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Speaker 1: When most people think of business, they think of suits, meetings, agendas,

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Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of stuff that's very, very serious.

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Speaker 1: But does it have to be this way? Naomi bag

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Speaker 1: Donus thinks that there's a room for humor even when

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Speaker 1: you're trying to accomplish very serious things. By bringing levity

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Speaker 1: into your day to day exchanges, you can more easily

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Speaker 1: build bonds with your colleagues, diffuse tension, and help them

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Speaker 1: get to know you better, and vice versa. Naomi's found

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Speaker 1: that utilizing humor can help boost innovation, foster creativity, and

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Speaker 1: boost resilience through hard times. And she should know, because

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Speaker 1: Naomi teaches humor as part of a purpose in the

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Speaker 1: leadership course at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Naomi learned

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Speaker 1: her tricks of the trade at the Upright Citizens Brigade

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Speaker 1: theater and from performing improv at comedy venues throughout the

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Speaker 1: United States, and now she coaches top executives in the

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Speaker 1: at of comedy. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm

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Speaker 1: an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral science Consultancy Inventium,

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Speaker 1: And this is how I work A show about how

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Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. Humor Seriously, which

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Speaker 1: is the book that Naomi co wrote is definitely, hands

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Speaker 1: down the funniest business book that I have ever read.

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Speaker 1: And that is pretty much how my chat with Naomi started.

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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I mean, the butter is low. People

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Speaker 2: don't start out to read funny business books, but I

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Speaker 2: will take it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, please take that as a big compliment. I want

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Speaker 1: to know what was your process for making it so funny?

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Speaker 1: Oh gosh.

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Speaker 2: I don't think anyone has asked us that question. I

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Speaker 2: love that question. You know, from the beginning, my co

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Speaker 2: author Jennifer Acker, and I knew that writing the book

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Speaker 2: was going to be really hard, even though we really

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Speaker 2: believe in this content. We believe in the transformative effective

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Speaker 2: humor on our behavior in psychology. We believe it's a

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Speaker 2: completely underleveraged asset at work, that our workplaces are particularly humorless,

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Speaker 2: and we believe it's a learnable skill. So we know

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Speaker 2: that these small shifts in behavior and mindset are really

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Speaker 2: all it takes to reap the benefits. And yet Jennifer

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Speaker 2: had written a book before, and she had told me

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Speaker 2: it's really really hard. It's harder than you think. And

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Speaker 2: so from the beginning we tried to set up these

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Speaker 2: hacks that would remind ourselves not to take the work

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Speaker 2: or ourselves too seriously along the way. So, as one example,

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Speaker 2: writing the first words of a book is really intimidating,

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Speaker 2: and so instead of creating a document with a manuscript

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Speaker 2: title and all of this stuff, we've just created a document,

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Speaker 2: a Google doc actually called words on a page. And

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Speaker 2: the was just to lower the bar. It's like, we're

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Speaker 2: not writing a book, We're just putting some words on

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Speaker 2: a page. That's all we're here to do. And so,

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Speaker 2: and another example is when it was time to write

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Speaker 2: a proposal again, something that could seem really intimidating, we

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Speaker 2: started a Google doc and we titled it a really

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Speaker 2: Shitty Proposal, And so every time we opened this dock,

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Speaker 2: it would say a really shitty proposal, and it'd be like,

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Speaker 2: you know, I'd text her at six am and be like, Hey,

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Speaker 2: I'm in the shitty proposal right now. I'll see you

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Speaker 2: there later today. And it's so funny. That stuck. So

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Speaker 2: we ended up kind of mistakenly turning it in at

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Speaker 2: one point to a publisher that way, and they loved

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Speaker 2: it so much that we ended up pitching it to

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Speaker 2: all the publishers as a really shitty proposal human sitiously

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Speaker 2: a really shitty proposal. And so we knew at the

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Speaker 2: beginning that there were parts of this that we're going

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Speaker 2: to be really hard and we're going to be a

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Speaker 2: slog and so it was our way of creating these

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Speaker 2: hacks and reminders to ourselves to have a sense of

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Speaker 2: levity and really to practice what we preach as we're.

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Speaker 1: Doing something I was wondering when I was reading it,

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Speaker 1: and I feel like I experienced this in my own writing,

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Speaker 1: Like I get the importance of humors, so when I

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Speaker 1: read the book, definitely preaching to the converted, but there

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Speaker 1: were so many practical strategies that I felt like I

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Speaker 1: could use to make myself more funny and the things

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Speaker 1: that I was producing more funny. But I was wondering

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Speaker 1: with the book, was it almost like you do a

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Speaker 1: straight draft that there's no pressure to be funny, and

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Speaker 1: then you go back over and then you make it funny.

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Speaker 1: Because I feel like that's a process I'll sometimes use

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Speaker 1: with my work, particularly if I'm staring at a blank page,

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Speaker 1: I'll just go just get some crap on a page

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Speaker 1: and then fix it up and then you can make

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Speaker 1: it funny if you want later on, or are you

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Speaker 1: just naturally funny when you're right?

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Speaker 2: That's so that's such an interesting question both. So one

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Speaker 2: of the things that was really important Jennifer and I

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Speaker 2: would work in silo and then we'd share our work

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Speaker 2: with each other. And so one thing that I found

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Speaker 2: really helpful is rather than thinking about trying to be funny,

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Speaker 2: I just thought about what's going to make Jennifer laugh.

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Speaker 2: So what I would do is I would write a

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Speaker 2: draft of something, and I would pass it to Jennifer,

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Speaker 2: and then we created this process that we called pink fontification,

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Speaker 2: which is the lamest title for everything, but we just

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Speaker 2: use it within ourselves and of course now the world knows.

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Speaker 2: And Jennifer, so what she would do is she would

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Speaker 2: read over my work and then she would turn to

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Speaker 2: pink anything that made her smile or laugh. And so

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Speaker 2: it was sort of this instant gratification and also real

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Speaker 2: time feedback of what's working what's not working. And we

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Speaker 2: find oftentimes with our students when they're having trouble quote

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Speaker 2: being funny or thinking of, you know, some type of humor,

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Speaker 2: it's like, okay, forget that, don't try to be funny.

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Speaker 2: Just try to write something that would make your best

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Speaker 2: friend smile or something that would, you know, make your

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Speaker 2: partner laugh a little bit. And so making it personal

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Speaker 2: helped a lot. And then there were certainly times where

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Speaker 2: we just had to get a framework out, Like I

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Speaker 2: remember we were working on this one frame work about

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Speaker 2: the misperceptions of failure in humor, where we think that

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Speaker 2: failure looks like one thing, and in fact we get

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Speaker 2: failure wrong. And we have, of course a two by

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Speaker 2: two because we teach it at business school, and I

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Speaker 2: remember as soon as we locked in on that, it

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Speaker 2: was like, oh my gosh, we got to get this

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Speaker 2: content down. And so we just start pouring content out

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Speaker 2: around that, and then later on we'll go through and

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Speaker 2: we'll look for humor. The other thing that we did was,

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Speaker 2: and this is I've spent a good amount of time

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Speaker 2: training at the Upright Citizens' Brigade Theater in Los Angeles

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Speaker 2: and doing not just improv comedy but sketch comedy there.

