Speaker 1: Hello there. Today's show is a best of episode while
Speaker 1: I take a couple of weeks off. It's my chat
Speaker 1: with Naomi Bagdonis from earlier this year, and I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy it. It's been one of my favorite interviews
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty one so far. When most people think
Speaker 1: of business, they think of suits, meetings, agendas, and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff that's very, very serious. But does
Speaker 1: it have to be this way? Naomi bag Donus thinks
Speaker 1: that there's a room for humor even when you're trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish very serious things. By bringing levity into your
Speaker 1: day to day exchanges, you can more easily build bonds
Speaker 1: with your colleagues, diffuse tension, and help them get to
Speaker 1: know you better, and vice versa. Naomi's found that utilizing
Speaker 1: humor can help boost innovation, foster creativity, and boost resilience
Speaker 1: through hard times. And she should know because they teaches
Speaker 1: humor as part of a purpose in the Leadership course
Speaker 1: at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Naomi learned her tricks
Speaker 1: of the trade at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater and
Speaker 1: from performing improv at comedy venues throughout the United States
Speaker 1: and now she coaches top executives in the act of comedy.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this
Speaker 1: is how I work. A show about how to help
Speaker 1: you do your best work. Humor seriously, which is the
Speaker 1: book that Naomi co wrote. Is definitely, hands down the
Speaker 1: funniest business book that I have ever read. And that
Speaker 1: is pretty much how my chat with Naomi started.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I mean, the butter is low. People
Speaker 2: don't start out to ate funny business book, but I
Speaker 2: will take it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please take that as a big compliment. I want
Speaker 1: to know what was your process for making it so funny?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I don't think anyone has asked us that question.
Speaker 2: I love that question. You know. From the beginning, my
Speaker 2: co author Jennifer Acker and I knew that writing the
Speaker 2: book was going to be really hard, even though we
Speaker 2: really believe in this content. We believe in the transformative
Speaker 2: effective humor on our behavior in psychology. We believe it's
Speaker 2: a completely underleveraged asset at work, that our workplaces are
Speaker 2: particularly humorless, and we believe it's a learnable skill so
Speaker 2: we know that these small shifts in behavior and mindset
Speaker 2: are really all it takes to reap the benefits. And
Speaker 2: yet Jennifer had written a book before, and she had
Speaker 2: told me it's really really hard. It's harder than you think.
Speaker 2: And so from the beginning we tried to set up
Speaker 2: these hacks that would remind ourselves not to take the
Speaker 2: work or ourselves too seriously along the way. So, as
Speaker 2: one example, right now, the first words of a book
Speaker 2: is really intimidating. And so instead of creating a document
Speaker 2: with a manuscript title and all of this stuff, we
Speaker 2: just created a document, a Google doc actually called words
Speaker 2: on a page. And the goal was just to lower
Speaker 2: the bar. It's like, we're not writing a book. We're
Speaker 2: just putting some words on a page. That's all we're
Speaker 2: here to do. And so, and another example is when
Speaker 2: it was time to write a proposal again, something that
Speaker 2: could seem really intimidating, we started a Google doc and
Speaker 2: we titled it a really shitty proposal. And so every
Speaker 2: time we opened this doc, it would say a really
Speaker 2: shitty proposal, and it'd be like, you know, I'd text
Speaker 2: her at six am and be like, hey, I'm in
Speaker 2: the shitty proposal right now, I'll see you there later today,
Speaker 2: and it's so funny that stuck. So we ended up
Speaker 2: kind of mistakenly turning it in at one point to
Speaker 2: a publisher that way, and they loved it so much
Speaker 2: that we ended up pitching it to all the publishers
Speaker 2: as a really shitty proposal, human sleusly a reality proposal.
Speaker 2: And so we knew at the beginning that there were
Speaker 2: parts of this that were going to be really hard
Speaker 2: and bring me a slog, And so it was our
Speaker 2: way of creating these hacks and reminders to ourselves to
Speaker 2: have a sense of levity and really to practice what
Speaker 2: we preach as we're doing it.
Speaker 1: Something I was wondering when I was reading it, And
Speaker 1: I feel like I experienced this in my own writing,
Speaker 1: Like I get the importance of humors, so when I
Speaker 1: read the book, definitely preaching to the converted, but there
Speaker 1: were so many practical strategies that I felt like I
Speaker 1: could use to make myself more funny and the things
Speaker 1: that I was producing more funny. But I was wondering
Speaker 1: with the book, was it almost like you do a
Speaker 1: straight draft that there's no pressure to be funny, and
Speaker 1: then you go back over and then you make it funny.
