Why Humor is Your Secret Leadership Weapon

Hello everyone. Welcome back to our LinkedIn Lives. I'm very excited to be here. My name is Claire Hayek. I'm team leadership expert, founder and CEO of MSP Teambuilding. As you all know, and many of you have been waiting for this one, including me, today we're talking with Courtney Bickert about why humor is your secret leadership weapon. I'm all— I'm sure we all thought about that, thought about humor and tried to be funny. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And Courtney is gonna demystify all that for us today. So Courtney, who is Courtney Bickert? Courtney Bickert is a social impact leader and stand-up comedian and so much more. Today we're diving into this humor and how it can transform your leadership approach. But before we start, you all know the drill. I would love to know where you're joining us from. And we'll also ask you to share it in the chat. Again, this is the first time you're joining us, you will find out that there's going to be a lot of interactions. We're all about interactivity. We're having a discussion. We're having an intelligent conversation. So we really, really encourage comments in the chat. So please do put it in the chat, and I'm gonna be popping in and checking in on you and see if people are chatting or not every now and again. But before I forget, I would like to mention that Connor, who's part of our team, is with us today, and he is gonna be adding in some comments, some chat info, links, etc., as we go. So that's Connor from our team. Welcome, Connor. If you're here, say hello or something in the chat. Otherwise, I wanted to also mention quickly, and Courtney, hold your horses. I know I'm almost done.

Well, it's okay.

It's all going to be about laughter today. I wanted to share with you that I will be sharing more information at the end. We'll have a Q&A at the end as well. So please put your questions in the chat. I'll go back and forth into it. Now, we do have a— we're resurrecting our team leadership webinar because a lot of you reached out and missed it on August 1st. We're going to be doing it again on September 12th. And I'll tell you a bit more about that. You should see a little QR code right on top of this here. I think I see it. I don't know if you all see it. You can scan that code and register if you can't make it. Not a problem. You'll get the replay. Okay, enough about that. Courtney, let's start. What do you say?

Let's start. Let's get this party rolling. Okay, so what I'd like to do is get everybody in the mood. I'm going to talk a little bit about the science behind humor and laughter and why it is so impactful in leadership. But first, we got to experience the science ourselves and get in the mood. So I'd like everybody to take a second and just think about something that made you giggle. Laugh out loud, think, huh, that is peculiar or odd. Anytime in the last year, years, days, today, this morning, funny stuff happens all the time. And I'll, I'll get us started with one. This actually came to my mind this morning when I was listening to something, and it happened years ago, but for some reason it still makes me giggle. I was living in Holland at the time, and it was winter, and I was wearing my big, like, US ski gloves, and I was at the grocery store, and the guy looked at me and he goes, Nice hand shoes. Just, it still makes me giggle for some reason. But anyway, things make me laugh all the time. I can share more, but Claire, do you have one?

Oh gosh. Oh my God, you're putting me on the spot. I should have thought about this earlier.

That's okay, that's okay. Let's see. Yeah, I'll share one more. Yeah, I don't know, shoes are on the brain today, but I was in the gym the other day and I do have sort of colorful sneakers. And this woman stopped me and she said, oh my gosh, I love your sneakers. And I was like, thank you. And then she added, I love a good clown shoe.

Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Tell me you were laughing.

I find that very funny.

Well, you know, some people could be offended, but, but yeah, good on you, like they'd say in Australia. Good on you. All right, cool. So look, um, I'm sure we all have our, our little stories. I'm sure when this conference is done, I'm probably gonna go, oh, but it'll be too late, right?

Right.

But maybe I'll just giggle by myself at that point, right?

Well, that's important. So anyway, the reason I do this is because I Even just thinking about those things yourselves. And I'm guessing that you all— and feel free to share them in the chat— are thinking of things yourself that made you giggle this morning or sometime recently. And that's already getting your brain in the right frame of mind, and you're already experiencing the science behind humor and laughter. So I think first you wanted to talk a bit about the science.

So it's exactly my first thing. I honestly wanted to to know a bit more all about the research and how, you know, what the research is saying about humour. And, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel here. We're not coming up with something mysterious. I think there's a lot of proof on that. And I want you to explain to us a bit more about the science behind it and how powerful humour can be in leadership and communication, basically.