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Speaker 2: And one thing that I learned from that experience of

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Speaker 2: being in a writer's room is you don't always have

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Speaker 2: to have the right joke. You just have to have

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Speaker 2: the intuition that there's an opportunity for humor here. And

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Speaker 2: so I might read a paragraph that I had written,

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Speaker 2: or that Jennifer had written, and I might find a

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Speaker 2: moment in that where I think it's a little bit humorous,

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Speaker 2: but I don't quite know what to say, And then

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Speaker 2: I'll just flag it and say pitch alts, which is

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Speaker 2: my code for Jennifer, of like pitch ideas for what

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Speaker 2: might be funny here. So I'll give one example. In

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Speaker 2: Jennifer's intro, she had written something like, I'm a behavioral scientist,

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Speaker 2: focused on how meaning and purpose shape the choices that

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Speaker 2: individuals make. I didn't view humor as important in my career.

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Speaker 2: Sure I liked laughter, but I never viewed humor as

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Speaker 2: an important skill to develop. And so when I was

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Speaker 2: reading through that, I highlighted the line, sure I like laughter,

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Speaker 2: because I was like, this is kind of a funny

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Speaker 2: thing to say, Like I like to laugh is kind

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Speaker 2: of there's something funny there. And then when she went

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Speaker 2: back over it, she wrote, it's sure I like to laugh,

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Speaker 2: and then she added a parenthesis, which is impossible to

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Speaker 2: say without sounding like a sociopath. But I never viewed

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Speaker 2: humor as and important skill developed. And so it was

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Speaker 2: this iterative process of I don't need to have the

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Speaker 2: right answer, I can just flag that something might be

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Speaker 2: an opportunity for humor, and then we can go back

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Speaker 2: and forth and build on each other's ideas like that.

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Speaker 1: So that's probably a good segue to get into how

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Speaker 1: do you write a joke? And I love how practical

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Speaker 1: human seriously is in this regard, and are you able

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Speaker 1: to take listeners through how you write a joke? And

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Speaker 1: like how you personally applying the strategies in the book.

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Speaker 2: So there are some really basic principles of comedy that

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Speaker 2: I have found really accessible. And I should back up

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Speaker 2: for a second and say that we're sort of going

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Speaker 2: at this backwards, because the thing that we say to

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Speaker 2: our students first and foremost is this is not about

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Speaker 2: being funny. It's not about telling jokes, it's not about

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Speaker 2: writing jokes. It's about fundamentally shifting our mindset so that

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Speaker 2: we're navigating our lives on the precipice of a smile.

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Speaker 2: And we use this analogy in the book of the

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Speaker 2: difference between levity, humor, and comedy is similar to the

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Speaker 2: relationship between movement, exercise and sports. So if you think

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Speaker 2: of those things like a pyramid, you've got on the

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Speaker 2: base floor levity and movement. These are just the way

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Speaker 2: that we navigate our world. So, whether it's our mindset

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Speaker 2: or whether it's our physicality, we know that small shifts

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Speaker 2: in our you know, whether we're our shoulders are back

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Speaker 2: or whether our shoulders are hunched, are going to change

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Speaker 2: how people interact with us and how we feel. And similarly,

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Speaker 2: if we navigate our lives on the precipice of a

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Speaker 2: smile versus the precipice of a frown, it's going to

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Speaker 2: change everything. So that first level of levity is really

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Speaker 2: what we're going for now. The reason that we spend

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Speaker 2: an entire chapter and more focused on comedy, focused on

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Speaker 2: the craft and the art of comedy, is that comedy

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Speaker 2: is like a sport. There are rules that you follow,

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Speaker 2: there are moves that you make to get the outcomes

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Speaker 2: you want, in this case laughter, and so our goal

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Speaker 2: there is to teach a few of these moves so

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Speaker 2: that you can just feel more comfortable getting off the couch.

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Speaker 2: Like right, we're not playing sports. We just want to

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Speaker 2: know what those moves are so that it comes more

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Speaker 2: naturally to us so that we can craft our humor

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Speaker 2: in a way that other people will find funny. So

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Speaker 2: that's a long digression to say, we're going to talk

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Speaker 2: about comedy for a few minutes. But if you are

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Speaker 2: not a person who's inclined to comedy, Amantha, I know

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Speaker 2: that you are, which is awesome. But for those who

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Speaker 2: are listening who are not, there's so much more here

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Speaker 2: that's actually important outside of of that just that comedy element. Okay,

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Speaker 2: So that being said, let's see a comedy.

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Speaker 1: One oh one.

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Speaker 2: So the two principles I love to share first are

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Speaker 2: number one, at the heart of comedy is truth and

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Speaker 2: number two, misdirection is key to getting laughs. So think

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Speaker 2: about truth. You often laugh because you think, oh, I

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Speaker 2: do that or I've seen people do that, Right, there's

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Speaker 2: a recognition that comes that often makes us laugh. And

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Speaker 2: then misdirection occurs when we think someone will zig and

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Speaker 2: instead they ostriche right, exactly, Okay, So we think they'll

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Speaker 2: go one way and they go the other way. And

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Speaker 2: so one really simple example I give my students is

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Speaker 2: imagine that you are at a dinner party. Remember dinner parties,

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Speaker 2: by the so such quaint times. So you're at this

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Speaker 2: dinner party and you're halfway through the second course and

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Speaker 2: one of your friends walks in late and she says, sorry,

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Speaker 2: I'm late, I didn't want to come. Now, this is

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Speaker 2: potentially you know. She says it with a smile. You're like, okay,

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Speaker 2: that's that's pretty funny. Now the truth here. Sorry I'm late,

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Speaker 2: I didn't want to come. The truth is obvious. We've

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Speaker 2: all felt this way where we don't really want to

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Speaker 2: get off the couch. The misdirection is in, Actually, Amantha,

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Speaker 2: where do you think the misdirection is in that sorry

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Speaker 2: I'm late, I didn't want to come.

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Speaker 1: Well, I guess it's in the I didn't want to come,

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Speaker 1: because everybody expects you to say the truth in that scenario.

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Speaker 2: Exactly right, So we expect a finlely veiled excuse. Sorry

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Speaker 2: i'm late. Traffic was horrible. Sorry i'm late. The link

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Speaker 2: didn't work. Sorry I'm late. It's twenty twenty one, We're

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Speaker 2: a full year into a pandemic. Just lateness even matter anymore.

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Speaker 2: So what this means is two things. Number One, comedy

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Speaker 2: isn't about making things up. It's really about being at

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Speaker 2: about finding truth in our lives. And this is The

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Speaker 2: most important misperception we find with our students and executives

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Speaker 2: is they'll come to us. You know, an executive will

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Speaker 2: come to me and say, hey, I'm giving a talk.

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Speaker 2: I want to be funny. What joke should I tell?

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Speaker 2: And I'll say fantastic. I'll push the papers to the side,

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Speaker 2: and I'll say, tell me about yourself. What is true

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Speaker 2: for you? What do you like more than other people?

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Speaker 2: What do you dislike more than other people? What areas

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Speaker 2: of contrast or incongruity exist in your life? And we'll

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Speaker 2: do this sort of genuine truth finding where we're mining

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Speaker 2: their lives for authentic material that they can then turn

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Speaker 2: into humor. And then the second thing that this tells

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Speaker 2: us is that structure matters. A set of an idea

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Speaker 2: often isn't enough. It needs to be encased in a

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Speaker 2: way that leads us in a different direction. So that's

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Speaker 2: why in the book we go through these techniques from comedians,

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Speaker 2: first mining your life for observations, and then second applying

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Speaker 2: a couple really easy frameworks. So I'll give I'll fly

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Speaker 2: through that sort of process that I would go through.

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Speaker 2: So first I'm going to make mundane observations about my

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Speaker 2: life right, it's not about inventing something from thin air.

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Speaker 2: It's just about noticing what's true. So I might say,

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Speaker 2: I might tell you that my dog is incredibly excited

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Speaker 2: at dinner time even though he's eating the same food

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Speaker 2: he always eats, or how my kids never listen to me,

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Speaker 2: or how I go for a walk every day just

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Speaker 2: to change up the day a little bit. So I

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Speaker 2: have these observations. They're not funny, but they're just true.