Speaker 1: Because I feel like that's a process I'll sometimes use
Speaker 1: with my work, particularly if I'm staring at a blank page,
Speaker 1: I'll just go just get some crap on a page
Speaker 1: and then fix it up and then you can make
Speaker 1: it funny if you want later on, or are you
Speaker 1: just naturally funny when you're right?
Speaker 2: That's so that's such an interesting question both. So so
Speaker 2: one of the things that was really important Jennifer and
Speaker 2: I would work in silo and then we'd share our
Speaker 2: work with each other. And so one thing that I
Speaker 2: found really helpful is rather than thinking about trying to
Speaker 2: be funny, I just thought about what's going to make
Speaker 2: Jennifer laugh. And so what I would do is I
Speaker 2: would write a draft of something, and I would pass
Speaker 2: it to Jennifer, and then we created this process that
Speaker 2: we called pink fontification, which is the lamest title for everything,
Speaker 2: but we just use it within ourselves, and of course
Speaker 2: now the world knows. And Jennifer, so what she would
Speaker 2: do is she would read over my work and then
Speaker 2: she would turn to pink anything that made her smile
Speaker 2: or laugh, and so it was sort of this instant
Speaker 2: gratification and also real time feedback of what's working what's
Speaker 2: not working. And we find oftentimes with our students when
Speaker 2: they're having trouble quote being funny or thinking of, you know,
Speaker 2: some type of humor, it's like, okay, forget that, don't
Speaker 2: try to be funny. Just try to write something that
Speaker 2: would make your best friend smile or something that would
Speaker 2: make your partner laugh a little bit. And so making
Speaker 2: it personal helped a lot. And then there were certainly
Speaker 2: times where we just had to get a framework out,
Speaker 2: Like I remember we were working on this one framework
Speaker 2: about the misperceptions of failure in humor, where we think
Speaker 2: that failure looks like one thing, and in fact we
Speaker 2: get failure wrong. And we have of course a two
Speaker 2: by two because we teach it at business school. And
Speaker 2: I remember as soon as we locked in on that,
Speaker 2: it was like, oh my gosh, we got to get
Speaker 2: this content down. And so we just start pouring content
Speaker 2: out around that, and then later on we'll go through
Speaker 2: and we'll look for humor. The other thing that we
Speaker 2: did was and this is I've spent a good amount
Speaker 2: of time training at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, and doing not just improv comedy but sketch
Speaker 2: comedy there. And one thing that I learned from that
Speaker 2: experience of being in a writer's room is you don't
Speaker 2: always have to have the right joke. You just have
Speaker 2: to have the intuition that there's an opportunity for humor here.
Speaker 2: And so I might read a paragraph that I had written,
Speaker 2: or that Jennifer had written, and I might find a
Speaker 2: moment in that where where I think it's a little
Speaker 2: bit humorous, but I don't quite know what to say,
Speaker 2: And then I'll just flag it and say pitch alts,
Speaker 2: which is my code for Jennifer, of like pitch ideas
Speaker 2: for what might be funny here. So I'll give one example.
Speaker 2: In Jennifer's intro, she had written something like, I'm a
Speaker 2: behavioral scientist focused on how meaning and purpose shape the
Speaker 2: choices that individuals make. I didn't view humor as important
Speaker 2: in my career. Sure I liked laughter, but I never
Speaker 2: viewed humor as an important skill to develop. And so
Speaker 2: when I was reading through that, I highlighted the line
Speaker 2: sure I like laughter, because I was like, this is
Speaker 2: kind of a funny thing to say, Like I like
Speaker 2: to laugh is kind of there's something funny there, and
Speaker 2: then when she went back over it, she wrote, it's
Speaker 2: sure I like to laugh, and then she added a
Speaker 2: parenthesis which is impossible to say without sounding like a sociopath.
Speaker 2: But I never viewed humor as in important skill develop
Speaker 2: and so it was this iterative process of I don't
Speaker 2: need to have the right answer, I can just flag
Speaker 2: that something might be an opportunity for humor, and then
Speaker 2: we can go back and forth and build on each
Speaker 2: other's ideas like that.
