Bring more comedy into your next stand-up meeting, with Naomi Bagdonas

get to know you better, and vice versa. Naomi's found that utilizing humor can help boost innovation, foster creativity, and boost resilience through hard times. And she should know, because Naomi teaches humor as part of a purpose in the leadership course at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Naomi learned her tricks of the trade at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater and from performing improv at comedy venues throughout the United States, and now she coaches top executives in the

at of comedy. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral science Consultancy Inventium, And this is how I work A show about how to help you do your best work. Humor Seriously, which is the book that Naomi co wrote is definitely, hands down the funniest business book that I have ever read. And that is pretty much how my chat with Naomi started.

and we believe it's a learnable skill. So we know that these small shifts in behavior and mindset are really all it takes to reap the benefits. And yet Jennifer had written a book before, and she had told me it's really really hard. It's harder than you think. And so from the beginning we tried to set up these hacks that would remind ourselves not to take the work

or ourselves too seriously along the way. So, as one example, writing the first words of a book is really intimidating, and so instead of creating a document with a manuscript title and all of this stuff, we've just created a document, a Google doc actually called words on a page. And the was just to lower the bar. It's like, we're not writing a book, We're just putting some words on

a page. That's all we're here to do. And so, and another example is when it was time to write a proposal again, something that could seem really intimidating, we started a Google doc and we titled it a really Shitty Proposal, And so every time we opened this dock, it would say a really shitty proposal, and it'd be like, you know, I'd text her at six am and be like, Hey, I'm in the shitty proposal right now. I'll see you

there later today. And it's so funny. That stuck. So we ended up kind of mistakenly turning it in at one point to a publisher that way, and they loved it so much that we ended up pitching it to all the publishers as a really shitty proposal human sitiously

a really shitty proposal. And so we knew at the beginning that there were parts of this that we're going to be really hard and we're going to be a slog and so it was our way of creating these hacks and reminders to ourselves to have a sense of levity and really to practice what we preach as we're.

that I was producing more funny. But I was wondering with the book, was it almost like you do a straight draft that there's no pressure to be funny, and then you go back over and then you make it funny. Because I feel like that's a process I'll sometimes use with my work, particularly if I'm staring at a blank page, I'll just go just get some crap on a page and then fix it up and then you can make it funny if you want later on, or are you just naturally funny when you're right?

So what I would do is I would write a draft of something, and I would pass it to Jennifer, and then we created this process that we called pink fontification, which is the lamest title for everything, but we just use it within ourselves and of course now the world knows. And Jennifer, so what she would do is she would read over my work and then she would turn to pink anything that made her smile or laugh. And so it was sort of this instant gratification and also real

time feedback of what's working what's not working. And we find oftentimes with our students when they're having trouble quote being funny or thinking of, you know, some type of humor, it's like, okay, forget that, don't try to be funny. Just try to write something that would make your best friend smile or something that would, you know, make your partner laugh a little bit. And so making it personal

helped a lot. And then there were certainly times where we just had to get a framework out, Like I remember we were working on this one frame work about the misperceptions of failure in humor, where we think that failure looks like one thing, and in fact we get failure wrong. And we have, of course a two by two because we teach it at business school, and I remember as soon as we locked in on that, it was like, oh my gosh, we got to get this

content down. And so we just start pouring content out around that, and then later on we'll go through and we'll look for humor. The other thing that we did was, and this is I've spent a good amount of time training at the Upright Citizens' Brigade Theater in Los Angeles and doing not just improv comedy but sketch comedy there. And one thing that I learned from that experience of being in a writer's room is you don't always have to have the right joke. You just have to have

the intuition that there's an opportunity for humor here. And so I might read a paragraph that I had written, or that Jennifer had written, and I might find a moment in that where I think it's a little bit humorous, but I don't quite know what to say, And then I'll just flag it and say pitch alts, which is my code for Jennifer, of like pitch ideas for what

might be funny here. So I'll give one example. In Jennifer's intro, she had written something like, I'm a behavioral scientist, focused on how meaning and purpose shape the choices that individuals make. I didn't view humor as important in my career. Sure I liked laughter, but I never viewed humor as

an important skill to develop. And so when I was reading through that, I highlighted the line, sure I like laughter, because I was like, this is kind of a funny thing to say, Like I like to laugh is kind of there's something funny there. And then when she went back over it, she wrote, it's sure I like to laugh, and then she added a parenthesis, which is impossible to say without sounding like a sociopath. But I never viewed

humor as and important skill developed. And so it was this iterative process of I don't need to have the right answer, I can just flag that something might be an opportunity for humor, and then we can go back and forth and build on each other's ideas like that.