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Speaker 2: And then you can apply one or more of the

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Speaker 2: techniques that we go over in the book, and the

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Speaker 2: three most common ones are exaggeration, contrast, and rule of three.

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Speaker 2: So I'll use exaggeration contrast. For example, So Larry David said,

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Speaker 2: I had a wonderful childhood, which is tough because it's

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Speaker 2: hard to adjust to a miserable adulthood. Right, So all

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Speaker 2: he's doing here is he's creating contrast between how he

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Speaker 2: felt about his childhood and how he feels about his adulthood.

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Speaker 2: And then also use it exaggeration because he probably doesn't

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Speaker 2: have a totally miserable adulthood, but you know, he's trying

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Speaker 2: to create that. And then the other technique that people

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Speaker 2: find really easy is rule of three. So this is

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Speaker 2: where you make a really simple list where the first

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Speaker 2: two elements lead people in one direction and then the

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Speaker 2: third reveals something unexpected. So I might say I miss

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Speaker 2: so many things about in person office life. You know,

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Speaker 2: I miss the support of eye contact, I miss spontaneous

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Speaker 2: lunches with colleagues, and I miss wearing pants. Right, so

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Speaker 2: you're sort of going ab and apple. So these are

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Speaker 2: again these they seem like really simple hacks, but once

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Speaker 2: you start noticing the frameworks, you'll start seeing them everywhere

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Speaker 2: in comedy, and then they'll start coming more naturally to

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Speaker 2: you as you're trying to turn your humor into something

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Speaker 2: that feels funny.

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Speaker 1: And what about collbex Because I feel like people knowing

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Speaker 1: about colbecks might think that's an opportunity for me to

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Speaker 1: be funny, even if I, you know, don't feel confident

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Speaker 1: constructing a whole joke. So can you talk about callbacks?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a great one, so that the callback

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Speaker 2: is the safest joke to make. And this is where

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Speaker 2: you just make a reference to a moment that already

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Speaker 2: got a laugh. So, as one example, I was in

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Speaker 2: a zoom call the other day and it was a

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Speaker 2: group of CFOs and retired CFOs, and they were all

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Speaker 2: going around the table introducing themselves and if you came

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Speaker 2: clear that it was sort of a ridiculous thing to

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Speaker 2: continue introducing themselves as CFOs because everyone was a CFO.

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Speaker 2: And so, you know, one person says, I'm a CFO,

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Speaker 2: the other person says, I'm retired CFO. The next person

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Speaker 2: says I'm a CFO. And then one woman introduces herself

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Speaker 2: and says I'm a recovering CFO, indicating that she's like

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Speaker 2: recovering from it rather than retired from it. You know,

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Speaker 2: the whole call laughs. Everyone has this shared experience. A

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Speaker 2: couple people later, another woman says I'm also a recovering CFO.

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Speaker 2: Again everyone laughs, and it's sort of this callback that

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Speaker 2: makes the first person feel good. A little bit later,

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Speaker 2: a third person says, I'm an aspiring recovering CFO. Right,

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Speaker 2: So this is now taking that callback and it's building

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Speaker 2: upon it, and again everyone laughs. So it's really low

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Speaker 2: risk because it's just making reference to something that already

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Speaker 2: got to laugh. It makes the first joke teller feel

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Speaker 2: valued and seen, So it's incredible relationship builder in that way,

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Speaker 2: and in a group of people. It can be a

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Speaker 2: powerful tactic to create an in group, and create an

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Speaker 2: in group in a way that's that's powerful and safe

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Speaker 2: and good for the culture, rather than one that feels exclusive.

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about bringing humor into the every

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Speaker 1: day so things that people do every day, like emails

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Speaker 1: and meetings and instant messages, and maybe human is not

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Speaker 1: quite the right word, because I know in the book

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Speaker 1: you talk a lot about levity, which I feel is

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Speaker 1: a really underused word. I love the idea of just

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Speaker 1: bringing more levity into the workplace. So let's maybe start

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Speaker 1: with emails, because I'm sure that listeners of the show

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Speaker 1: are probably sending hundreds of emails every week, and I

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Speaker 1: feel that there's a lot of missed opportunity there for levity.

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Speaker 1: So can you talk about how you think about your

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Speaker 1: emails and having received emails from you, I mean, you

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Speaker 1: completely practice what you preach. Because we had to reschedule

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Speaker 1: this interview because you were sick, and you wrote me

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Speaker 1: a hilarious email telling me that you were sick, and

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Speaker 1: I'm like, ah, that's so funny. I don't mind rescheduling.

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Speaker 1: That's totally cool because you're so funny. But tell me

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Speaker 1: about how do you think about emails.

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Speaker 2: Well, first, that's great to hear, and you were very

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Speaker 2: gracious about meaning to reschedule. Oh, so thank you for that.

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Speaker 2: If we think about the barrage of electronic information we

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Speaker 2: get every day, it is pretty profound and humor is

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Speaker 2: such a powerful way to create signal from the noise.

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Speaker 2: In that way, it's a gift to someone when they

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Speaker 2: read their fortieth email, you know, in the last twenty

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Speaker 2: minutes and everything has been all business and then you

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Speaker 2: have this one email that has a little bit of lightheartedness.

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Speaker 2: It's so incredibly powerful. Whether it's a pun in the

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Speaker 2: subject line, or whether it's a gift for whether it's

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Speaker 2: just an unexpected line, it's such a useful way to

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Speaker 2: create an email that someone actually wants to respond to,

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Speaker 2: rather than one that they will move past and wait

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Speaker 2: to respond to it later. And so a couple of

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Speaker 2: techniques that we use. First of all, the first thing

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Speaker 2: that we do with our students is we give them

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Speaker 2: an audit. So we have different kinds of audits because

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Speaker 2: we're a very fun class and we're in a business school.

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Speaker 2: But this specific kind of audit is an email audit.

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Speaker 2: So what we have them do is they have to

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Speaker 2: go into their sent folder right there and then in

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Speaker 2: class and they have to read the last ten emails

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Speaker 2: that they've sent. And after doing so, we then have

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Speaker 2: a competition. We call it a jargon off, and they

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Speaker 2: have to find the most sterile business speak, like any

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Speaker 2: phrase that could have been written by a robot. You know,

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Speaker 2: maybe it's the sign off, or maybe it's attached please find,

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Speaker 2: or maybe it's the sign off best or kind regards,

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Speaker 2: whatever it is that really could have been written by

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Speaker 2: a robot. And then they share it with the class.

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Speaker 2: You know, they either drop it in a chat box

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Speaker 2: or were in person and al through a dramatic reading

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Speaker 2: of it. And it's this illustration with this reminder that

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Speaker 2: the more technology mediated our communication becomes, the easier it

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Speaker 2: is to lose our sense of humor and our humanity

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Speaker 2: along the way, because we subconsciously adapt for our medium,

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Speaker 2: and when we're constantly communicating through technology, it's easy to

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Speaker 2: sound like a robot. So step one is just right

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Speaker 2: like a human, really simple but incredibly effective. The second

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Speaker 2: is serendipitous sign offs. So instead of writing best, write

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Speaker 2: something that's a callback to something from earlier or something

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Speaker 2: that is a little bit unexpected. So as an example,

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Speaker 2: I started a three pm call and the person that

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Speaker 2: I was talking with talked about how she had had

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Speaker 2: three cups of coffee and I said, yeah, I'm on

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Speaker 2: my second cup, and we sort of had a laugh

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Speaker 2: about it, and so I signed off my email from

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Speaker 2: that day yours heavily caffeinated. And then we were on

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Speaker 2: another call recently and Jennifer's dog got out while we

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Speaker 2: were doing an interview, and so she thinks that she

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Speaker 2: goes on mute, and she yells to her husband Andy,

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Speaker 2: who let the dog out, which then of course led

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Speaker 2: to a wonderful rendition of who let the dogs out?