Speaker 1: So that's probably a good segue to get into how
Speaker 1: do you write a joke? And I love how practical
Speaker 1: human seriously is in this regard, and are you able
Speaker 1: to take listeners through how you write a joke, and
Speaker 1: like how you personally applying the strategies in the book.
Speaker 2: So there are some really basic principles of comedy that
Speaker 2: I have found really accessible. And I should back up
Speaker 2: for a second and say that we're sort of going
Speaker 2: at this backwards, because the thing that we say to
Speaker 2: our students first and foremost is this is not about
Speaker 2: being funny. It's not about telling jokes, it's not about
Speaker 2: writing jokes. It's about fundamentally shifting our mindset so that
Speaker 2: we're navigating our lives on the precipice of a smile.
Speaker 2: And we use this analogy in the book of the
Speaker 2: difference between levity, humor, and comedy is similar to the
Speaker 2: relationship between movement, exercise, and sports. So if you think
Speaker 2: of those things like a pyramid, you've got on the
Speaker 2: base floor levity and movement. These are just the way
Speaker 2: that we navigate our world. So whether it's our mindset
Speaker 2: or whether it's our physicality, we know that small shifts
Speaker 2: in our you know, whether we're our shoulders are back
Speaker 2: or whether our shoulders are hunched, are going to change
Speaker 2: how people interact with us and how we feel. And similarly,
Speaker 2: if we navigate our lives on the precipice of a
Speaker 2: smile versus the precipice of a frown, it's going to
Speaker 2: change everything. So that first level of levity is really
Speaker 2: what we're going for now. The reason that we spend
Speaker 2: an entire chapter and more focused on comedy, focused on
Speaker 2: the craft and the art of comedy, is that comedy
Speaker 2: is like a sport. There are rules that you follow,
Speaker 2: there are moves that you make to get the outcomes
Speaker 2: you want, in this case laughter, and so our goal
Speaker 2: there is to teach a few of these moves so
Speaker 2: that you can just feel more comfortable getting off the couch.
Speaker 2: Like right, we're not playing sports. We just want to
Speaker 2: know what those moves are so that it comes more
Speaker 2: naturally to us, so that we can craft our humor
Speaker 2: in a way that other people will find funny. So
Speaker 2: that's a long digression to say, we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about comedy for a few minutes. But if you are
Speaker 2: not a person who's inclined to comedy, Amantha, I know
Speaker 2: that you are, which is awesome. But for those who
Speaker 2: are listening who are not, there's so much more here
Speaker 2: that's actually important outside of of that just that comedy element. Okay,
Speaker 2: So that being said, let's see a comedy one oh one.
Speaker 2: So the two principles I love to share first are
Speaker 2: number one, at the heart of comedy is truth and
Speaker 2: number two, misdirection is key to getting laughs. So think
Speaker 2: about truth. You often laugh because you think, oh, I
Speaker 2: do that or I've seen people do that. Right, there's
Speaker 2: a recognition that comes that often makes us laugh. And
Speaker 2: then misdirection occur is when we think someone will zig
Speaker 2: and instead they ostrich right exactly, Okay, so we think
Speaker 2: they'll go one way, and they go the other way.
Speaker 2: And so one really simple example I give my students
Speaker 2: is imagine that you are at a dinner party. Remember
Speaker 2: dinner parties, by the way, so such quaint times. So
Speaker 2: you're at this dinner party and you're halfway through the
Speaker 2: second course and one of your friends walks in late
Speaker 2: and she says, sorry, i'm late, I didn't want to come. Now,
Speaker 2: this is potentially you know. She says it with a smile.
Speaker 2: We were like, okay, that's that's pretty funny. Now the
Speaker 2: truth here, Sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come.
Speaker 2: The truth is obvious. We've all felt this way where
Speaker 2: we don't really want to get off the couch. The
Speaker 2: misdirection is in Actually, Amantha, where do you think the
Speaker 2: misdirection is in that sorry I'm late, I didn't want
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess it's in the I didn't want to come,
Speaker 1: Because nobody expects you to say the truth in that scenario.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, So we expect a thinly veiled excuse. Sorry
Speaker 2: i'm late. Traffic was horrible, Sorry i'm late. The link
Speaker 2: didn't work. Sorry I'm late. It's twenty twenty one. We're
Speaker 2: a full year into a pandemic. Does lateness even matter anymore?