Absolutely. So first of all, I'm going to go into really more of the physiological science behind it because I think that's important to understand. So I'll talk about humour. The first thing I want to talk about with humor is to bust a couple myths. One, there isn't a person that doesn't have a sense of humor. So when somebody says, oh, I don't have a sense of humor, or that person has no sense of humor, actually we're all born with one. So we all have a sense of humor, and it's something that can be developed and honed. And that's different from getting somebody's sense of humor. We come from different backgrounds and cultures, but we all have a sense of humor, and it's for all of us A way to connect. The other mythbuster is that having a sense of humor isn't about being the class clown or the jokester or the person who always makes people crack up and has people rolling with laughter. Having a sense of humor is really rooted in curiosity and observation, and it's really finding the incongruous in life and the surprises and being curious. It's also rooted in empathy. So we all have that sense of humor and we don't need to be the class clown to bring it into our leadership. I also want to say that just hearing a joke, just hearing a joke, so from humor's perspective, engages all these different parts of your mind.

Yes.

Because as you're hearing the joke, the left side of your brain is starting to put the words together. Then your thinking right side of your brain starts to get into making sense of it. And then as you're making sense of it and you're starting to get the surprise, your brainwaves are sending back to your occipital lobe where we experience emotions, visual and memory and motor skills starts to get activated as you prepare to respond. So just hearing a joke is already making you more innovative, more creative, more open, and thinking in different ways.

Imagine that.

Imagine that. Now—

How we take that for granted.

I know.

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Twain said humor is mankind's greatest Blessing. So, um, and now I want you to show an image because I'm going to talk a little bit about laughter. This is your brain on laughter. So laughter is a universal human emotion, and it is the only emotion that we have that activates all parts of our brain. So if you think about wanting to get people to be innovative, safe, creative, etc., By having them laugh, giggle, even laugh in their own heads, not necessarily out loud, is stimulating their whole brain. And you can remove that. I'm just going to talk a little bit more about a couple more science facts. One that I think is fascinating is I can geek out on this for hours, but don't worry, I won't.

We like geeks. We like geeks.

But laughter has played a really important role in our evolution. So they know that from early hominoids, laughter was used as a signal that it's safe to play, it's safe to engage.

Uh-huh.

Most mammals use a smile or a laugh also to signal, like if you think of apes, that's signaling it's safe, we can engage. And that's the part of laughter that's releasing the oxytocin in our brain, which is the love hormone and connects us immediately. So laughter, when it engages all those parts of the brain, is engaging your memory functions, your learning, reducing cortisol, so reducing stress and your heart rate. It's also creating, expanding your elasticity of your brain.

Right.

So you're automatically more open to creativity. So if you're using humor and laughter, you're tapping into all that power that we all have to get your teams to feel safe, signaling it's safe to engage. Getting them creative, getting them excited, motivated, healthy, all of these wonderful things. And there's all sorts of research behind that, which I can go into now or later.

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm fascinated and I'm not surprised. I'll be very honest with you. I'm not surprised. And I'll tell you why. When COVID hit and we had to literally change the whole company around because we went from in-person to virtual and we didn't know What Zoom was. I'm sure you all can relate to that.

I wish I had stock in Zoom at that time.

Oh my God, you know, to try to do Skype and then nothing. It's like, what is Skype? It's like, wow, Skype was a cool thing. And, uh, but anyways, you had to learn Zoom and dive right in, in, in this mysterious world of virtual world. But here we are, right? But the reason why I say that, we brought in laughter yoga. We brought in laughter yoga as the activity to de-stress motivate, relax, and just literally get all these feel-good hormones in your brains. So I totally— I was a true believer from the beginning. I hadn't heard of laughter yoga, and it was a great tool to be able to bring that and get people to relax and just pause. So here we are, I mean, you know, 3, 4 years later talking about this. again but in a different aspect of it. So, more on as a tool and not just doing laughter yoga and having an activity to make us laugh but just introducing it in our everyday as a leader to create a safe environment. That's amazing. I mean, for me, it's fascinating.

Yeah.

This is me being fascinated here today because I love this subject. But just before we continue on, Right. Let me ask you all a question. Do you believe humor can positively impact team dynamics and leadership? I just want to kind of assess here and survey what people think. Yes or no. Simple, simple. Yes or no. I will leave this question here as we move on to the next one. And I'm hearing that we might have an issue with LinkedIn. This is not streaming on LinkedIn right now, but we do— it's streaming on YouTube. It's streaming on Facebook as well. So, Basically, look in the chat, look in the comments and join us. If you're late, welcome. We are happy to have you. So please do engage in the chat. Now, Courtney, let's keep going. Basically, now I want to know. I know that you're someone with formal training in comedy, right? You're a stand-up comedian. You've seen how humor can benefit leadership. I mean, you yourself are a leader as well. You worked in different organizations, still work in organizations. You lead your own company. You're an entrepreneur. Can you share some strategies on how leaders can effectively integrate humour into their leadership style to kind of get everybody that safe space, whatever you said earlier, and that team morale up and improve communication? How can we do that when we're not professionals in comedy or humour, right?