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Speaker 2: And then she signed off that email still wondering who

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Speaker 2: let the dogs out? So these are just really lighthearted

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Speaker 2: ways to leave a little gift in your sign off.

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Speaker 2: So that would be number two. My third tip would

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Speaker 2: be make callbacks. So this is what you were mentioning earlier.

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Speaker 2: When I'm on a call, especially if it's with a

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Speaker 2: new client or a new customer or anyone, even a friend,

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Speaker 2: I will look for moments when we organically laugh together,

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Speaker 2: like I'm not trying to make jokes, but we're humans,

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Speaker 2: and humors of fundamental melody of human conversation. We're going

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Speaker 2: to probably have a laugh at some point, especially if

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Speaker 2: it's a professional context. I'll jot down that moment when

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Speaker 2: they laughed, and then I'll bring it back in the email.

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Speaker 2: So it could be something as simple as someone mentions

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Speaker 2: on the call I had. I was on the phone

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Speaker 2: with someone. We're trying to invite him to come speak

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Speaker 2: in our course at Stanford. He mentioned that he is superstitious,

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Speaker 2: and so I wrote in the email back to him,

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Speaker 2: wonderful chatting today. We're so hoping that you can come.

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00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:30,760
Speaker 2: We've penciled you in while crossing our fingers, stroking rabbit

403
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Speaker 2: foot keychains and throwing a thousand pennies into wishing wells

404
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:36,440
Speaker 2: that you can join. Right, So it's making a reference

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Speaker 2: to something that he said, but you know, including that

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Speaker 2: as a callback and an email. And then the last

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Speaker 2: one that I would tell people is it's incredible what

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Speaker 2: a well placed meme can do, and you don't want

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Speaker 2: to overuse them. But we share a story in the

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Speaker 2: book which is actually a secretly a story have a

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Speaker 2: personal experience, which is that I was working with a

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Speaker 2: client and I had done work for them, and then

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Speaker 2: I got totally ghosted where they weren't paying me for

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Speaker 2: the work I had done, and I sent a couple

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Speaker 2: follow up notes. The woman who I was working with

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Speaker 2: was actually a former colleague of mine, and so the

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00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:17,120
Speaker 2: invoice had now gone and paid for months, and so

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Speaker 2: I followed up, you know, Hey, so sorry, but any

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Speaker 2: updates on the invoice. No response. Two weeks later, Hey

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Speaker 2: just wanted to follow up. Is there anything else that

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Speaker 2: you need from this order to have this invoice go through?

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Speaker 2: Nothing in a month later, checking in on this again,

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Speaker 2: is there anything I can do to help push this forward?

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Speaker 2: No response, And so finally a month later I tried

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Speaker 2: a different strategy, which is I sent a cat meme,

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Speaker 2: and this cat meme was a cat looking longingly through

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Speaker 2: a glass outside that said hello from the other side.

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Speaker 2: I must have me owed a thousand times and it's

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Speaker 2: like from the Adell lyric. And she got back to

430
00:22:57,840 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 2: me the next day and I was paid with him

431
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:02,119
Speaker 2: the week. So I guess the last tip that I

432
00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 2: would give is think about showing, not telling, especially if

433
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 2: you aren't super comfortable making humor yourself. Just include something

434
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:13,040
Speaker 2: lighthearted that you think would make the other person smile.

435
00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:18,360
Speaker 1: Do you find now, particularly because you've written this book

436
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:21,720
Speaker 1: about humor. I mean, with most of your emails, do

437
00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: you feel like I have to be funny? Are you

438
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:25,440
Speaker 1: sending any straight emails?

439
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:28,600
Speaker 2: And Naomi, Oh, that's such a great question. Gosh, I

440
00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:30,680
Speaker 2: guess I have to do an email audit on myself.

441
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:35,400
Speaker 2: You know, I would say we've created a culture of lightheartedness,

442
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:37,880
Speaker 2: but there's a point where that can go too far.

443
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:41,679
Speaker 2: Too If you're over extending your energy on trying to

444
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 2: be funny, on trying to make things lighthearted, then of

445
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:47,399
Speaker 2: course that's going to be detrimental to your goal. And

446
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 2: so what I do try and do is be unapologetically

447
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:55,639
Speaker 2: and relentlessly human in my emails. So I try and

448
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:58,679
Speaker 2: write my emails as if I'm talking, and if I

449
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:01,439
Speaker 2: feel excited about something, I'm going to totally show that

450
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:03,720
Speaker 2: in my email. If I can think of something that

451
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:06,200
Speaker 2: I think would make the other person smile, then I'm

452
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 2: going to include that in my email. I was talking

453
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:11,479
Speaker 2: with a colleague of mind, this incredible woman who teaches

454
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:14,640
Speaker 2: at Harvard and has done a lot of this research.

455
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 2: Alison Woodbrooks, along with Brad Bitterley and Murray Schweitzer, has

456
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:22,439
Speaker 2: done incredible research in this area of humor and status,

457
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,680
Speaker 2: and in particular for Alison, around human conversations, how do

458
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 2: we create more effective conversations with people? And I was

459
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:32,320
Speaker 2: talking with Alison. We've worked together for the last seven

460
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 2: years now. She was one of the researchers at the

461
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 2: Second City Humor Retreat where we were hosted by Anne

462
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 2: Libra and Kelly Leonard to do a deep dive into

463
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 2: humor with the heads of the Second City and the

464
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 2: founder of the Onion and these behavioral scientists from all

465
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:49,320
Speaker 2: over the world. And I was talking to Alison this

466
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,240
Speaker 2: morning because I guest spoke in her class, and she

467
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:55,320
Speaker 2: was saying, I think I may over index in like

468
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:58,000
Speaker 2: none of my emails are serious. All of my emails

469
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 2: have some levity. And she reflected from and she said,

470
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 2: but you know what, if I'm going to over index

471
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 2: in one direction of the or the other, I would

472
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,800
Speaker 2: so much rather have more levity and more joy in

473
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 2: my life than have all of my professional communications be boring.

474
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:17,399
Speaker 2: And what I've noticed with Alison, the way that she

475
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:21,960
Speaker 2: communicates with her students is she creates an environment where

476
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,800
Speaker 2: everyone feels safe to show their own sense of humor

477
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 2: and We see this in organizations too, that when the

478
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 2: leader is willing to have more levity and humor and

479
00:25:31,440 --> 00:25:36,920
Speaker 2: show more of themselves, then everyone feels safer and more

480
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:39,120
Speaker 2: empowered to show more of themselves as well.

481
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:44,199
Speaker 1: How about in matings, where are the opportunities for bringing

482
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: more levity into matings? I'm curious as to how you

483
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: think about this in your own life for matings that

484
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: you're attending or facilitating.

485
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 2: Never is the answer.

486
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 1: No.

487
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting when we all moved to zoom,

488
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 2: or when we all move to working remotely, it fell

489
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 2: for a while, like we fell off this humor cliff,

490
00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 2: and now you're seeing this incredible rebirth of humor in

491
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 2: a new format. So for me, for example, I mentioned

492
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 2: that I have my students do the humor audit. Well,

493
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 2: the way that I've started doing that, and I did

494
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 2: that this morning with the students at Harvard is instead

495
00:26:22,800 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 2: of saying, okay, everyone go into your email, you know

496
00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:28,879
Speaker 2: you have to do this now, I play an alarm sound,

497
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,400
Speaker 2: so everyone thinks that there's like a fire alarm going

498
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,120
Speaker 2: off in my house. And I interrupt myself mid sentence

499
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 2: as I'm lecturing and I'm looking around, I'm like, oh

500
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 2: my gosh, Oh my gosh, you know what this means.