Speaker 2: So what this means is two things. Number One, comedy
Speaker 2: isn't about making things up. It's really about being observant,
Speaker 2: about finding truth in our lives. And this is the
Speaker 2: most important misperception we find with our students and executives
Speaker 2: is they'll come to us. You know, an executive will
Speaker 2: come to me and say, hey, I'm giving a talk.
Speaker 2: I want to be funny. What joke should I tell?
Speaker 2: And I'll say fantastic. I'll push the papers to the side,
Speaker 2: and I'll say, tell me about yourself. What is true
Speaker 2: for you? What do you like more than other people,
Speaker 2: What do you dislike more than other people? What areas
Speaker 2: of contrast or incongruity exist in your life? And we'll
Speaker 2: do this sort of genuine truth finding. We're reminding their
Speaker 2: lives for authentic material that they can then turn into humor.
Speaker 2: And then the second thing that this tells us is
Speaker 2: that structure matters. A set of an idea often isn't enough.
Speaker 2: It needs to be encased in a way that leads
Speaker 2: us in a different direction. So that's why in the
Speaker 2: book we go through these techniques from comedians first mining
Speaker 2: your life for observations, and then second applying a couple
Speaker 2: really easy frameworks. So I'll give all fly through that
Speaker 2: sort of process that I would go through. So first,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make mundane observations about my life. Right,
Speaker 2: It's not about inventing something from thin air. It's just
Speaker 2: about noticing what's true. So I might say, I might
Speaker 2: tell you that my dog is incredibly excited at dinner
Speaker 2: time even though he's eating the same food he always eats,
Speaker 2: Or how my kids never listen to me, or how
Speaker 2: I go for a walk every day just to change
Speaker 2: up the day a little bit. So I have these observations.
Speaker 2: They're not funny, but they're just true. And then you
Speaker 2: can apply one or more of the techniques that we
Speaker 2: go over in the book. And the three most common
Speaker 2: ones are exaggeration, contrast and rule of three. So I'll
Speaker 2: use exaggeration contrast for sample. So Larry David said, I
Speaker 2: had a wonderful childhood, which is tough because it's hard
Speaker 2: to adjust to a miserable adulthood. Right, So all he's
Speaker 2: doing here is he's creating contrast between how he felt
Speaker 2: about his childhood and how he feels about his adulthood,
Speaker 2: and then also using exaggeration because he probably doesn't have
Speaker 2: a totally miserable adulthood, but you know he's trying to
Speaker 2: create that. And then the other technique that people find
Speaker 2: really easy is rule of three. So this is where
Speaker 2: you make a really simple list where the first two
Speaker 2: elements lead people in one direction and then the third
Speaker 2: reveals something unexpected. So I might say I miss so
Speaker 2: many things about in person office life. You know, I
Speaker 2: miss the support of eye contact, I miss spontaneous lunches
Speaker 2: with colleagues, and I miss wearing pants. Right, so you're
Speaker 2: sort of going ab and apple. So these are again
Speaker 2: these they seem like really simple hacks, but once you
Speaker 2: start noticing the frameworks, you'll start seeing them everywhere in comedy,
Speaker 2: and then they'll start coming more nat really do as
Speaker 2: you're trying to turn your humor into something that feels funny.