And we use this analogy in the book of the difference between levity, humor, and comedy is similar to the relationship between movement, exercise and sports. So if you think of those things like a pyramid, you've got on the base floor levity and movement. These are just the way

that we navigate our world. So, whether it's our mindset or whether it's our physicality, we know that small shifts in our you know, whether we're our shoulders are back or whether our shoulders are hunched, are going to change how people interact with us and how we feel. And similarly, if we navigate our lives on the precipice of a smile versus the precipice of a frown, it's going to change everything. So that first level of levity is really

what we're going for now. The reason that we spend an entire chapter and more focused on comedy, focused on the craft and the art of comedy, is that comedy is like a sport. There are rules that you follow, there are moves that you make to get the outcomes you want, in this case laughter, and so our goal there is to teach a few of these moves so that you can just feel more comfortable getting off the couch.

Like right, we're not playing sports. We just want to know what those moves are so that it comes more naturally to us so that we can craft our humor in a way that other people will find funny. So that's a long digression to say, we're going to talk about comedy for a few minutes. But if you are not a person who's inclined to comedy, Amantha, I know that you are, which is awesome. But for those who are listening who are not, there's so much more here

that's actually important outside of of that just that comedy element. Okay, So that being said, let's see a comedy.

go one way and they go the other way. And so one really simple example I give my students is imagine that you are at a dinner party. Remember dinner parties, by the so such quaint times. So you're at this dinner party and you're halfway through the second course and one of your friends walks in late and she says, sorry, I'm late, I didn't want to come. Now, this is potentially you know. She says it with a smile. You're like, okay, that's that's pretty funny. Now the truth here. Sorry I'm late,

I didn't want to come. The truth is obvious. We've all felt this way where we don't really want to get off the couch. The misdirection is in, Actually, Amantha, where do you think the misdirection is in that sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come.

is they'll come to us. You know, an executive will come to me and say, hey, I'm giving a talk. I want to be funny. What joke should I tell? And I'll say fantastic. I'll push the papers to the side, and I'll say, tell me about yourself. What is true for you? What do you like more than other people? What do you dislike more than other people? What areas

of contrast or incongruity exist in your life? And we'll do this sort of genuine truth finding where we're mining their lives for authentic material that they can then turn into humor. And then the second thing that this tells us is that structure matters. A set of an idea often isn't enough. It needs to be encased in a

way that leads us in a different direction. So that's why in the book we go through these techniques from comedians, first mining your life for observations, and then second applying a couple really easy frameworks. So I'll give I'll fly through that sort of process that I would go through. So first I'm going to make mundane observations about my life right, it's not about inventing something from thin air.

It's just about noticing what's true. So I might say, I might tell you that my dog is incredibly excited at dinner time even though he's eating the same food he always eats, or how my kids never listen to me, or how I go for a walk every day just to change up the day a little bit. So I have these observations. They're not funny, but they're just true.

And then you can apply one or more of the techniques that we go over in the book, and the three most common ones are exaggeration, contrast, and rule of three. So I'll use exaggeration contrast. For example, So Larry David said, I had a wonderful childhood, which is tough because it's hard to adjust to a miserable adulthood. Right, So all he's doing here is he's creating contrast between how he felt about his childhood and how he feels about his adulthood.

And then also use it exaggeration because he probably doesn't have a totally miserable adulthood, but you know, he's trying to create that. And then the other technique that people find really easy is rule of three. So this is where you make a really simple list where the first two elements lead people in one direction and then the third reveals something unexpected. So I might say I miss so many things about in person office life. You know, I miss the support of eye contact, I miss spontaneous

lunches with colleagues, and I miss wearing pants. Right, so you're sort of going ab and apple. So these are again these they seem like really simple hacks, but once you start noticing the frameworks, you'll start seeing them everywhere in comedy, and then they'll start coming more naturally to you as you're trying to turn your humor into something that feels funny.