501
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,719
Speaker 2: It's time for the audit. You're all being audited. Everyone's

502
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 2: sort of looking around confused, and I go, oky, everyone

503
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 2: reach under your chairs, like taped under your chair is

504
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,080
Speaker 2: going to be an envelope, And of course everyone sort

505
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:53,159
Speaker 2: of looks around at each other. A few people actually

506
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 2: go and reach down there. And then I show a

507
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:58,400
Speaker 2: slide with an envelope open that says you're being audited.

508
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 2: And so it's so well, it's so lighthearted, but they're

509
00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 2: just these small ways in which you're signaling that we're

510
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 2: not taking ourselves to do seriously. So a couple other

511
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 2: examples that I have heard recently. So I work with

512
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 2: a woman at Salesforce, and she's a senior exec. She

513
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 2: was in a meeting and one of her and her

514
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 2: five year old walked into the meeting accidentally, and everyone

515
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:22,440
Speaker 2: sort of laughed about it, and the five year old left.

516
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 2: So what she did was she noticed that in these

517
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 2: meetings she's always repeating the same phrases, whether it's let's

518
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 2: talk about next steps or let's find time on the

519
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:38,120
Speaker 2: calendar right now, or whatever it is. And so she

520
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 2: had her five year old create signs, like create signs

521
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 2: on paddles that she could hold up during meetings, and

522
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 2: they're adorable. They're like written with krans and they say

523
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 2: things like what are the next steps? And I think

524
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:53,639
Speaker 2: you're on mute was my favorite one. I think you're

525
00:27:53,680 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 2: on mutant paddle that she holds up, and so it's

526
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 2: a way for her to say the things that she's

527
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 2: going to say anyways, but do it in sort of

528
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 2: a lighthearted way. So there are lots of examples. I

529
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 2: think the important thing is it needs to be authentic

530
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 2: to whoever the person is, and it also needs to

531
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 2: be appropriate to their status. And so in the book

532
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:20,920
Speaker 2: and in our teaching, we share that there are these

533
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,880
Speaker 2: four humor styles, and everyone can go to humor seriously

534
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 2: dot com and take a quiz to find out what

535
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 2: your style is. But in short, those styles are the

536
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 2: stand up, the sweetheart, the sniper, and the magnet. And

537
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 2: what we find is that different styles are going to

538
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 2: work in different contexts and in particular based on your status.

539
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 2: So I can do that, I can do that sort

540
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 2: of silly. There's an envelope taped dont your desk and

541
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 2: do all of that because in that context, I have authority.

542
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:56,760
Speaker 2: I am a high status person in the room because

543
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 2: I'm the teacher. Now, when i am lee workshops for

544
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:03,880
Speaker 2: groups of executives, by the way, that's magnet humor. That's

545
00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 2: like very typical magnet humor. When I'm leading workshops for

546
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 2: groups of executives, I'll lean more into sniper and stand

547
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 2: up style humor, which is more biting. I'm not afraid

548
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 2: to ruffle a few feathers to get a laugh a

549
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 2: little more targeted. And the reason for this is I'm

550
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 2: no longer quote, the most senior person in the room,

551
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 2: and so there's this ruling comedy that you never want

552
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,280
Speaker 2: to punch down, which means you never want to make

553
00:29:28,320 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 2: the target of your joke someone of lower status than you.

554
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 2: So what that means is when I am the highest

555
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 2: person on the totem pole, or I'm in a position

556
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 2: of authority, making fun of myself is a really safe

557
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 2: place to go. When I'm not the highest status person

558
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 2: in the room, I can punch up and that can

559
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 2: actually gain me status and influence.

560
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: That's so helpeful to think about. And on the topic

561
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: of presenting, because you would do so much presenting and

562
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: I imagine knot spaking is part of your work. How

563
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: do you think about the first few minutes the presentation?

564
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 2: Setting the tone is incredibly important because it cures people

565
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 2: that you are going to have some humor in levity.

566
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:13,000
Speaker 2: So if I am serious, if I'm really serious the

567
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 2: first two to three minutes, then oftentimes my humor won't

568
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 2: land later on because people aren't expecting it. But if

569
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 2: they code me as someone who's intellectually agile in that way,

570
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 2: because by the way people do code humor as being

571
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 2: associated with intelligence and agility, if I signal that early,

572
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 2: then my jokes are going to land better later. And

573
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:39,719
Speaker 2: so the thing I always do, if possible, is I

574
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 2: will make a callback reference to something that the earlier

575
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 2: presenter has said, or I will name something that's happening

576
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 2: in the moment. So at conferences, for example, I have

577
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 2: a placeholder in my first thirty seconds where all I'm

578
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 2: going to do is I'm going to make a reference

579
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:02,120
Speaker 2: to the last presenter who had a humorous line. If

580
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 2: I don't find that, if you know, they don't laugh

581
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 2: the entire time that the presenter is going, then instead

582
00:31:08,560 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 2: what I'm doing in the one minute before I go

583
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 2: on stage, or in the one minute before I start

584
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,959
Speaker 2: talking on zoom is I'm just noticing what's going on

585
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 2: for people. So I'm looking at people's zoom backgrounds, or

586
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 2: if I'm in person, I'm looking at the venue. I'm

587
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 2: sort of making note of something that's happening in the room.

588
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 2: And So I was on a call yesterday and I

589
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 2: was presenting, and the introduction was quite dry. There was

590
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 2: not a moment of humor that happened, and so I

591
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 2: started scrolling through all of the pictures of people on

592
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 2: zoom and I came on and I said, thank you

593
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 2: so much for having me. I just want to start

594
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 2: by saying that this is an incredibly impressive crowd. I'm

595
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 2: really grateful to be here. And in addition to your

596
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 2: professional accomplishments, I want to start by giving out a

597
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 2: couple of awards for your backgrounds, because these are some

598
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 2: of the best backgrounds I've seen. And so I give

599
00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 2: an award for best plant life, which is like a

600
00:31:57,280 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 2: woman who's sitting there with like literally in a jung

601
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 2: And then I give an award for I forget what

602
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:05,520
Speaker 2: the other ones where I think someone had pictures of

603
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 2: their kids. And I gave an award for that, and

604
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 2: then my third award was someone who was in like

605
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 2: a virtual background on the moon, and I thanked them

606
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 2: for joining another ingenuity and getting their Internet connections set

607
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 2: up on the moon. And so you know what that

608
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 2: does is it takes people right in the moment. I

609
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 2: couldn't have planned that out, just like I couldn't have

610
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 2: planned out the callback, and so again it signals intelligence,

611
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:31,760
Speaker 2: it signals agility, and it also signals Okay, this is

612
00:32:31,800 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 2: someone who I've got to stay on my toes for.

613
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: Hey, there, it's time for a little ad break. But

614
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: can I ask a favor of you? If you're enjoying

615
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: how I work, I'd be so grateful if you could

616
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: hit pause and pop into Apple Podcasts or wherever you're

617
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 1: listening to this from and leave a review. You might

618
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:53,959
Speaker 1: want to leave, a start writing or maybe a comment.