Speaker 1: And what about collbecks, Because I feel like people knowing
Speaker 1: about callbecks might think that's an opportunity for me to
Speaker 1: be funny, even if I, you know, don't feel confident
Speaker 1: constructing a whole joke. So can you talk about callbacks?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a great one. So the callback is
Speaker 2: the safest joke to make, and this is where you
Speaker 2: just make a reference to a moment that already got
Speaker 2: a laugh. So, as one example, I was in a
Speaker 2: zoom call the other day and it was a group
Speaker 2: of CFOs and retired CFOs and they were all going
Speaker 2: around the table introducing themselves. And if you came clear
Speaker 2: that it was sort of a ridiculous thing to continue
Speaker 2: introducing themselves as CFOs because everyone was a CFO. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, one person says I'm a CFO. The other
Speaker 2: person says, I'm retired CFO. The next person says I'm
Speaker 2: a CFO. And then one woman introduces herself and says
Speaker 2: I'm a recovering CFO, indicating that she's like recovering from
Speaker 2: it rather than retired from it. You know, the whole
Speaker 2: call laughs, everyone has this shared experience. A couple people later,
Speaker 2: another woman says I'm also a recovering CFO. Again, everyone laughs,
Speaker 2: and it's sort of this callback that makes the first
Speaker 2: person feel good. A little bit later, a third person says,
Speaker 2: I'm an aspiring recovering CFO. Right, So this is now
Speaker 2: taking that callback and it's building upon it and again
Speaker 2: everyone laughs, So it's really low risk because it's just
Speaker 2: making reference to something that already got to laugh. It
Speaker 2: makes the first joke teller feel valued and seen. So
Speaker 2: it's incredible relationship builder in that way, and in a
Speaker 2: group of people, it can be a powerful tactic to
Speaker 2: create an in group, and create an in group in
Speaker 2: a way that's that's powerful and safe and good for
Speaker 2: the culture, rather than one that feels exclusive.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about bringing humor into the every day,
Speaker 1: so things that people do every day, like emails and
Speaker 1: meetings and instant messages, and maybe human's not quite the
Speaker 1: right word, because I know in the book you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about levity, which I feel is a really
Speaker 1: underused word. I love the idea of just bringing more
Speaker 1: levity into the workplace. So let's maybe start with emails,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure that listeners of the show are probably
Speaker 1: sending hundreds of emails every week, and I feel that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of missed opportunity there for levity. So
Speaker 1: can you talk about how you think about your emails
Speaker 1: and having received emails from you, I mean, you completely
Speaker 1: practice what you preach. Because we had to reschedule this
Speaker 1: interview because you were sick, and you wrote me a
Speaker 1: hilarious email telling me that you were sick, And I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: that's so funny. I don't mind rescheduling. That's totally cool
Speaker 1: because you're so funny. But tell me about how do
Speaker 1: you think about emails.
Speaker 2: Well, first, that's great to hear, and you're very gracious
Speaker 2: about meaning to reschedule the well, so thank you for that.
Speaker 2: If we think about the barrage of electronic information we
Speaker 2: get every day, it is pretty profound, and humor is
Speaker 2: such a powerful way to create signal from the noise.
Speaker 2: In that way, it's a gift to someone when they
Speaker 2: read their fortieth email, you know, in the last twenty
Speaker 2: minutes and everything has been all business and then you
Speaker 2: have this one email that has a little bit of lightheartedness.
Speaker 2: It's so incredibly powerful. Whether it's a pun in the
Speaker 2: subject line, or whether it's a gift for whether it's
Speaker 2: just an unexpected line. It's is such a useful way
Speaker 2: to create an email that someone actually wants to respond to,
Speaker 2: rather than one that they will move past and wait
Speaker 2: to respond to it later. And so a couple of
Speaker 2: techniques that we use. First of all, the first thing
Speaker 2: that we do with our students is we give them
Speaker 2: an audit. So we have different kinds of audits because
Speaker 2: we're a very fun class and we're in a business school.
Speaker 2: But this specific kind of audit is an email audit.
Speaker 2: So what we have them do is they have to
Speaker 2: go into their sent folder right there and then in
Speaker 2: class and they have to read the last ten emails
Speaker 2: that they've sent. And after doing so, we then have
Speaker 2: a competition. We call it a jargon off, and they
Speaker 2: have to find the most sterile business speak, like any
Speaker 2: phrase that could have been written by a robot. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's the sign off, or maybe it's attached please find,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's the sign off vest or kind regards,
Speaker 2: whatever it is that really could have been written by robot.
Speaker 2: And then they share it with the class, you know,
Speaker 2: they either drop it in a chat box or for
Speaker 2: in person and al through a dramatic reading of it.
Speaker 2: And it's this illustration with this reminder that the more
Speaker 2: technology mediated our communication becomes, the easier it is to
Speaker 2: lose our sense of humor and our humanity along the way,
Speaker 2: because we subconsciously adapt our medium, and when we're constantly
Speaker 2: communicating through technology, it's easy to sound like a robot.
Speaker 2: So step one is just right like a human, really
Speaker 2: simple but incredibly effective. The second is serendipitous sign offs.
Speaker 2: So instead of writing best, write something that's a callback
Speaker 2: to something from earlier, something that is a little bit unexpected.
