12 Steps For Incorporating Humor Into Your Workplace

Now, more than ever, it is vital to laugh when it comes to work. Y’know… that thing we spend a majority of our lives doing and stressing about. With the seismic shift in what it means to work brought about by the pandemic (among other changes), refusing to allow humor to become a vital part of your workplace’s culture will not only impact happiness, it will hamper creativity, productivity, and the bottom line. Because using humor is not typically a behavior associated with leadership – or even the workplace – here are twelve guidelines for making your workplace more effective with humor.

*Note: Each workplace operates differently, containing its own unique cast of characters, policies, and culture, so by seeing these steps as guidelines for dealing with adversity and uncertainty, and not hard rules, you can adapt them to your own circumstances.

Step 1: Lean Into It

Be open to the fact that anything can be funny. No matter what situation you’re in, what difficult person you’re dealing with, or how hopeless you feel, someone out there has had it worse and been able to laugh. If 100 people heard your story, there would be 100 different perspectives, and by simply saying, “This is funny,” it creates a shift in yours.

Step 2: Start From Where You Are

Look around you and take note of everything that’s happening. What do you see? What’s going on? What are your thoughts? How do your thoughts make you feel? What actions are you taking? Are things going as planned? If not, how are they being addressed? What is and isn’t working? What are people saying? What do you have control over? What do you not? What skills, talents, and tools do you have at your disposal? Why so many questions? Because asking yourself questions that force you to provide objective answers can lead you to new solutions.

Step 3: Know From Whence You Came

What victories have you had in the past? How have you grown? How did you respond to defeats? Are there cringeworthy moments? Regrets? Things you wish you had done? Remember, you have no control over the past, but you do have control over your perspective of it and the actions you take based on that.

Step 4: Know Where You Want To Go And Why

Before starting anything, you need a goal and a why. For example, the intent of every comedian should be to leave their audience feeling better than they were when they arrived. As a leader, shouldn’t this be your goal too? In this case, your “audience” includes your employees, coworkers, customers, and clients, and inspiring positive emotions based on your interactions not only makes both of you feel better, it provides an energy boost that will have you doing better too.

Step 5: Be Authentic

Watching someone try to be funny is so painful because they’re trying to get a reaction, rather than sharing something that actually made them laugh. Don’t be that guy. If it isn’t funny to you, it’s going to be even less funny to others. Be true to yourself – if you’re not typically the person who makes wisecracks, people will start giving you funny looks and wondering if you’re okay. You don’t have to use humor to appreciate the humor in a situation.

Step 6: Provide A Safe Space For Creativity And Discovery

If you want your creativity to flourish when it comes to problem-solving, you gotta give it the space to do so. Instead of shooting down your own ideas before you have a chance to explore them by telling yourself “There’s no way this works,” enter the creative space by assuming it will work, use that as your starting point, and work backwards.

Step 7: Use “Yes, And…” As Your Core Collaborative Tool

One of the best ways for overcoming creative blockage is by accepting ideas as true and amazing and then adding to them – whether they’re your own ideas or someone else’s. Even if it’s a bad idea, responding with a resounding acceptance and then adding to it has myriad benefits, the chief of which is emotional connection. There’s plenty of time to get analytical, but that has no place in the idea stage of a project.

Step 8: Know Your Audience

Who are you using humor in front of? Not all humor works for all people, so adapt it to your coworkers, clients, or your audience. What new idea do you have and who are you presenting it to? Always read the room and adapt accordingly. There’s always a way to get a message across more effectively, and being aware of how you’re packaging that message for its intended audience is vital to that message’s success.

Step 9: Use Humor To Uplift

Like point 4 mentioned, your intent serves as a guide. Never demean, ridicule, isolate, punch down on, or be excessively sarcastic toward others in an effort to be funny. You want to ease tension, inspire creativity, and build bonds, and any form of humor that leaves people feeling bad for you or themselves is not welcome. (Additional tip: there are times when you or someone else may unintentionally cross the line. If it’s someone else, appreciate their efforts, and ask them questions where they come up with answers to guide themselves toward more uplifting forms of humor. If it’s you, see the following step.)

Step 10: Laugh At Yourself

No one’s perfect. You’re a human being who makes mistakes, but that’s actually a good thing: mistakes are how you learn and grow. Being steadfast and stubborn in your quest to always be right and have the answers is how you stay stagnant. The quicker you laugh, the quicker you learn, the quicker you course correct, and the more you deliver the subconscious message to others that it’s okay to mess up… as long as growth is the result. There’s a reason my programs are filled with stories about falling on my face and learning from it: the audience sees themselves, and it creates connection and common ground.