619
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 1: And aside from the warm fuzzy feelings that this will

620
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: give both you and me, it helps other people find

621
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 1: out about how I work. So thank you in advance. Okay,

622
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 1: Naomi is going to be back after this short break

623
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 1: and we're going to be learning about some other tricks

624
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: that you can use to be funny in presentations. Especially

625
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 1: if you're not that confident in your ability to be

626
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: spontaneously funny. What are some other tricks that people can

627
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 1: use maybe if they're not confident in their ability to

628
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:28,200
Speaker 1: be spontaneously funny, are there any other tricks that people

629
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: can use in those first few minutes?

630
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 2: Totally. So, one trick that we see people use as

631
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 2: bringing up a cope presenter that they naturally can banter with.

632
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 2: So this obviously isn't always possible, but in instances where

633
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 2: it is possible, it's a really safe way to showcase

634
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:47,040
Speaker 2: that you have a sense of humor, that you don't

635
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 2: take yourself too seriously, but you don't need to be

636
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 2: the one making jokes. So a couple examples of this.

637
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:55,280
Speaker 2: Dick Costello, the FORMERCYEU of Twitter. He used to have

638
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 2: people who were not the most senior in his organization

639
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 2: come co present with him in all hands meetings. So,

640
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 2: as one example, April Underwood, who was very senior in

641
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 2: product at Twitter. Dick and April had a very good relationship.

642
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 2: He was a mentor to her. They had grown a

643
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:17,839
Speaker 2: real peer relationship, and April had a real biting sense

644
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:20,759
Speaker 2: of humor. She would often take him down or she'd

645
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,840
Speaker 2: just bring out Dick's sense of humor, and so he

646
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 2: would have her co present and in doing so, their

647
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 2: banter naturally came out. Sergey and Larry at Google did

648
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 2: this too, where early in there in founding Google and

649
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 2: then throughout the company's growth, they would have these all

650
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:39,799
Speaker 2: hands meetings where they would both be on stage and

651
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 2: they would really showcase their natural banter. So that's one way.

652
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:48,720
Speaker 2: Another way is simply to share something that you find

653
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 2: genuinely funny or lighthearted and tie it into a content

654
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:57,800
Speaker 2: piece that you're already going to present. And this is

655
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:00,520
Speaker 2: actually a lot easier than you think it. So I'll

656
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:03,160
Speaker 2: give an example of one thing I use is I

657
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 2: use this clip from The Californians. So google the SNL

658
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 2: the Californians and you'll find this clip. There are many

659
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 2: good clips there, but my favorite one is one where

660
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:21,879
Speaker 2: Bill Hayder, Kristen Wigg and Fred Armison break character. They

661
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:25,359
Speaker 2: just they can't. They think it's so funny that they

662
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 2: break character and they're laughing in the middle of the

663
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:31,359
Speaker 2: sketch and it always gets people laughing. That the most

664
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 2: important thing. I look through the zoom screen and it

665
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 2: just gets people laughing and so I don't have to

666
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 2: do anything to be funny. I just play this clip,

667
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 2: and I will make a connection to whatever I'm teaching. So,

668
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 2: for example, if I'm sharing a study on how when

669
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 2: people laugh together, they are more likely to share thirty

670
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 2: percent more personal information in a subsequent conversation, so those

671
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 2: conversations are rated as thirty percent more intimate and authentic.

672
00:35:57,400 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 2: So I'll share that clip and then I'll say, now,

673
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:00,880
Speaker 2: I want you to imagine that you're walking into a

674
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 2: room with someone and having a conversation. So I might

675
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,440
Speaker 2: do that. Another way I might do it is just

676
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 2: show that clip and then say, great, I know that

677
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:11,880
Speaker 2: we're joining from all over the world today, so I

678
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 2: just wanted to kick off here with a California vibe

679
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:17,160
Speaker 2: since I typically do my teaching at Stanford. These are

680
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 2: totally different reasons that I've given for showing the clip.

681
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 2: The important thing is just to get people laughing. So

682
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,880
Speaker 2: whatever it is that you find funny, of course that

683
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:29,920
Speaker 2: is also work appropriate. Try and see if you can

684
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:32,840
Speaker 2: find a way to lead with that or to include

685
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 2: it in your presentation and then make a loose tie

686
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:38,200
Speaker 2: to the content, and people will allow you some leeway

687
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 2: because you've given them the gift of laughter.

688
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:44,320
Speaker 1: And how about that the end of a presentation? How

689
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: important is it to incorporate hema right at the end.

690
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 2: So there's a peak end theory in psychology which shows

691
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 2: that people, well, first of all, there's privacy effect, there's

692
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 2: recency effects, and then peak ND So all of these

693
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,040
Speaker 2: things say that different moments are really really important in

694
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 2: our conversations, in our interactions, and in our relationships, so priming.

695
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 2: So that's what the initial thing that you do is.

696
00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:10,440
Speaker 2: That's why it's important to start with some element of levity.

697
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 2: Or it can be powerful to start with some element

698
00:37:12,680 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 2: of levity, because then people are primed to look for

699
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:19,880
Speaker 2: and find other moments, other reasons to laugh. Now, peak

700
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,839
Speaker 2: end theory says that people tend to remember the most

701
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:28,200
Speaker 2: emotionally heightened moments and also the last moment. And this

702
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 2: is similar to recency effect with the last moment, that

703
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 2: people will remember the most recent interaction with someone. And

704
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:36,200
Speaker 2: so what this means is you want to leave people

705
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:40,560
Speaker 2: with some little bit of levity or humor. Now I

706
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:43,839
Speaker 2: don't stick to this really firmly. I think that it's

707
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 2: more important to end your presentation strong or end what

708
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 2: you're doing strong rather than necessarily to end with humor.

709
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:55,879
Speaker 2: And the reason for that is if you have used

710
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 2: humor along the way, people will remember it. I can

711
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 2: give it in ample of that in a minute, but

712
00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 2: the important thing is I will never end on Q

713
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 2: and A. And this is something that I learned from

714
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:08,640
Speaker 2: David Nihill, who wrote Do You Talk Funny and was

715
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:12,879
Speaker 2: graciously a guest in our class at Stanford. He wrote

716
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 2: a fantastic book where he became a stand up comedian

717
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 2: and deconstructed all of these techniques. I mean, it was

718
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 2: really incredibly inspiring work in a really good book. And

719
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 2: one of the things that David taught me is you

720
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 2: never end on Q and A, because, without fail, you

721
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 2: have this incredible presentation that you've been prepping, and you

722
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 2: know exactly what you're going to say, you know all

723
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:35,320
Speaker 2: your notes to hit, and then you end on Q

724
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 2: and A and it's sort of like, oh, well, you know,

725
00:38:38,719 --> 00:38:40,879
Speaker 2: it's not something that you necessarily wanted to talk about,

726
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:42,719
Speaker 2: maybe you don't have a great answer to it. You're

727
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:45,319
Speaker 2: sort of bumbling your way through it, and that's how

728
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,360
Speaker 2: you end. And so the most effective technique that I

729
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:51,200
Speaker 2: learned from him was you want to do Q and

730
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 2: A and then you want to leave a three minute

731
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 2: content piece at the very end. So say, you know,

732
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 2: I'm going to take some Q and A now, and

733
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 2: then I'd love to leave you with a few closing remarks.

734
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 2: So that's what I would say about ending strong. I

735
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 2: mean that said, if you can leave with something that's lighthearted,

736
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 2: that's good too.