Speaker 2: So as an example, I started a three PM call
Speaker 2: and the person I was talking with talked about how
Speaker 2: she had had three cups of coffee, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm on my second cup, and we sort of had
Speaker 2: a laugh about it, and so I signed off my
Speaker 2: email from that day yours heavily caffeinated. And then we
Speaker 2: were on another call recently and Jennifer's dog got out
Speaker 2: while we were doing an interview, and so she thinks
Speaker 2: that she goes on mute, and she yells to her
Speaker 2: husband Andy, who let the dog out, which then of
Speaker 2: course led to a wonderful rendition of who let the
Speaker 2: dogs out? And then she signed off that email still
Speaker 2: wondering who let the dogs out? So these are just
Speaker 2: really lighthearted ways to leave a little gift in your
Speaker 2: sign off, So that would be number two. My third
Speaker 2: tip would be make callbacks. So this is what you
Speaker 2: were mentioning earlier. When I'm on a call, especially if
Speaker 2: it's with a new client or a new customer or
Speaker 2: anyone even a friend. I will look for moments when
Speaker 2: we organically laugh together, Like I'm not trying to make jokes,
Speaker 2: but we're humans, and humors a fundamental melody of human conversation,
Speaker 2: so we're going to probably have a laugh at some point,
Speaker 2: especially if it's a professional context. I'll jot down that
Speaker 2: moment when they laughed, and then I'll bring it back
Speaker 2: in the email. So it could be something as simple
Speaker 2: as someone mentions on the call I had. I was
Speaker 2: on the phone with someone. We're trying to invite him
Speaker 2: to come speak in our course at Stanford. He mentioned
Speaker 2: that he is superstitious, and so I wrote in the
Speaker 2: email back to him, wonderful chatting today. We're so hoping
Speaker 2: that you can come. We've penciled you in while crossing
Speaker 2: our fingers, stroking rabbit foot keychains and throwing a thousand
Speaker 2: pennies into wishing wells that you can join. Right, So
Speaker 2: it's making a reference to something that he said, but
Speaker 2: you know, including that as a callback and an email.
Speaker 2: And then the last one that I would tell people
Speaker 2: is it's incredible, but a well placed meme can do,
Speaker 2: and you don't want to overuse them. But we share
Speaker 2: a story in the book which is actually a secretly
Speaker 2: a story of a personal experience, which is that I
Speaker 2: was working with a client and I had done work
Speaker 2: for them, and then I got totally ghosted where they
Speaker 2: weren't paying me for the work I had done, and
Speaker 2: I sent a couple follow up notes. The woman who
Speaker 2: I was working with was actually a former colleague of mine,
Speaker 2: and so the invoice had now gone and paid for months,
Speaker 2: and so I followed up, you know, Hey, so sorry,
Speaker 2: but any updates on the invoice. No response. Two weeks later, Hey,
Speaker 2: just wanted to follow up. Is there anything else that
Speaker 2: you need from this order to have this invoice go through?
Speaker 2: Nothing in a month later, checking in on this again,
Speaker 2: is there anything I can do to help push this forward?
Speaker 2: No response, And so finally a month later I tried
Speaker 2: a different strategy, which is I sent a cat meme,
Speaker 2: And this cat meme was a cat looking longingly through
Speaker 2: a glass outside that said hello from the other side.
Speaker 2: I must have meowed a thousand times and it's like
Speaker 2: from the Adell lyric. And she got back to me
Speaker 2: the next day and I was paid with him the week.
Speaker 2: So I guess the last tip that I would give
Speaker 2: is think about showing, not telling, especially if you aren't
Speaker 2: super comfortable making humor yourself. Just include something lighthearted that
Speaker 2: you think would make the other person smile.
Speaker 1: And do you find now, particularly because you've written this
Speaker 1: book about humor, I mean, with most of your emails,
Speaker 1: do you feel like I have to be funny? Are
Speaker 1: you sending any straight emails? Naomi?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's such a great question. Gosh, I guess I
Speaker 2: have to do an email audit on myself. You know,
Speaker 2: I would say we've created a culture of lightheartedness, but
Speaker 2: there's a point where that can go too far. Too
Speaker 2: If you're over extending your energy on trying to be funny,
Speaker 2: on trying to make things light hearted, then of course
Speaker 2: that that's going to be detrimental to your goal. And
Speaker 2: so what I do try and do is be unapologetically
Speaker 2: and relentlessly human in my emails. So I try and
Speaker 2: write my emails as if I'm talking, and if I
Speaker 2: feel excited about something, I'm going to totally show that
Speaker 2: in my email. If I can think of something that
Speaker 2: I think would make the other person smile, then I'm
Speaker 2: going to include that in my email. I was talking
Speaker 2: with a colleague of mind, this incredible woman who teaches
Speaker 2: at Harvard and has done a lot of this research.