Step 11: Create Shared Experiences

Shared laughter creates an instant bond between people, whether strangers, friends and family, or bitter enemies. The more immersive, involved, and inclusive an experience is, the more you connect people. Anyone can reap the benefits of humor, and doing it as a group is a way to speed up the process, see one another as individuals instead of job titles and actions, and create a shared story, whether virtually or in person.

Step 12: Delegate

This is the step for those of you who consider yourselves more analytical than creative – you don’t have to be funny to use humor. By leaning into those who are or, at the very least, to those who are more creative or upbeat, you contribute in the way that suits you best by leaning into the talents of others. Yeah, giving up control to others is scary, but if you consistently follow the above 11 steps, even if it doesn’t go as planned, not only do you have the tools to adapt and respond, but you’ve built a culture where others do too.

We could all use a laugh right now. If you’re able to implant the idea that work – the place where people spend a significant chunk of their time – is a place where they can actually enjoy themselves, laugh, and accomplish tasks in new ways, you’ve set yourself apart from a normal that has dragged down people’s potential too long.

If your team is struggling with uncertainty, stress, overwhelm, virtual fatigue, and pessimism, chances are good that engagement levels are down, meaning fewer ideas, less collaboration, and lower returns. Effectively incorporating humor into your culture solves these problems, and I can help. Schedule a free conversation today, and we’ll team up to come up with a plan to transform your team into one that is more creative, effective, and equipped to deal with adversity and uncertainty.

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The Election Is Over - What Now?

The robots are taking our jobs, which isn’t a bad thing, but we HAVE to be ready for it.

What an election cycle! It had it all: drama, comedy, and more information about every county in every swing state that any one human being can retain. Did CNN’s John King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki just have that overwhelming amount of knowledge swimming in their brains? Also, did either of them have time for bathroom breaks? Were they hooked up to catheters? Are they even human?

While these were the questions I had on election night between sips of double IPAs, there is a much bigger question that must be answered, regardless who won the presidency: what now?

If you’re anything like me, you probably want to talk about something — anything else, but I’m sure you’ve probably noticed there is much more work that needs to be done. The message we keep getting from politicians and media alike is that “we’re more divided than ever,” but because of the access to social media, we’re more connected than ever, so this is a bizarre paradox in which we find ourselves. 

Just because we are connected doesn’t mean we have connected, and that — more than anything — must be first on our to-do list. No matter who won the election, I was going to write this particular blog post because, red or blue, the core problems that we’re facing are colorblind.

There are three things we must do as a nation in order to come together and come up with solutions that will help us thrive in the 21st century:

1. Connect

As a comedian, one of the first things I do once onstage is to make a connection with the audience. If I don’t connect and can’t get them to see from my P.O.V., my material isn’t going to land quite as hard. Connecting is about finding common ground, a common goal, or a common interest. Scan through any political “discussion” on social media — it’s two people trying to get their point of view across without anyone learning anything. When we go into a conversation with the goal of talking, there is no room for communication, as the key to communicating effectively is listening. This is a fundamental problem that transcends party lines, and it has ingrained itself to the point where too many people can’t even fathom why other people have differing perspectives. I’m guilty of it too. The course of action is to find common ground and/or agree on a common goal. What do all people, no matter their race, socioeconomic status, or ideology want? According to positive psychologist Martin Seligman, there are 5 pieces of the human well-being puzzle: positive emotion, engagement, meaning, accomplishment, and positive social relationships. 

We all want these things, but we disagree on what it takes to ensure that each one of these needs are met, so instead of insisting on your rightness, ask open-ended questions. Find out their passions, stresses, pains, desires, and needs are. If we aren’t starting from common ground, it’ll be difficult — if not impossible — to reach a common goal.

2. Collaborate

At the very least, we all want to live in a better world, but we each have a different vision of how exactly we get there. The way our political system is set up creates a diametric opposition, so that those who think differently are wrong. Throughout the entirety of the election, Joe Biden’s message has been a consistent theme of unity, however, there are plenty of Democrats who refuse to even consider working to connect with Trump supporters. 

This refusal to connect or work together is why we’re in this situation to begin with! 

Watch the presidential debates — they’re about who “wins” — but imagine if they were centered around who works together the best… it would change our political dynamic. The basic level of human collaboration is “yes, and.” That is, taking a problem, and presenting ideas in a way where the next idea adds to the previous idea, rather than proving why it won’t work, taking credit for the idea, or one-upping it. Working together like this will not only bridge the gap between ideologies, it has the power to bridge the gap between problems and solutions, and it focuses the conversation on ideas instead of problems. Think about how powerful it would be if, instead of dismantling the Affordable Care Act, we improved upon it. Do you work for a leader who, from your perspective, has awful ideas? What if, instead of resisting those ideas, you got to work to improve upon them? Whether the goal is to make the world or your workplace better, undercutting the other person or idea is energy that can be spent actually doing the third thing…