Exactly. Well, like I said, we all have a sense of humour. So, it's about getting in touch with it. And one of the things about bringing humour into your life, into your work into your home is really— it's about being genuine and authentic and also believable. And that's believable when you're genuine and authentic. And the starting point for that is really understanding how people perceive you. Comics use that as their persona, right? So, you know, you think of different comedians and how their different personas— if you think of Lewis Black, he's a grump and he's grumpy, but it's believable. And so there's something likable about it, and it's genuine, right? So understanding how people perceive you is a place to start. And, you know, I, um, when I think of myself, you know, stern and mean doesn't work for me. That's not how I'm perceived. Actually, nerdy doesn't really work for me. Kind of, I come across as chill and relaxed. So my—

Oh, you do that.

Do I?

You just light up the room too. Just, just let's add that one too.

So it's really understanding, and you can play with that because let's say, you know, you're perceived as kind of nerdy and sciency, right? That's something to play with. You can use like one of the safest ways to start is self-deprecating humor, laughing at yourself. And you can use that so you can joke about being the geek if you know that people see you as a geek. Um, or you see you as a nerd, or if someone sees you as kind of the maybe a little bit chill, relaxed person, play on that. You can make a joke about being the hippie in the group. I mean, anything.

Right.

If you're seen as kind of a goofball, make a joke about how you tripped that morning and whatever. So that kind of self-deprecating humor based on what people perceive of you and how you perceive yourself is, is a really safe and easy way, and it will get people automatically laughing with you at you and at themselves. And so, it's a connection too, right? Yes, it makes a connection. We know laughter is the closest link. It creates an incredible connection. Try being mad at somebody or swearing at somebody when you're laughing.

It's impossible. That's amazing, right?

Yes. So, think about it for negotiations. It's very powerful. Yeah.

You know, Courtney, oftentimes when we talk about humor, many people what they have difficulty with most of the time when you're not a natural, right? It's finding the right tone, finding, using the right timing or saying the right thing at the right time or just getting into the right context. Any tips on that?

Absolutely. So yeah, it's not that timing is everything. It's It's really about getting in touch, observing. Something funny is happening around you pretty much all of the time. And there's lots of safe ways to bring it in. So you can think about one of the things I think is most important to remember is as a leader, you bring the weather. And I can't remember who said that. It might have been you.

No, but sure, I'll take that credit. I love it. It sounds very cool and very smart.

As simple as remembering that you bring the weather. So the mood you enter the room in, the mood you're communicating with is the mood that you're— everybody is empathetic. We're mimickers, physiologically, biologically, we are mimickers. And so if you come into the room, I listen to funny podcasts in the morning before I start my day, just to get in that kind of rather than the news or something, just to kind of Be light. I like to think about something funny before I walk into a meeting or something because it lightens my mood, it calms me down, but it also is the energy I'm gonna share, right? And so if you think about, like, let's say you go into— you walk into a meeting and you spill your coffee on yourself, um, then you could be like, oh God, or you can just be like, well, that pretty much sums up my day, right?

Right.

Right? That's the energy you're bringing into the room. So if you're coming into the room, you don't have to be trying to be funny.

Yeah.

It's just getting in touch with that lighter side of yourself, because you'll start to notice things that might be annoyances can be jokes. The jackhammer starts going off outside the window in the middle of like a really difficult meeting. Well, that's like, well, I, I paid them to do that so you can't hear what I'm about to to say, you know, just— or even I planned that.

Be creative, basically. Just use what's happening around you.

Use what's happening around you. You don't have to come in and start the meeting with a joke. Um, and but you can come in and be like, oh my gosh, my commute this morning, you should have— whatever.