737
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: And how about during the presentation, because I remember, really

738
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: early on when I started keynote speaking, I had this

739
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 1: coach and he would always say, Okay, that's good, but

740
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 1: be funnier, be funnier, be funnier, like think about laughs

741
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:27,319
Speaker 1: per minute and so yea, how whenever yeah, yeah. Like

742
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:30,399
Speaker 1: so now whenever I'm creating a new keynote presentation, I'm

743
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 1: literally thinking laughs per minute. And then I will look

744
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:38,720
Speaker 1: over recordings of presentations and I will be thinking, oh gosh,

745
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:40,760
Speaker 1: that was like a two minute period where I didn't

746
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: say anything funny. They probably fell asleep. I need to

747
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 1: inject more humor. There is this overkill how are you

748
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 1: thinking about it for your presentations?

749
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:51,719
Speaker 2: Like can you be too funny? I love that, So

750
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 2: it's totally not overkill. And I do the exact same thing.

751
00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: Oh, good.

752
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 2: Yeah. So remember I mentioned earlier the Jennifer and I

753
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:04,280
Speaker 2: had this process, our pink fontification process. So I still

754
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:07,439
Speaker 2: do that with my own talks. I will go through

755
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:12,320
Speaker 2: my talk and then at least every like every paragraph

756
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:14,720
Speaker 2: or every other paragraph, there has to be a moment

757
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 2: that's lighthearted or has some humor in it, or something

758
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 2: that's going to make people perk up or ideally laugh.

759
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:25,839
Speaker 2: And so this is something that I really think about

760
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 2: a lot. And of course, sometimes we're really stressed and

761
00:40:29,040 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 2: we don't have time for this. And I've also loved

762
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:34,880
Speaker 2: working with some comedians, and I have a team of

763
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:37,840
Speaker 2: comedy writers that I've gotten to know over the last

764
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 2: number of years, and we'll have those comedy writers come

765
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 2: in and coach our students. And sometimes if I'm giving

766
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 2: a talk and I'm just like this isn't where it

767
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:49,720
Speaker 2: needs to be, I'll gather three of my favorite comedy

768
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 2: writers and I'll say, hey, guys, can you jump in

769
00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 2: this document for thirty minutes? Can you just pitch either

770
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 2: humor or different opportunities for humor or We'll get on

771
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,200
Speaker 2: the phone together and we'll throw it together and will

772
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 2: do that. And so there's this thought in business, especially

773
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 2: that we have to have all the right answers, that

774
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 2: we have to work in a vacuum and then have

775
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:12,800
Speaker 2: just the right thing to say, and that the reality

776
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,239
Speaker 2: is that's just not how the comedy world works. Anything

777
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 2: you see on TV, whether it's sketch comedy or a

778
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:25,040
Speaker 2: sitcom or a Netflix special, every joke that you see

779
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 2: on TV has been worked over by ten writers in

780
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:32,919
Speaker 2: a room together who are laughing. And so if you're

781
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 2: feeling stuck yourself, then grab it doesn't have to be

782
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,959
Speaker 2: comedy writers. It can be grab a couple friends and say, hey,

783
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 2: can you help me, you know, go through this and

784
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 2: just flag any opportunities for humor that you see or

785
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 2: any ways to make this a little bit more lighthearted.

786
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:52,319
Speaker 1: That reminds me of something Adam Grant talks about where

787
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 1: he talks about having a challenge network, So a group

788
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:57,120
Speaker 1: of people who you can send you work at too

789
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: for critique and to make it better, into challenge into

790
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:03,239
Speaker 1: thinking and like, I think about what you've just said,

791
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:06,200
Speaker 1: that's kind of like having a human network, like people

792
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 1: you can draw on to make your stuff funnier. I

793
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: really like that idea.

794
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of them as my writer's room. So

795
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:17,960
Speaker 2: comedy is a team sport. And when I was training

796
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 2: and performing in LA, I was so used to being

797
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 2: in a writer's room with people, or being on stage

798
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 2: with seven other people, and so the idea of creating

799
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 2: comedy in a vacuum by myself alone was like horrifying.

800
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:37,080
Speaker 2: And so I would sometimes create a writer's room where

801
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:39,400
Speaker 2: it's really just my friends I know from comedy, and

802
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:41,879
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, can we do a quick writer's room

803
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 2: this weekend and can I run some stuff by you?

804
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, totally, and so yeah, absolutely, having your

805
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:50,400
Speaker 2: writer's room or having your what did you call.

806
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: It, like a human network?

807
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that having your humor network is incredibly powerful.

808
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 2: And by the way, Sarah Cooper, So, Sarah Cooper is

809
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 2: in a fantastic comedian. Of course, she's become more famous

810
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 2: in the last couple of years, but Sarah Cooper has

811
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 2: been wildly funny for many, many years. Her books are amazing,

812
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 2: and she was one of the first guests in our class,

813
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,520
Speaker 2: and I remember her telling our students about how she

814
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,839
Speaker 2: had a set of trusted testers is what she called them,

815
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 2: and she had a Facebook group that was all her friends, family,

816
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:27,760
Speaker 2: and colleagues who she trusted, who would give her really

817
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 2: genuine feedback on her work. And so when she was

818
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:34,280
Speaker 2: writing her books, first had to look smart in meetings

819
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 2: and then how to be successful without hurting men's feelings

820
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,760
Speaker 2: were her two books. She would post in her private

821
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 2: Facebook group, Hey, this is what I'm thinking of writing.

822
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:43,759
Speaker 2: What do you think about it? And she would get

823
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 2: really candid feedback about what people thought and whether it

824
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 2: was going too far, whether it was crossing a line,

825
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 2: whether it needed to go further. And so this concept

826
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 2: of not creating comedy in a vacuum, it's just so

827
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:01,320
Speaker 2: core to everyone who has done comedy in their background,

828
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,320
Speaker 2: and something that we don't necessarily think of in business.

829
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: What do you do when a joke fails? Because I

830
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:12,320
Speaker 1: guess that's probably one reason why people maybe stay away

831
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 1: from humor, because of fear of failure. So what do

832
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: you do?

833
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a great question. So I delineate between

834
00:44:21,280 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 2: two important types of failure. So type one of failure

835
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:31,160
Speaker 2: is you try to make someone laugh and it doesn't

836
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:34,399
Speaker 2: go well. But it's benign, right, it's totally appropriate. It's

837
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 2: just you misjudged, You didn't craft your humor. In the

838
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 2: right way and you just you know, you don't get

839
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 2: it right. In that case, a powerful technique can actually

840
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:45,680
Speaker 2: be to double down and acknowledge, just name what happened.

841
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 2: So you try and make a joke and you say

842
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 2: either well you know that one didn't land here, or

843
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 2: thank you all be here all day, or something else,

844
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 2: to just acknowledge the fact that you just tried to

845
00:44:54,719 --> 00:44:58,359
Speaker 2: make a joke and there was radio silence. Oftentimes just

846
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 2: doing that will get a laugh. You know, you diffuse tension.

847
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 2: You allow people to laugh at the fact that that

848
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 2: didn't go well, and that's a great way to sort

849
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 2: of move past it. The type two of failure is

850
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 2: you cross a line, you offend someone, or you make

851
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 2: someone feel bad. And in this case we give a

852
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:19,399
Speaker 2: framework in our book of recognize, diagnose, and make it right.

853
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:25,000
Speaker 2: So step one just recognizing the fact that you have failed,

854
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 2: which weirdly gets hard when you rise in status, because

855
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 2: we know that the more status and power you gain,

856
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 2: the harder it is to stay calibrated because people will laugh,

857
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,720
Speaker 2: not necessarily because you're funny, but because you are the boss.