And so, you know, one person says, I'm a CFO, the other person says, I'm retired CFO. The next person says I'm a CFO. And then one woman introduces herself and says I'm a recovering CFO, indicating that she's like recovering from it rather than retired from it. You know, the whole call laughs. Everyone has this shared experience. A couple people later, another woman says I'm also a recovering CFO. Again everyone laughs, and it's sort of this callback that

makes the first person feel good. A little bit later, a third person says, I'm an aspiring recovering CFO. Right, So this is now taking that callback and it's building upon it, and again everyone laughs. So it's really low risk because it's just making reference to something that already got to laugh. It makes the first joke teller feel valued and seen, So it's incredible relationship builder in that way,

and in a group of people. It can be a powerful tactic to create an in group, and create an in group in a way that's that's powerful and safe and good for the culture, rather than one that feels exclusive.

bringing more levity into the workplace. So let's maybe start with emails, because I'm sure that listeners of the show are probably sending hundreds of emails every week, and I feel that there's a lot of missed opportunity there for levity. So can you talk about how you think about your emails and having received emails from you, I mean, you

completely practice what you preach. Because we had to reschedule this interview because you were sick, and you wrote me a hilarious email telling me that you were sick, and I'm like, ah, that's so funny. I don't mind rescheduling. That's totally cool because you're so funny. But tell me about how do you think about emails.

In that way, it's a gift to someone when they read their fortieth email, you know, in the last twenty minutes and everything has been all business and then you have this one email that has a little bit of lightheartedness. It's so incredibly powerful. Whether it's a pun in the subject line, or whether it's a gift for whether it's just an unexpected line, it's such a useful way to create an email that someone actually wants to respond to, rather than one that they will move past and wait

to respond to it later. And so a couple of techniques that we use. First of all, the first thing that we do with our students is we give them an audit. So we have different kinds of audits because we're a very fun class and we're in a business school. But this specific kind of audit is an email audit. So what we have them do is they have to go into their sent folder right there and then in class and they have to read the last ten emails that they've sent. And after doing so, we then have

a competition. We call it a jargon off, and they have to find the most sterile business speak, like any phrase that could have been written by a robot. You know, maybe it's the sign off, or maybe it's attached please find, or maybe it's the sign off best or kind regards, whatever it is that really could have been written by a robot. And then they share it with the class. You know, they either drop it in a chat box or were in person and al through a dramatic reading

of it. And it's this illustration with this reminder that the more technology mediated our communication becomes, the easier it is to lose our sense of humor and our humanity along the way, because we subconsciously adapt for our medium, and when we're constantly communicating through technology, it's easy to sound like a robot. So step one is just right like a human, really simple but incredibly effective. The second

is serendipitous sign offs. So instead of writing best, write something that's a callback to something from earlier or something that is a little bit unexpected. So as an example, I started a three pm call and the person that I was talking with talked about how she had had three cups of coffee and I said, yeah, I'm on my second cup, and we sort of had a laugh about it, and so I signed off my email from

that day yours heavily caffeinated. And then we were on another call recently and Jennifer's dog got out while we were doing an interview, and so she thinks that she goes on mute, and she yells to her husband Andy, who let the dog out, which then of course led to a wonderful rendition of who let the dogs out? And then she signed off that email still wondering who let the dogs out? So these are just really lighthearted ways to leave a little gift in your sign off.

So that would be number two. My third tip would be make callbacks. So this is what you were mentioning earlier. When I'm on a call, especially if it's with a new client or a new customer or anyone, even a friend, I will look for moments when we organically laugh together, like I'm not trying to make jokes, but we're humans, and humors of fundamental melody of human conversation. We're going to probably have a laugh at some point, especially if

it's a professional context. I'll jot down that moment when they laughed, and then I'll bring it back in the email. So it could be something as simple as someone mentions on the call I had. I was on the phone with someone. We're trying to invite him to come speak in our course at Stanford. He mentioned that he is superstitious, and so I wrote in the email back to him, wonderful chatting today. We're so hoping that you can come.

