscious of you know, when and how and where and why and you have to be really, you know, conscious of how people take humor, Like you have to know your team and know the people that you're around.
And we've we've all been there and seen it. We've all been around people and social you know, dynamics where somebody said something that was funny to you but maybe not funny to others, right, or it felt like it was just the wrong timing to say something. Somebody got nervous and they tried to say something funny to kind of break the ice or release some of the tension, but that created more you know, like like those things
happen too. But I do think that there's an element of it where, you know, laughing and having some fun to me is how humor is applied appropriately when you're working.
Yeah, you're I think you're right about that. I think when it comes to I.
Think the most effective humor is one on one when if you're a leader of people, because it's the more people that you are that are around you, the harder it is to be humorous in a way that lands correctly with every person that is around you. And the larger that group gets, the harder it becomes. With individual people. You're talking about just individual relationship, and a person who does this well will know what level of humor what they can say to one person versus another based on
whatever that relationship is. There are people who have I've had working relationships with where things I've said to them in humor or that they've said to me in humor would have been career ending for them to say to somebody else, right, let's be honest about it, right, and to the right person it's not. It's laughed at, and you move on because you have the benefit of the relationship, you know, backing it up and understanding, you know what.
Where that's rooted in. I think when a leader is trying to be humorous in front of a group of people, a widespread group of people that all report to them a lot of diversity, different roles, different positions, backgrounds, different levels of time and relationship with that leader, sometimes the only type of humor that works well is it can be like self deprecating humor. So if a leader becomes self deprecating in front of the group, then that can
be effective. But even that can be a pitfall for some people because if you're self deprecating on something that you shouldn't be bad at, but are bad at as
the leader and the team knows it. Then it's just like, oh my gosh, this this person knows they're bad at being a leader on this team, they don't care that can land the wrong way to So it has to be something like, you know, you stepped outside of your role to help with something, to do something that you wouldn't normally do, and we're not good at it, but you kind of did your best at it, and you're
self deprecating about that. Process that can work can work out well, but that's kind of the only the only place that that works when it comes to a large group of people. I want to go over some of the things that leaders can do if they if they feel like that that the humor they're trying to insert into their teams is you know, landing incorrectly, or if they're trying to get better at this.
But first let's get up towards for one of our sponsors.
All right, if you're a leader and you're trying to figure this this this road out, navigate it for yourself and kind of figure out first of all, if if you already know that you're good at this, then you know, like This is if the feedback that you've been given is positive, and if you have solid relationships with people individually, then chances are your way of inserting humor when necessary or when you want to is done correctly. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't make a misstep and cross
the line every once in a while. It just means that in general, you probably have a good a good way forward here. If you don't feel like the way that you insert humor as a leader is effective or that it's building relationships and it's hurting them more, the first thing you want to do is any time you had an opportunity to try to be humorous, you need to pull people aside after the fact and ask them how it landed.
People who you know you can trust.
You don't want people who are just gonna like say, yeah, of course you did great.
You know when you.
When you can't really trust that they're being honest with you, And you don't want to ask people who you know have it out for you or who are gonna who are you know, hypercritical about everything, because then you don't
know whether you've you've done the right thing. These have to be people you have a solid enough relationship with where they want to see you succeed, and they can tell you whether or not how you threw something out there, whether it landed correctly or didn't land correctly, or give
you kind of the nuance of it. That's really the only way to become more effective at doing this is kind of figuring out Okay, being able to see in you know, back in time, connect the dots looking backward and say, okay, I can see why that didn't land correctly or why it landed well with this team, but not this team, you know, based on whatever their history with the organization is or or culturally or or anything.
But the more data you can get from people after the fact, the more likely you are to you know, kind of make better decisions going forward and kind of you know, have the the empathy that it takes to to see the result of something you're about to say through the eyes of everybody who's about to hear.
It, and then and then kind of tailoring that thing accordingly.
Yeah, I think the highlighted point around like checking in with those around you, I think is critical here. Again, it's it's it's some people are naturally funny. Some people can read a room some people have a an understanding of social nuance and what's going on and group dynamics
and things like that. And then there are people that may be a little bit more oblivious, maybe haven't been in enough different social spaces to be able to understand how things come across or how they could come across, or when's a good time to inject humor and things.
So like, if this is something that you're listening and you feel like I could probably do more here, it is going to be critical that as you do it or as you see it happened amongst your team, that you are checking in with those that you're very conscious of, you know, those in the room or those kind of in the conversations.
You need to look at body language.
You need to really understand, like, you know, are you making sure that you're meaning of injecting some fun into
a conversation or having a little bit of humor. It's just about that and that if there are elements that maybe making people uncomfortable or they're not used to or you pick up on things, or you have people around you that you can trust that we'll talk to you about it, Like you definitely want to bring people in if this is any part of something that you're working on, because it can feel like, oh I can, I can be funny, and then you take your personal humor and
the way that you talk to your friends and family and try to do that at work, and many times it does not go over well. So I definitely would say, like, make sure that you're checking in with those around you, you know, if this is something that you're going to be doing more of.
Yeah, you're spot on with that.
And I will say, lastly, be very careful not to sacrifice something really good that you already have to try to get something else that you perceive is better. There
is no question that leadership is about relationships. And there's no question that a person who has humor and wit and the ability to kind of do it on the fly probably has a much easier time creating and building relationships than a person who doesn't, because that's how human beings are naturally wired to gravitate towards people like that.
But if you are not that kind of person and you attempt to be, what kind of happening is a situation where you a weren't successful and b you lost what you did have with that person or that team, which is just that they knew what to expect of you, that you were authentic in your lack of humor, but
they could there was still that level of trust. You can be a very effective leader if you are not a humorous leader, you absolutely can be You can build be a very effective builder of relationships if you are not a humorous person. It just might take a little bit more time and more interaction with people to make that happen. But that's better than killing the relationship or the leadership as a whole by trying to be something that you're not. So be very careful. There's a lot
of nuance here. If you can give it a shot, then great. You might find something within yourself that you never need had and go forward with it. But that feedback is critical because if it's not going the right way, you could do more damage than just being happy with the way things are, So keep that in mind as you go forward this. Thank you all for listening today. We'll see you next Thursday for our next discussion on employ engagement.
You have a great day,