3. Create

What set America apart from the rest of the world during the Industrial Revolution was the fact that we innovated and created so many new inventions and systems. Over the past 60 years, America went from being the world’s greatest creator to the world’s biggest consumer. Most Americans agree: if everyone who could work in the United States had a job, that’d be great. However, it’s 2020, and many of the jobs that brought the United States to the world stage in terms of innovation are now being done by robots and A.I. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but many of those computers and robots do those formerly human jobs way better and way faster than people. That’s why it’s vital that people of all ideologies connect and collaborate on creating new jobs for this new world, otherwise more and more jobs will disappear and we’ll be left with a bunch of angry, hungry, unemployed people feeling betrayed by the system. Demanding more jobs in manufacturing and fossil fuels would’ve been like demanding more blacksmiths and carriage manufacturers after guns and cars became commonplace. It’s urgent that we put our heads together and see what kinds of new jobs we can create in new, burgeoning industries — like creating a robot to break down the minute-by-minute, county-by-county election results so John King and Steve Kornacki can use the restroom in November of 2024.

Our common goal is to create a marketplace that works for everyone. Though I may joke about what separates us, I do it to point out how distracted we are by it. Our differences are a positive tool we can use to our advantage. Once we connect and see how much we really have in common, we can collaborate on creating a world worth living in. Reach out to someone who believes differently than you and tell them you’re grateful you have them in your life, then start asking questions to learn about them. All it takes is an open mind and a conversation, but if we wait for others to have the open mind first, we may be waiting forever.

6 Lessons You Can Learn From Ellen’s Apology

Pictured: Ellen in what I like to call her “Sorry Suit”

Toxic workplaces: we’ve all worked somewhere that seemed to drain our happiness, but when the place is a nationally televised talk show featuring a personality with a message of “Be kind,” it hits different.

For those who weren’t aware of the workplace toxicity reports on Ellen, here’s a quick refresher:

One current employee and 10 former staffers claimed they endured a culture of racism, fear and intimidation. They blamed senior managers on the show for allowing the behavior.

The allegations in the Buzzfeed report included former employees saying they were fired for taking time off for medical leave or bereavement. — Source: Today.com

36 former employees of the show reported “handsy” behavior, asking for sexual favors, and groping by multiple producers and higher-ups at “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” — Source: Insider.com

This coupled with comedian Kevin T. Porter’s viral tweet thread requesting stories about Ellen being mean, it seemed as though the world was piling on Ellen DeGeneres, and rightfully so. It’s one thing to run a toxic workplace environment, it’s quite another to run a toxic workplace environment while asking your audience to be kind, which is why the stories got so much traction and #cancelellen was trending.

Here are six (plus one) lessons I learned while watching Ellen apologize.

Lesson 1: When confronted with reports of a toxic work environment, address it immediately

When Ellen returned today, she was expected to address the elephant in the room, and she did, but the Buzzfeed report was released in July, it’s now two months later. Imagine your workplace’s environment being so negative that employees reported it to your local news organization, then you disappear into your office for two months before addressing it publicly. Whether you’re the culprit of the mistreatment of others or not, it’s your job to address criticisms and complaints as though you’re the perpetrator. You set the tone. Even if you don’t have all of the answers, other people are counting on you to say admit that, and assure them with your words and actions that you’re actively pursuing a solution. I live by the quote, “This wasn’t my fault, but it’s my responsibility now,” and if you’re a leader, you should too. It gives you power, shows you’re willing to shoulder the burden of responsibility, and gives people the courage to come to you if something is stopping them from doing their jobs to their best of their abilities. During her statement, Ellen admitted to fumbling the responsibility that comes with her power — a step in the right direction.

Lesson 2: Be open to vulnerability

“Being known as ‘The Be Kind Lady’ is a tricky position to be in. So let me give you some advice out there: if anybody’s thinking of changing their title or giving yourself a nickname, do not go with ‘The Be Kind Lady.’” — Ellen DeGeneres

In a position of power, it is easy to take ourselves too seriously in order to maintain an air of confidence and control. If you make a mistake and you’re looking for forgiveness from your team, your customers, or your community, it is incredibly helpful to show your human side. We all make mistakes, and admitting that is a huge step in winning back the trust of others. By admitting that she’s not always kind, that she gets sad, mad, anxious, frustrated, and impatient, and that she’s a work in progress, Ellen delivers the message that at least she has some self-awareness — a fantastic starting point.

Lesson 3: Use humor without minimizing the situation

To open her monologue, Ellen broke the ice with a little bit of humor:

“How was everybody’s summer? Good? Mine was great!”