858
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 2: So one of my favorite illustrations of this, by the way,

859
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 2: was a group of social psychologists ran this study where

860
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:51,759
Speaker 2: they had a research assistant. It was actually an interview simulation,

861
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:54,480
Speaker 2: but the people walking in the room didn't know that

862
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:56,839
Speaker 2: this person in the simulation was a research assistant. They

863
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 2: thought that it was just another person. And so in

864
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 2: one situation, they made the participants believe that this person

865
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,759
Speaker 2: was high status, that they were an important person, a

866
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 2: powerful person. And in the other group, they made the

867
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:14,839
Speaker 2: participants believe that this person was a subordinate, that they

868
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 2: were lower status than the participants. And so in this study,

869
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:22,840
Speaker 2: all the research assistants delivered the same joke, and that

870
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 2: joke was two muffins are baking in an oven. One

871
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:28,560
Speaker 2: of them yells, wow, it's hot in here, and the

872
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 2: other muffin replies, holy cow, a talking muffin. Now this

873
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:37,719
Speaker 2: is objectively a grade A dad joke. I mean, this

874
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 2: is a bad joke. And what they found was that

875
00:46:41,600 --> 00:46:44,720
Speaker 2: participants in the condition where they thought the joke teller

876
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 2: was low status crickets absolutely no laughter. People in the

877
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 2: high status condition, people who thought that the joke teller

878
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 2: was high status like roaring laughter. Right, And anyways, this

879
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 2: research is really interesting. It doesn't even matter if the

880
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 2: person's in the room. If they watch a video of

881
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 2: someone high status, they're more likely to laugh. And so

882
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:06,879
Speaker 2: what this means is that we think like, oh, yeah,

883
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 2: I have to recognize when I fail, but it actually

884
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:12,279
Speaker 2: can be harder than we think. And so especially if

885
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:15,000
Speaker 2: we fail in ways where we think we could have

886
00:47:15,000 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 2: crossed a line where there's an appropriateness issue, you have

887
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 2: to get really good at recognizing that. And by the way,

888
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 2: that was Seth Meyers's number one piece of advice for

889
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 2: our students. So Seth Meyer's former head writer of Saturday

890
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 2: Night Live and he has his own show, Late Night

891
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:31,839
Speaker 2: with Seth Myers. He joined as a guest in our

892
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 2: class and we were wrapping up and we said, great, Seth,

893
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 2: what's the one thing you want to leave our students

894
00:47:35,960 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 2: with And he paused, and he said, get really good

895
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 2: at recognizing your own fake laughter, the laughter that you

896
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 2: make that isn't genuine. Because once you get good at that,

897
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 2: then you'll start noticing other people's fake laughter, and that

898
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:53,359
Speaker 2: gets really important as you get hire in status. So

899
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 2: we always tell our students if you do fail, recognize it,

900
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 2: apologize and make it right immediately, genuine apology, and really

901
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 2: try and understand why your humor failed, So ask the

902
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 2: person what did I miss? What went wrong? When our

903
00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:15,799
Speaker 2: humor fails, it's really easy to lean on, oh, well,

904
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 2: you know, they probably didn't get the joke or it's

905
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:22,799
Speaker 2: their problem, rather than saying, actually, I may have done

906
00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 2: something wrong here. And then third is so recognized, diagnose,

907
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:28,760
Speaker 2: make it right. And then we always tell our students

908
00:48:29,560 --> 00:48:33,839
Speaker 2: that there are these common reasons why humor fails that

909
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,040
Speaker 2: you want to try and avoid. So, for example, never

910
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:40,440
Speaker 2: punch down. We've talked about that before. Number two minding

911
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:42,960
Speaker 2: your medium. So a really quick tip here is sarcasm

912
00:48:43,160 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 2: is the most wrongly interpreted form of humor in writing,

913
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 2: so people think that they're much better than they actually

914
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 2: are at conveying sarcasm. Another one context switching. So it

915
00:48:56,800 --> 00:49:00,520
Speaker 2: goes without saying that humor's context dependent, that something that

916
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:03,240
Speaker 2: lands in the living room won't necessarily land in the boardroom.

917
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:06,120
Speaker 2: And yet it can be really tempting if we're sitting

918
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 2: around our colleagues and we think of something funny to

919
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:09,840
Speaker 2: just sort of let it come out. So we have

920
00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 2: to be really aware of context switching. And then the

921
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:14,839
Speaker 2: other thing that we dive into more fully is those

922
00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 2: personal humor pitfalls based on your humor style. So each

923
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:20,840
Speaker 2: of those styles you know, for example, the magnet and

924
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 2: the sweetheart, they're more likely to over index on self

925
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 2: deprecation and so they can actually take away their power

926
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 2: when they do that. On the other side, you have

927
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 2: stand ups and snipers who can alienate or offend with

928
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 2: their humor. So really getting to know what's your humor

929
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:39,719
Speaker 2: style and therefore what are your personal pitfalls can help

930
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 2: you avoid those humor fails.

931
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:43,359
Speaker 1: And I'll put a link to that in the show

932
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: note so that people cannose the personal humus style. Now,

933
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:51,160
Speaker 1: I mean my final question if people want to consume

934
00:49:51,200 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 1: more of what you're doing and get the hands on

935
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:58,239
Speaker 1: a copy of Humors Seriously, which seriously people need to do.

936
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 1: It's just brilliant how and people do all that.

937
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 2: The book is available anywhere books are sold, but come

938
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 2: on to Humor Seriously dot com and you can find

939
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:10,840
Speaker 2: links to our book. And then we also have a

940
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 2: twenty one day humor boot camp that is SMS space,

941
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:17,440
Speaker 2: so you'd get text messages to your phone more to

942
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:20,920
Speaker 2: WhatsApp whenever your preferred method is. That's a twenty one

943
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:25,680
Speaker 2: day program where every day you get a little audio message.

944
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 2: Some activities you interact with the program in a way,

945
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:32,800
Speaker 2: and the goal is really to have us make behavior

946
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 2: change right that they are these small changes that we

947
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:37,520
Speaker 2: can make in our day to day that will have

948
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:41,040
Speaker 2: monumental impact on the thing that's most important, which is

949
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:43,480
Speaker 2: are we navigating our lives on the precipice of a smile?

950
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: Oh Aso Naimi. I'm devastated that we've run out of

951
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: time because I've just loved chatting to you. This is

952
00:50:50,239 --> 00:50:52,879
Speaker 1: like a highlight of my week, if not month. Thank

953
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: you so much for all the demising stuff that you've imparted,

954
00:50:56,680 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: and I wish I didn't have to let you get

955
00:50:58,760 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: on with your day, but I think.

956
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 2: I well, thank you so much for having me. And

957
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:05,319
Speaker 2: I have to give you props that your email to

958
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 2: us to ask us to join you on the podcast.

959
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 2: In it you signed off with and keeping everything cross

960
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:15,600
Speaker 2: that you'll say yes. And I remember reading that and

961
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 2: reading what you had said about the book and thinking, Okay,

962
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:22,239
Speaker 2: Amantha gats this and I really can't wait for this conversation.

963
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:23,640
Speaker 2: So I've been looking forward to this one for a

964
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 2: long time. And thank you so much for having me

965
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 2: and for the work that you do.

966
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:32,239
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you have not

967
00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: hit subscribe to How I Work, you might want to

968
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:37,880
Speaker 1: go and quickly do that because you will be alerted

969
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:39,880
Speaker 1: when new episodes drop, such as the one that I

970
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:43,880
Speaker 1: Have Next week, which is with comedian and ABC Breakfast

971
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: radio presenter Sammy Jay will be continuing on the human

972
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: theme and learning about how can you be funny on

973
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 1: cue when your job is to literally be funny every

974
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: single day. How I Work is produced by Inventingum with

975
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 1: production support from dead Set Studios. The producer for this

976
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 1: episode was the marvelous Jenna Koda, and thank you to

977
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 1: Martin Nimber who did the audio mix and makes everything

978
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,279
Speaker 1: sound better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.