We've penciled you in while crossing our fingers, stroking rabbit foot keychains and throwing a thousand pennies into wishing wells that you can join. Right, So it's making a reference to something that he said, but you know, including that as a callback and an email. And then the last one that I would tell people is it's incredible what a well placed meme can do, and you don't want

to overuse them. But we share a story in the book which is actually a secretly a story have a personal experience, which is that I was working with a client and I had done work for them, and then I got totally ghosted where they weren't paying me for the work I had done, and I sent a couple follow up notes. The woman who I was working with was actually a former colleague of mine, and so the invoice had now gone and paid for months, and so I followed up, you know, Hey, so sorry, but any

updates on the invoice. No response. Two weeks later, Hey just wanted to follow up. Is there anything else that you need from this order to have this invoice go through? Nothing in a month later, checking in on this again, is there anything I can do to help push this forward? No response, And so finally a month later I tried a different strategy, which is I sent a cat meme, and this cat meme was a cat looking longingly through a glass outside that said hello from the other side.

I must have me owed a thousand times and it's like from the Adell lyric. And she got back to me the next day and I was paid with him the week. So I guess the last tip that I would give is think about showing, not telling, especially if you aren't super comfortable making humor yourself. Just include something lighthearted that you think would make the other person smile.

and relentlessly human in my emails. So I try and write my emails as if I'm talking, and if I feel excited about something, I'm going to totally show that in my email. If I can think of something that I think would make the other person smile, then I'm going to include that in my email. I was talking with a colleague of mind, this incredible woman who teaches at Harvard and has done a lot of this research.

Alison Woodbrooks, along with Brad Bitterley and Murray Schweitzer, has done incredible research in this area of humor and status, and in particular for Alison, around human conversations, how do we create more effective conversations with people? And I was talking with Alison. We've worked together for the last seven

years now. She was one of the researchers at the Second City Humor Retreat where we were hosted by Anne Libra and Kelly Leonard to do a deep dive into humor with the heads of the Second City and the founder of the Onion and these behavioral scientists from all over the world. And I was talking to Alison this morning because I guest spoke in her class, and she was saying, I think I may over index in like none of my emails are serious. All of my emails

have some levity. And she reflected from and she said, but you know what, if I'm going to over index in one direction of the or the other, I would so much rather have more levity and more joy in my life than have all of my professional communications be boring.

And what I've noticed with Alison, the way that she communicates with her students is she creates an environment where everyone feels safe to show their own sense of humor and We see this in organizations too, that when the leader is willing to have more levity and humor and show more of themselves, then everyone feels safer and more empowered to show more of themselves as well.

that I have my students do the humor audit. Well, the way that I've started doing that, and I did that this morning with the students at Harvard is instead of saying, okay, everyone go into your email, you know you have to do this now, I play an alarm sound, so everyone thinks that there's like a fire alarm going off in my house. And I interrupt myself mid sentence as I'm lecturing and I'm looking around, I'm like, oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, you know what this means.

It's time for the audit. You're all being audited. Everyone's sort of looking around confused, and I go, oky, everyone reach under your chairs, like taped under your chair is going to be an envelope, And of course everyone sort of looks around at each other. A few people actually go and reach down there. And then I show a slide with an envelope open that says you're being audited. And so it's so well, it's so lighthearted, but they're just these small ways in which you're signaling that we're

not taking ourselves to do seriously. So a couple other examples that I have heard recently. So I work with a woman at Salesforce, and she's a senior exec. She was in a meeting and one of her and her five year old walked into the meeting accidentally, and everyone sort of laughed about it, and the five year old left. So what she did was she noticed that in these meetings she's always repeating the same phrases, whether it's let's talk about next steps or let's find time on the

calendar right now, or whatever it is. And so she had her five year old create signs, like create signs on paddles that she could hold up during meetings, and they're adorable. They're like written with krans and they say things like what are the next steps? And I think you're on mute was my favorite one. I think you're on mutant paddle that she holds up, and so it's a way for her to say the things that she's going to say anyways, but do it in sort of