Then, when accepting responsibility, she did it again:

“This is the Ellen DeGeneres show, I am Ellen DeGeneres. My name is there. My name is there. My name is… on underwear.”

Some may assert that this is minimizing some of these serious allegations, but the humor is well-placed, and is mostly targeted toward herself. Though not all apologies and course corrections need a dose of humor, be sure to use it to point out your own flaws, mistakes, and vulnerabilities, but also be sure to use it as a springboard or stepping stone toward making changes.

Lesson 4: Offer gratitude openly

Though I wish she would’ve spent more time showing gratitude toward her employees, Ellen at least made mention of the people who allow her to do what she does best: make people laugh. As a leader, we need to do this every day and as much as possible, hence the italics for emphasis. We cannot reach our full potential without the contributions of others, and to help them reach their potential, be vocal about pointing out the positive impacts they have on your day, whether in public, or 1-on-1.

Lesson 5: Communicate a vision

When offering regret, admitting to mistakes, and asking for forgiveness, be sure to communicate that you’re committed to your original why. If you are mistreating employees, putting profits over people, and allowing hate in your workplace, you’ve lost your vision. When you ask yourself why your organization exists, the answer is always to serve people, and those people especially include your employees.

Lesson 6: Commit to change

“I still want to be the one hour a day that people can go to escape and laugh. I want to continue to help all the people that we help every day.” — Ellen DeGeneres

From this quote, for example, Ellen and her employees will know if she is actually committed to her vision because if they don’t feel going to work is an escape. If they don’t laugh while they’re at work, then it’s much harder to bring those things to their viewers. If your vision at your organization is to help your community, that should be the first thing on your mind when an employee is falling short of your expectations. If your actions don’t match your words, then your apology means nothing and you’ve learned nothing. We all make mistakes, but the only way to regain trust and show that you’ve grown is to act on your words.

Bonus Lesson: Follow up

I would love to see Ellen deliver a follow-up monologue stating all of the ways the working conditions have improved. Transparency is key here. If you want to mean what you say, push yourself to give updates on all of the changes you’ve made and ask for honest feedback. When people come to you with ideas, even if it seems like they’re attacking or complaining, keep in mind that they’re doing it because they want you to be better, which makes them better too. Be open to asking for help if you need it and you feel you aren’t keeping your word. Ellen’s latest stand-up special is called Relatable, and one of the most relatable things she, and you, can do as a leader is to be a vulnerable and flawed human being who needs reminders to “be kind.”

We could all use that reminder nowadays.

Don’t Cancel, Question

If everyone had the same beliefs and the same things made everyone happy, what would the world look like?

It would decidedly not look anything like today’s world — in fact, I would argue that if everyone shared the same perspective, this planet would be painfully boring. No diversity of thought means the first idea would always be the best idea, which, without any form of challenge from others, could actually end up being the idea that kills everyone.

Nowadays, with everyone being so connected through the internet and social media, we have an opportunity to explore the incredibly diverse perspectives of people across the globe. Yet, it seems that whenever someone shares their ideology, those with other ideologies instinctively attack.

I’m guilty of it too.

From comedians making insensitive jokes, to far-right purists, to Black Lives Matter activists, to opinionated lesbian feminists, there is something to learn from each of these ideologies, but the moment we say “I disagree,” we miss out on the opportunity to make a connection. Each of these people experienced their own unique upbringing and have reasons for why they behave the way they do, but our basic human nature requires us to be social and work together with the group.

The way we’re nurtured drives us away from our human nature.

It’s in our nature to explore, try new things, and work together, but we’re conditioned to stay in our lanes, hold steadfast beliefs, and value individuality. It’s like our school system taught us how to be less human.

When I see an opinion that is unlike my own, I ask, “Why?” The other person must have a reason for why they see the world differently, so instead of insulting, disparaging, or ignoring them, I’m more interested in seeing from their point of view. At worst, learning from those who don’t believe like me will expand my worldview and help me build a stronger argument in favor of my ideology. In fact, one of the best ways to make our point is to be able to argue effectively from the opposite perspective. At the very least, it will put us on similar footing, which gives us a starting point upon which we can all agree.

For example, freedom of speech is a value held dearly by most Americans, from BLM protesters to right wing militias. But when BLM protesters are being arrested, gassed, and beaten by law enforcement for exercising their right to free speech, the “Don’t Tread On Me” folks are nowhere to be found. Freedom of speech doesn’t just refer to the opinions you agree with. Perhaps, with a shared agreement that all speech much be protected, these ideologically opposed groups can come together and start a dialogue with one another.

If everyone had the same beliefs, the world would have far less dialogue and way more monologue. We learn way more when we listen to others than when we parrot our own opinions, so if you disagree with this post, feel free to contact me and ask, “Why?” because I’d love to hear your perspective too.