Do not try to be funny at work unless you want to risk your work and any chance of being promoted, say management teachers

A solution offered in corporate books, LinkedIn publications and team consolidation manuals is to use humor. Sharing jokes, sarcastic jokes, ironic memes and full -minded anecdotes, the advice will make you more sympathetic, will facilitate stress, strengthen the teams, arouses creativity and even signal the potential of leadership.

We are marketing and management teachers who study humor and dynamics of the workplace. Our own research – and an increasing set of work by other researchers – show that it is more difficult to be funny than most people think so. The downside to make a bad joke is often greater than what you could win by winning a good one.

Fortunately, you don’t have to tell jokes aside to make humor work for you. You can rather learn to think like an actor.

Humor is a risky business

Comedy works by folding and breaking the standards – and when these rules are not in the right way, this is more likely to harm your reputation than to help your team.

We have developed the “theory of benign violations” to explain what makes things funny – and why attempts at humor turn so often, especially in the workplace. Essentially, humor occurs when something is wrong and ok at the same time.

People find funny jokes when they break the rules while seeing harmless. Lack one of these ingredients when you tell a joke and your audience does not appreciate it. When everything is benign and there is no violation, you get the yawn. When it is a violation and not benign, you could eventually trigger the indignation.

It is quite difficult to laugh in the darkness of a comedy club. Under fluorescent office lights, this thin line like a razor becomes even more difficult to walk. What is wrong but ok for a colleague can simply feel bad about another, especially in the differences in seniority, culture, sex or even the mood in which they are.

An advertising study

In our experiences, when everyday people are invited to “be funny”, most attempts disembark flat or transverse lines.

In a humorous legendary competition with business students, described in Peter McGraw’s book on world humor practices, “the humor code”, the legends were not particularly funny to start. However, those who were evaluated by judges and the funniest were often also assessed the most unpleasant.

Being funny without being offensive is of paramount importance. This is particularly true for women, because a robust literature shows that women face a more severe backlash than men for behavior considered to be offensive or violating standards, such as expressing anger, acting dominantly or even “making requests” in negotiations.

You might end up receiving any respect

The research of other researchers who examine the behavior of leaders and managers in organizations tell a similar story.

In a study, managers who used humor were considered more confident and competent, strengthening their status. However, when their attempts have missed, these same managers lost status and credibility. Other researchers have found that failed humor does not only affect the status of a manager – this also makes employees less likely to respect this manager, ask their advice or trust their leadership.

Even when jokes land, humor can turn against him. In a study, marketing students asked to write a “funny” copy for advertisements wrote funny, but also less effective advertisements, that students asked to write a “creative” or “persuasive” copy.

Another study revealed that the bosses who too often joke pushes employees to pretend to be amused, which drains energy, reduces work satisfaction and increases burning. And the risks are higher for women due to a double standard. When women use humor in presentations, they are often judged as less capable and having a lower status than men.

The main thing is that telling a big joke rarely gives you a promotion. And falling out a bad can compromise your work – even if you are not a talk -show host who earns his life by making people laugh.

Flip the script

Instead of trying to be funny at work, we recommend that you focus on what we call “funny thinking” – as described in another McGraw books, “Shtick to Business”.

“The best ideas come like jokes,” said David Ogilvy’s advertising legend. “Try to make your thought as funny as possible.”

But Ogilvy did not tell the leaders to make jokes during the meetings. He encouraged employees to think like actors by reversing expectations, taking advantage of their networks and finding their niche.

The comics often lead you in one direction, then return the script. The actor Henny Youngman, a master of one-liners, joked: “When I read the dangers of alcohol consumption, I abandoned … reading.” The commercial version of this agreement is to challenge an obvious hypothesis.

For example, the Patagonia “Don Buy This Jacket” campaign that Gear’s outdoor company deployed Black Friday in 2011 as a full page The New York Timesa paradoxically stimulated sales by calling overconsumption.

To apply this method, choose an obsolete hypothesis that your team has, such as adding features to a product always improves it or that having more meetings will lead to more fluid coordination and ask: “What if the opposite was?”

You will discover options that standard brainstorming is lacking.

Create a abyss

When the actor Bill Burr has his fans in stitches, he knows that some people do not find his jokes funny – and he does not try to win them.

We have observed that many of the best comics do not try to please everyone. They succeed by deliberately shrinking their audience. And we also note that companies that build the same stronger brands.

For example, when the Nebraska tourism council adopted “honestly, it’s not for everyone” in a 2019 campaign, targeting visitors outside the state, web traffic jumped 43%.

Some people want hot tea. Others want iced tea. Serving hot tea does not satisfy anyone. Likewise, you can succeed in business by deciding to whom your idea is for and who it is not, then by adapting your product, your policy or your presentation accordingly.

Cooperate

Stand-up may look like a solo act. But comics depend on the comments – punches of comedian colleagues and public reactions – iterative jokes in the same way as Lean startups can innovate new products.

Building successful teams at work means listening before speaking, making your partners beautiful and balancing roles. The improvisation teacher Billy Merritt described three types of improvisers. Pirates are risk takers. Robots are structural manufacturers. The ninjas are followers in both, taking risks and construction structures.

A team designing a new application, for example, needs the three: pirates to offer daring features, robots to rationalize the interface and ninjas to fill the gaps. Everyone’s empowerment in these roles leads to more courageous ideas with less dead angle.

Gifts are not universal

To tell someone to “be funny” is to say “to be musical”. Many of us can keep a beat, but few have what it takes to become rock stars.

This is why we argue that it is smarter to think like an actor than to try to act as one.

By reversing the hypotheses, by cooperating to innovate and by creating chasms, professionals can generate new solutions and stand out – without becoming an office punchline.

Peter McGraw, professor of marketing and psychology, University of Colorado Boulder; Adam Barsky, associate professor of management, the University of Melbourne, and Caleb Warren, professor of marketing, University of Arizona

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