a lighthearted way. So there are lots of examples. I think the important thing is it needs to be authentic to whoever the person is, and it also needs to be appropriate to their status. And so in the book and in our teaching, we share that there are these four humor styles, and everyone can go to humor seriously dot com and take a quiz to find out what your style is. But in short, those styles are the

stand up, the sweetheart, the sniper, and the magnet. And what we find is that different styles are going to work in different contexts and in particular based on your status. So I can do that, I can do that sort of silly. There's an envelope taped dont your desk and do all of that because in that context, I have authority. I am a high status person in the room because I'm the teacher. Now, when i am lee workshops for groups of executives, by the way, that's magnet humor. That's

like very typical magnet humor. When I'm leading workshops for groups of executives, I'll lean more into sniper and stand up style humor, which is more biting. I'm not afraid to ruffle a few feathers to get a laugh a little more targeted. And the reason for this is I'm no longer quote, the most senior person in the room, and so there's this ruling comedy that you never want to punch down, which means you never want to make the target of your joke someone of lower status than you.

So what that means is when I am the highest person on the totem pole, or I'm in a position of authority, making fun of myself is a really safe place to go. When I'm not the highest status person in the room, I can punch up and that can actually gain me status and influence.

then my jokes are going to land better later. And so the thing I always do, if possible, is I will make a callback reference to something that the earlier presenter has said, or I will name something that's happening in the moment. So at conferences, for example, I have a placeholder in my first thirty seconds where all I'm going to do is I'm going to make a reference

to the last presenter who had a humorous line. If I don't find that, if you know, they don't laugh the entire time that the presenter is going, then instead what I'm doing in the one minute before I go on stage, or in the one minute before I start talking on zoom is I'm just noticing what's going on for people. So I'm looking at people's zoom backgrounds, or if I'm in person, I'm looking at the venue. I'm sort of making note of something that's happening in the room.

And So I was on a call yesterday and I was presenting, and the introduction was quite dry. There was not a moment of humor that happened, and so I started scrolling through all of the pictures of people on zoom and I came on and I said, thank you so much for having me. I just want to start by saying that this is an incredibly impressive crowd. I'm

really grateful to be here. And in addition to your professional accomplishments, I want to start by giving out a couple of awards for your backgrounds, because these are some of the best backgrounds I've seen. And so I give an award for best plant life, which is like a woman who's sitting there with like literally in a jung And then I give an award for I forget what the other ones where I think someone had pictures of

their kids. And I gave an award for that, and then my third award was someone who was in like a virtual background on the moon, and I thanked them for joining another ingenuity and getting their Internet connections set up on the moon. And so you know what that

does is it takes people right in the moment. I couldn't have planned that out, just like I couldn't have planned out the callback, and so again it signals intelligence, it signals agility, and it also signals Okay, this is someone who I've got to stay on my toes for.

out about how I work. So thank you in advance. Okay, Naomi is going to be back after this short break and we're going to be learning about some other tricks that you can use to be funny in presentations. Especially if you're not that confident in your ability to be spontaneously funny. What are some other tricks that people can use maybe if they're not confident in their ability to be spontaneously funny, are there any other tricks that people can use in those first few minutes?

come co present with him in all hands meetings. So, as one example, April Underwood, who was very senior in product at Twitter. Dick and April had a very good relationship. He was a mentor to her. They had grown a real peer relationship, and April had a real biting sense of humor. She would often take him down or she'd just bring out Dick's sense of humor, and so he would have her co present and in doing so, their

banter naturally came out. Sergey and Larry at Google did this too, where early in there in founding Google and then throughout the company's growth, they would have these all hands meetings where they would both be on stage and they would really showcase their natural banter. So that's one way. Another way is simply to share something that you find genuinely funny or lighthearted and tie it into a content piece that you're already going to present. And this is

actually a lot easier than you think it. So I'll give an example of one thing I use is I use this clip from The Californians. So google the SNL the Californians and you'll find this clip. There are many good clips there, but my favorite one is one where Bill Hayder, Kristen Wigg and Fred Armison break character. They just they can't. They think it's so funny that they break character and they're laughing in the middle of the sketch and it always gets people laughing. That the most

important thing. I look through the zoom screen and it just gets people laughing and so I don't have to do anything to be funny. I just play this clip, and I will make a connection to whatever I'm teaching. So, for example, if I'm sharing a study on how when people laugh together, they are more likely to share thirty percent more personal information in a subsequent conversation, so those conversations are rated as thirty percent more intimate and authentic.

