Laughter shifts your nervous system into a state that handles complexity better by broadening attention. People trust those they laugh with, not those they laugh at. Leaders who use inclusive humor build stronger teams.
People don't talk about laughter in leadership that often. A couple things about laughter. One is it goes back to playfulness, which playfulness gets our nervous system in a more of a parasympathetic state, and which is much more suited to complexity because it enables us to scan widely, to stay in a thing rather than fighting a thing. Another one is that there's some research on laughing that suggests that we trust people that we can laugh with more. And Now we have to be really careful not to ever be laughing at somebody because that can really destroy trust, but laughing together is— we trust people that we laugh with.
Reducing Regrettable Attrition in Organizations by Fixing the System, Not the People Reducing Regret