Right, right. And then a lot of people can relate to that, and then it just opens up the conversation.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, it kind of just gets everybody to relax. And I've been to meetings where we're just giggling and getting things done. And it's funny enough, we were more efficient. It was more relaxed. And we had extra time and we giggled some more at the end. It's amazing how sometimes we have this preconception that if we're laughing and we're having too much fun at work, we're wasting our time. We're not being serious. We're not being focused. Think again. Obviously, you know, I think it could go and be pushed to a whole different limit where nobody's paying attention anymore. Obviously, we don't want it to escalate to that. But it's all about just keeping it light, right? But here we go. Another question. Just a quick poll for you. So, if you are struggling with humour or you find it a bit challenging, what is it exactly that you find challenging? We chose 3 here. It could be something else if you want to share in the chat. But just for simplicity, you find it challenging to find the right tone, the timing, or the context. Please do share it in the chat and we'll be checking the chat in a second here. So this is very interesting and I'm not surprised. I was really looking forward to this conversation. And I'm just gonna throw it in here quickly. If you're interested in more to learn more about humor and how Courtney can help you, how we can help you at MSP Teambuilding as well, You know, she's specialized in this. She gives conferences, trainings, and even public speaking on how to integrate humor. Please do reach out and type in the chat the word humor. We make it so easy. Just type humor, okay? You can add some like funny faces in there if you want. We'll get it, okay? And we'll get back to you with some information. You know, we're on a mission. We're on a mission to transform workplaces into pleasant, relaxed, safe spaces where people actually are performant, productive, happy. They grow. And we spend most of our time at work. So, why can't it be pleasant? This is why we do what we do. This is why we bring people like Courtney to talk to you and share these gold nuggets with you because this is what we do. We care. We do. And Anyway, I'm gonna stop right there because I get all passionate about this subject.

I do too.

All right. So, moving on, Courtney. So, let's look at again studies and how humor was, you know, studies have proven that leaders with a sense of humor, they appear to their peers and to their team as more confident, more competent, Believe it or not, more competent, and of course, more trustworthy. So, can you discuss how you've applied humour personally in your leadership roles and maybe share more insights and research insights on the benefits? Anything you can share with the audience today on takeaways they can just literally finish this conference and start applying it right away. But please do share your experience and what you've seen.

Yes.

in your leadership roles? Because that's the best way to learn.

Sure. First of all, I'm going to just geek out again a little bit on some stats just to show what the research says about humor and leadership. So this is from a study published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality. And leaders with any sense of humor are seen as 27% more admirable and motivating than those who don't joke around. Their employees are 15% more engaged and committed, and their teams are twice as likely to solve a creativity challenge. So when you were talking about that meeting where you laughed and were effective, it's because you're motivated, you're open, you're innovative. We know there was another study that showed that a team that watched 10 minutes of humor and the team that didn't were given the same problems.

Mm-hmm.

And the team that saw the came up with like 38% more answers, and they were judged by a group of professors as being like 35% more innovative and creative than the other team. So really gets the juices going. One other story I'll tell is a Harvard case study where they put leaders in situations that were challenging, or there was a problem to be solved. And the people followed— 90% of the time, the people followed The person they thought had a sense of humor more than the others, even if that person didn't have the right answer or know how to solve the problem.

Interesting.

Right? So it's really powerful stuff. And just one more thing, just companies with happy employees outperform their competition by 20%. Those employees are 59% less likely to leave for another job. And salespeople who are happy have 37% greater sales. So it's good for business.

Apparently so. I'm going to share a quick question here with the audience. So what's the— in your opinion, right? What's the biggest benefit of using humour in leadership? Building trust, enhancing communication, or reducing stress? And I'm going to add being more performant or more productive. I think that one should definitely be added here from what we just heard from you and with research. Let's hear it in the chat. And what I'm going to do here, Courtney, I'm going to go to the chat because I did see some comments and I'll overlay it here quickly.

Yeah.

So a lot of people answered yes, yes, yes to what we said about humor being beneficial in a leadership role. And I'll highlight this one here, Pharma Allies. I'm not sure what your name is, but we'll call you Pharma Allies. I think that was an answer to the second poll. Living in a PC world, this makes people hypersensitive. Hot topics offend a lot of people. I find it very interesting and I wanted to highlight that because I couldn't understand what hot topic, hot topics means. But maybe Courtney, you can address that comment. You know, Leave it to the expert here.

Yeah, so, um, that's a really good question, and it's a frequently asked question as well about how do you do this safely, right? Right. I'm assuming that hot topics here means any, like, race, ethnicity, um, gender jokes, culture jokes, diversity, right? Yeah, yeah, these kinds of things, politics, etc., religion. These can be very sensitive subjects. And so obviously there's no real reason to go there in a workplace. You're— something funny happens at work pretty much every day, whether it's online, in your home while you're talking on a meeting, your cat's doing whatever, or, you know, something funny is happening around you all the time. So—

Or your cat jumps on your lap and on your keyboard in the middle of a presentation and poof. Right.