So I'll share that clip and then I'll say, now, I want you to imagine that you're walking into a room with someone and having a conversation. So I might do that. Another way I might do it is just show that clip and then say, great, I know that we're joining from all over the world today, so I just wanted to kick off here with a California vibe since I typically do my teaching at Stanford. These are totally different reasons that I've given for showing the clip.

The important thing is just to get people laughing. So whatever it is that you find funny, of course that is also work appropriate. Try and see if you can find a way to lead with that or to include it in your presentation and then make a loose tie to the content, and people will allow you some leeway because you've given them the gift of laughter.

Or it can be powerful to start with some element of levity, because then people are primed to look for and find other moments, other reasons to laugh. Now, peak end theory says that people tend to remember the most emotionally heightened moments and also the last moment. And this is similar to recency effect with the last moment, that people will remember the most recent interaction with someone. And so what this means is you want to leave people with some little bit of levity or humor. Now I

don't stick to this really firmly. I think that it's more important to end your presentation strong or end what you're doing strong rather than necessarily to end with humor. And the reason for that is if you have used humor along the way, people will remember it. I can give it in ample of that in a minute, but the important thing is I will never end on Q and A. And this is something that I learned from David Nihill, who wrote Do You Talk Funny and was

graciously a guest in our class at Stanford. He wrote a fantastic book where he became a stand up comedian and deconstructed all of these techniques. I mean, it was

really incredibly inspiring work in a really good book. And one of the things that David taught me is you never end on Q and A, because, without fail, you have this incredible presentation that you've been prepping, and you know exactly what you're going to say, you know all your notes to hit, and then you end on Q and A and it's sort of like, oh, well, you know, it's not something that you necessarily wanted to talk about,

maybe you don't have a great answer to it. You're sort of bumbling your way through it, and that's how you end. And so the most effective technique that I learned from him was you want to do Q and A and then you want to leave a three minute content piece at the very end. So say, you know, I'm going to take some Q and A now, and then I'd love to leave you with a few closing remarks.

So that's what I would say about ending strong. I mean that said, if you can leave with something that's lighthearted, that's good too.

literally thinking laughs per minute. And then I will look over recordings of presentations and I will be thinking, oh gosh, that was like a two minute period where I didn't say anything funny. They probably fell asleep. I need to inject more humor. There is this overkill how are you thinking about it for your presentations?

we don't have time for this. And I've also loved working with some comedians, and I have a team of comedy writers that I've gotten to know over the last number of years, and we'll have those comedy writers come in and coach our students. And sometimes if I'm giving a talk and I'm just like this isn't where it needs to be, I'll gather three of my favorite comedy writers and I'll say, hey, guys, can you jump in

this document for thirty minutes? Can you just pitch either humor or different opportunities for humor or We'll get on the phone together and we'll throw it together and will do that. And so there's this thought in business, especially that we have to have all the right answers, that we have to work in a vacuum and then have just the right thing to say, and that the reality

is that's just not how the comedy world works. Anything you see on TV, whether it's sketch comedy or a sitcom or a Netflix special, every joke that you see on TV has been worked over by ten writers in a room together who are laughing. And so if you're feeling stuck yourself, then grab it doesn't have to be

comedy writers. It can be grab a couple friends and say, hey, can you help me, you know, go through this and just flag any opportunities for humor that you see or any ways to make this a little bit more lighthearted.

They're like, yeah, totally, and so yeah, absolutely, having your writer's room or having your what did you call.

been wildly funny for many, many years. Her books are amazing, and she was one of the first guests in our class, and I remember her telling our students about how she had a set of trusted testers is what she called them, and she had a Facebook group that was all her friends, family, and colleagues who she trusted, who would give her really

genuine feedback on her work. And so when she was writing her books, first had to look smart in meetings and then how to be successful without hurting men's feelings were her two books. She would post in her private Facebook group, Hey, this is what I'm thinking of writing. What do you think about it? And she would get really candid feedback about what people thought and whether it was going too far, whether it was crossing a line,

whether it needed to go further. And so this concept of not creating comedy in a vacuum, it's just so core to everyone who has done comedy in their background, and something that we don't necessarily think of in business.

