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Laugh more at work to ease office stress
Positive humour is beneficial in the workplace for many reasons. From job interviews to daily interactions, using humour can enhance career success, reports Sinara Stull O’Donnell
In addition to a great resume and superior references, you might want to pack a little humour along on your next interview. From first impressions to the so-called daily grind, professionals are finding that the use of humour can perform workplace wonders. It may aid communication, establish empathy, diffuse tough situations and even build the bottom line.
Studies show that humour may increase productivity on the job. Research by Lee Berk, a medical researcher in humour and laughter, shows that good-natured or mirthful laughter can: Increase the immune system’s activity; decrease stress hormones which constrict blood vessels and suppress immune activity; and increase the antibody immunoglobulin A, which protects the upper-respiratory tract.
“Who wouldn’t want that kind of benefit?” says Dr Berk, an assistant professor of family medicine at the Susan Samueli Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. Dr Berk co-authored an extensive study on laughter with Stanley Tan while with California’s Loma Linda University School of Medicine.
Their study shows that if you’re using or experiencing positive humour, the whole brain is involved, not just one side, and that there’s more coordination between both sides. “As a result of using humour, we experience the diminishment of classical stress,” he says. “When one utilises humour, it makes you less on edge, lowers your blood pressure and your heart rate and allows you to think more clearly.” When you experience or use good-natured humour, “your biology has changed. Your stress hormones have been lowered and your immune system optimised,” says Dr Berk. “Using humour and laughter in our work environment counters all the negative effects of that environment.”
Positive humour, as opposed to negative or mean-spirited joking, is beneficial in the workplace for other reasons. From job interviews to daily interactions, using humour can enhance career success. Here’s why:
Humour shows you’re easy to work with
Job
candidates worry that they won’t seem serious during interviews.
But coming across as easy to work with is important as well, and
humour can aid in this impression. As a hiring manager in the corporate
workplace, Lou Heckler, a professional speaker and humourist in
Gainesville says he was often asked if candidates he interviewed
seemed easy to work with. This quality “is definitely a factor”
in hiring decisions, he says.
Candidates have plenty of opportunity to show an appropriate sense of humour during the interview process. For instance, when glitches arise, such as long waits, postponed meetings or misplaced resumes, the ability to relax, laugh appropriately and “go with the flow” will help you to be perceived as flexible.
Naturally, avoid all sexist, racist, crude and mean-spirited overtones when using humour. Others’ reactions are the best gauge of whether humour works, and if there’s a question about whether a remark is appropriate, it usually isn’t.
Humour makes you likable
As a free-lance advertising copywriter based in Carlsbad, California, Jill Easton often meets with new clients to pitch business. “You can walk into a business situation with the best plans, the most professional presentations,” she says. “The decision about whether to hire you boils down to whether they like you or not.”
Easton learned this early in her career while working in New York as a junior copywriter. The agency sent her to Dallas to make a presentation to a beverage company. The storyboard — a visual depiction of the ad campaign — showed musical lyrics and dancers in the ad, which she duly described to the client’s decision-makers.
“We’re not going to spend $100,000 unless we know what it sounds like,” one executive responded. So she belted out the song. He then said, “I’m not going to spend $100,000 unless I know what the dancing looks like.” “So I danced around in my Evan Picone suit and did ‘shuffle off to Buffalo’ and the ‘Suzy Q’ around the conference room,” Easton says. She landed the account.
Later, Easton was interviewing for a job in New York when she met an interviewer who took a dislike to her California background. Finally, Easton told him in a lighthearted tone: “I’m not blond. I’m a brunette. I’ve never surfed a day in my life. I won’t eat tofu or sprouts.” The humour helped break the ice. She was later offered the job.
Easton says hilarious behind-the-scenes stories help put other participants in business meetings at ease. One story describes how, while filming a commercial at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, she and the crew on a flatbed truck were charged by two rhinos. Their handlers told the frightened crew the rhinos were “just playing.” Meanwhile, an emu put its head over a fence and bit Easton’s head. “This isn’t in my job description,” she said repeatedly.
Humour improves creativity, lowers stress
Laughter reduces stress because it’s relaxing and calming, says Steve Wilson, founder of the World Laughter Tour, an organization based in Gahanna, Ohio, that promotes therapeutic laughter and a vision of world peace through laughter. He teaches “laughter yoga,” a therapy started in India in 1995 that teaches people to laugh without using jokes.
“Laughter improves creativity and problem-solving. It activates the limbic system in the brain, connecting the right and left sides. It helps you do more whole brain work,” he says.
Under acute stress, the two hemispheres of the brain become disconnected. For instance, if you’re late to work or an event, you’ll fumble, drop things and make mistakes. Laughter works as a relaxation response and calms the system. “One of the myths is that laughter is trivial,” he says. “It’s very powerful.” Merely smiling can be healing and reassuring.
Humour changes perception
Robert
Harris, a real-estate agent with Troop Real Estate in Simi Valley,
California, attributes much of his success to using humour in his
job. “I take what I do very seriously, but buying a house is
one of the most stressful acts a person can participate in,”
says Harris, who expects to close more than $30 million in sales
in 2001. “Introducing some humour or lighthearted moments helps
relieve stress for all parties.”
In a field that lends itself to frustration and delays, Harris tries to make buyers and sellers more comfortable by interjecting humour. “Most of my business is from referrals. I think that people come back to me both from the smoothness of the transaction and because they enjoyed being with me,” he says.
“Inside jokes” may lead to team-building
The first time a new employee laughs with new co-workers is usually the first time he or she feels part of the team in a new environment. Says Wilson, “You know you have an ‘inside joke’ when everybody at work laughs, but nobody at home does.” Ironic or “black humour” can even have a place. “It doesn’t mean we aren’t compassionate,” he says. “We’re discharging tension.”
Richard Jacobson, a news anchor with a Los Angeles radio station, says having an ironic sense of humour helps him and, sometimes, his listeners. “As a journalist, you encounter the rough edges of society much like firefighters, policemen and physicians. A certain amount of humour allows you to keep your emotional equilibrium,” says Jacobson.
He likes to end newscasts with back-of-the-book stories. He might introduce police-blotter items by saying, “And now for another chapter of stupid criminal tricks.” After telling the story of a man who was trapped unhurt in a sewer overnight, Jacobson played Art Carney’s “The Sewer Song” from “The Honeymooners.”
Making the effort
It isn’t always easy to find humour in business. Daniel Saintjean, a Montreal publisher and professional speaker, says it takes effort to incorporate humour into presentations, e-mails and letters, but using a funny quote, cartoon or other humour “has the effect of loosening someone’s tie or shoelaces. It relaxes them for a moment.”
President Bush used this technique at a ceremony commemorating National Hispanic Heritage month on September 28, 2001. It was an emotional event that included Latin singers and representatives from the Hispanic community. When Bush stood to speak, he said, “Mi Casa Blanca, es su Casa Blanca.” This light joke visibly lifted the heavy mood.
In his workshops and speeches, Heckler promotes finding humour in the workplace. “Humour is what’s obvious, but we have been trained to be too polite to mention it,” he says. He hunts for mirth in posted signs. At one meeting, he noticed a sign that read: “For restrooms: Use stairs.” He’s mentioned September 11 in all his speeches since the attack, but still preaches the benefits of humour. While it may seem rude or unfeeling to inject humour during this time in US history, he notes that humour is needed more than ever now “to maintain our equilibrium, indeed, our souls.”
—www.hrhub.com