You're like, I didn't mean to say that. Um, so there really is— you're, you're correct. In a professional setting and in, in most settings in terms of humor, uh, sensitive humor, sensitive subjects, just don't need to go there. Um, as you wouldn't in serious comments either. So, um, but it can create a very safe space if you want to experience culture through humor. If somebody tries to tell you a joke and you don't get it It's a wonderful opportunity to say, I don't get it.

I don't get it. I don't get it.

And they can say, well, that's because where I come from, our aunties always did the blah blah blah, and so we find that very funny. You'll get an insight. Um, but yes, it's, um, one of the don'ts is stay away from those. And the other thing is, you know, sharing humor is really important. Laughing at yourself is always very safe. Um, laughing at someone else Is not very safe.

No, and it's— that's not the point.

And that's not the point.

I don't think that's cool at all.

Right, exactly.

That's not the point here at all, at all. Just to be clear, and correct me if I'm wrong, Courtney, this is not about mocking or laughing at, picking on somebody. This is not what we're talking about here. We are talking about making it fun, trustworthy, and bringing down your mask. Your mask.

Yes.

It's not about the others. By being yourself and walking the talk and being funny around yourself and things happening in your life, then you are creating that fun, you know, I can laugh at myself environment, humility, you know, and all that, right?

Right. Laughing at yourself demonstrates vulnerability and humility, which is so critical to trust, right? And people will let you know what you can laugh— what they want you to laugh at them about. And because people do like being kind of the brunt of a joke when they're well loved, but they'll let you know what that is.

Yes.

And, um, like, we had a— I had an employee and, um, he would wear a cape instead of a jacket sometimes, but he let us know that he thought it was worth joking about.

And so then it became a safe So, if somebody is giving you permission to, you know, give me attention about this because that makes me feel good in a positive way, right? Then, it's all about respect and being in tune and listening. You know, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence. I think it's huge here.

Right.

And that's going to be the factor. You got to listen. You got to see what's going on around you. Let me just highlight another one here because when I asked what is the biggest benefit, Conor mentioned reducing reducing stress. And I know that for a fact. Connor laughs a lot when he's anxious. Sometimes it's like a gazillion things to do and it's due now, in the next 5 minutes, and he just starts laughing. And then we all laugh and we're like, okay, let's all just chill here and take it easy. This can wait. This can wait. You know, you know how it is when we're all stressed and he's great at that. So Connor, kudos to you for this one. Also, Pharma Allies said stress reducer. I think I do agree with that, that it's one of the biggest benefits. Courtney, I don't know what you think, but I think that's one of the big things in a world where we're all running at a gazillion miles an hour, right?

There's a reason that we laugh when we're nervous or uncomfortable. That's our body actually reducing our cortisol levels, decreasing our blood pressure. So We know there's proof, physiological proof, that laughter does do all these things. So it really is a true stress reducer and true relaxer.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. So look, I mean, it's already noon here in EST time. Let me just quickly— first of all, thank you so much, Courtney, for being with us. But before we go, you and I, and maybe giggle as we log off here, I just wanted to share that our next conference is on September 4th, and we're going to be talking about If or can ESG really boost profits? And we're gonna have an expert in the field join us. It's all on LinkedIn. The event has been posted. Please do register if you want to know, you know, demystify. Again, we're here to demystify a lot of things. And one of them is ESG. A lot of people go, what is that? And why? And why is everybody talking about it? It is important. And let's talk about it. So September 4th, same time. 11:30 EST. And finally, before we go, we're actually going to be inviting Courtney to come to our webinar as well, a team leadership webinar, which is again September 12th at 1:00 PM EST. And we'll be talking about— actually, we'll be sharing. It's an hour and a half. We'll be sharing great, great tools and gold nuggets when it comes to leadership mindset, the neuroscience of leadership, how we can actually be transforming our style and be conscious of what we're doing as leadership, as leaders, as well as tools on how to engage, mobilize, motivate. This is hands-on tools. All right. And we're gonna wrap up with all the benefits and how we can get rid of those pain points. And Courtney will do a little 5-10 minute talk about humor and all of that because it is important. We're bringing her back. So please do scan the code and register. Again, if you can't make it, No problem. If you don't register, you don't get to watch the replay. So, do register and share it with everybody on your team. Courtney, lovely, lovely, lovely talking with you.

So much fun.

I mean, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your knowledge on humor and leadership. And we can't wait to see you again on September 12th.

Yay!

All right. Bye everyone. Thank you all. Have a great afternoon, morning, day, whichever time zone it is. See you later.