So you try and make a joke and you say either well you know that one didn't land here, or thank you all be here all day, or something else, to just acknowledge the fact that you just tried to make a joke and there was radio silence. Oftentimes just doing that will get a laugh. You know, you diffuse tension. You allow people to laugh at the fact that that didn't go well, and that's a great way to sort of move past it. The type two of failure is you cross a line, you offend someone, or you make

someone feel bad. And in this case we give a framework in our book of recognize, diagnose, and make it right. So step one just recognizing the fact that you have failed, which weirdly gets hard when you rise in status, because we know that the more status and power you gain, the harder it is to stay calibrated because people will laugh, not necessarily because you're funny, but because you are the boss.

So one of my favorite illustrations of this, by the way, was a group of social psychologists ran this study where they had a research assistant. It was actually an interview simulation, but the people walking in the room didn't know that this person in the simulation was a research assistant. They thought that it was just another person. And so in one situation, they made the participants believe that this person was high status, that they were an important person, a

powerful person. And in the other group, they made the participants believe that this person was a subordinate, that they were lower status than the participants. And so in this study, all the research assistants delivered the same joke, and that joke was two muffins are baking in an oven. One of them yells, wow, it's hot in here, and the other muffin replies, holy cow, a talking muffin. Now this is objectively a grade A dad joke. I mean, this

is a bad joke. And what they found was that participants in the condition where they thought the joke teller was low status crickets absolutely no laughter. People in the high status condition, people who thought that the joke teller was high status like roaring laughter. Right, And anyways, this research is really interesting. It doesn't even matter if the person's in the room. If they watch a video of

someone high status, they're more likely to laugh. And so what this means is that we think like, oh, yeah, I have to recognize when I fail, but it actually can be harder than we think. And so especially if we fail in ways where we think we could have crossed a line where there's an appropriateness issue, you have to get really good at recognizing that. And by the way, that was Seth Meyers's number one piece of advice for

our students. So Seth Meyer's former head writer of Saturday Night Live and he has his own show, Late Night with Seth Myers. He joined as a guest in our class and we were wrapping up and we said, great, Seth, what's the one thing you want to leave our students with And he paused, and he said, get really good at recognizing your own fake laughter, the laughter that you make that isn't genuine. Because once you get good at that, then you'll start noticing other people's fake laughter, and that

gets really important as you get hire in status. So we always tell our students if you do fail, recognize it, apologize and make it right immediately, genuine apology, and really try and understand why your humor failed, So ask the person what did I miss? What went wrong? When our humor fails, it's really easy to lean on, oh, well, you know, they probably didn't get the joke or it's their problem, rather than saying, actually, I may have done

something wrong here. And then third is so recognized, diagnose, make it right. And then we always tell our students that there are these common reasons why humor fails that you want to try and avoid. So, for example, never punch down. We've talked about that before. Number two minding your medium. So a really quick tip here is sarcasm is the most wrongly interpreted form of humor in writing, so people think that they're much better than they actually

are at conveying sarcasm. Another one context switching. So it goes without saying that humor's context dependent, that something that lands in the living room won't necessarily land in the boardroom. And yet it can be really tempting if we're sitting around our colleagues and we think of something funny to just sort of let it come out. So we have to be really aware of context switching. And then the other thing that we dive into more fully is those

personal humor pitfalls based on your humor style. So each of those styles you know, for example, the magnet and the sweetheart, they're more likely to over index on self deprecation and so they can actually take away their power when they do that. On the other side, you have stand ups and snipers who can alienate or offend with their humor. So really getting to know what's your humor style and therefore what are your personal pitfalls can help you avoid those humor fails.

Some activities you interact with the program in a way, and the goal is really to have us make behavior change right that they are these small changes that we can make in our day to day that will have monumental impact on the thing that's most important, which is are we navigating our lives on the precipice of a smile?

production support from dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was the marvelous Jenna Koda, and thank you to Martin Nimber who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.