Speaker 2: Alison Woodbrooks, along with Brad Bitterley and Maury Schweitzer, has
Speaker 2: done incredible research in this area of humor and status,
Speaker 2: and in particular for Alison, around human conversations. How do
Speaker 2: we create more effective conversations with people? And I was
Speaker 2: talking with Alison. We've worked together for the last seven
Speaker 2: years now. She was one of the researchers at the
Speaker 2: Second City Humor Retreat where we were hosted by Anne
Speaker 2: Libra and Kelly Leonard to do a deep dive into
Speaker 2: humor with the heads of the Second City and the
Speaker 2: founder of the Union and these behavioral scientists from all
Speaker 2: over the world. And I was talking to Alison this
Speaker 2: morning because I guess spoke in her class, and she
Speaker 2: was saying, I think I may over index in like
Speaker 2: none of my emails are serious. All of my emails
Speaker 2: have some levity. And she reflected for a minute and
Speaker 2: she said, but you know what, if I'm going to
Speaker 2: over index in one direction of the or the other,
Speaker 2: I would so much rather have more levity and more
Speaker 2: joy in my life than have all of my professional
Speaker 2: communications be boring. And what I've noticed with Alison the
Speaker 2: way that she communicates with her students is she creates
Speaker 2: an environment where everyone feels safe to show their own
Speaker 2: sense of humor. And we see this in organizations too,
Speaker 2: that when the leader is willing to have more levity
Speaker 2: and humor and show more of themselves, then everyone feels
Speaker 2: safer and more empowered to show more of themselves as well.
Speaker 1: How about in matings where the opportunities for bringing more
Speaker 1: levity into matings. I'm curious as to how you think
Speaker 1: about this in your enlife, the matings that you're attending
Speaker 1: or facilitating.
Speaker 2: Never is the answer. No, you know, it's interesting when
Speaker 2: we all moved to zoom, or when we all moved
Speaker 2: to working remotely, it fell for a while, like we
Speaker 2: fell off this humor cliff. And now you're seeing this
Speaker 2: incredible rebirth of humor in a new format. So for me,
Speaker 2: for example, I mentioned that I have my students do
Speaker 2: the humor audit. Well, the way that I've started doing
Speaker 2: that and I did that this morning with the students
Speaker 2: at Harvard is instead of saying, okay, everyone go into
Speaker 2: your email, you know you have to do this now.
Speaker 2: I play an alarm sound, so everyone thinks that there's
Speaker 2: like a fire alarm going off in my house. And
Speaker 2: I interrupt myself mid sentence as I'm lecturing, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking around, I'm like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: you know what this means. It's time for the audit.
Speaker 2: You're all being audited. Everyone's sort of looking around confused,
Speaker 2: and I go, okay, everyone, reach under your chairs, like
Speaker 2: taped under your chair is going to be an envelope.
Speaker 2: And of course everyone sort of looks around at each other.
Speaker 2: A few people actually go and reach down there, and
Speaker 2: then I show a slide with an envelope open that
Speaker 2: says you're being audited. And so it's so it's so lighthearted,
Speaker 2: but they are just these small ways in which you're
Speaker 2: signaling that we're not taking ourselves to seriously. So a
Speaker 2: couple other examples that I have heard recently. So I
Speaker 2: work with a woman at Salesforce, and she's a senior exec.
Speaker 2: She was in a meeting and one of her and
Speaker 2: her five year old walked into the meeting accidentally, and
Speaker 2: everyone sort of laughed about it, and the five year
Speaker 2: old left So what she did was she noticed that
Speaker 2: in these meetings she's always repeating the same phrases, whether
Speaker 2: it's let's talk about next steps or let's find time
Speaker 2: on the calendar right now or whatever it is. And
Speaker 2: so she had her five year old create signs, like
Speaker 2: create signs on paddles that she could hold up during meetings.
Speaker 2: They're adorable. They're like written with crans and they say
Speaker 2: things like what are the next steps? And I think
Speaker 2: you're on mute was my favorite one. I think you're
Speaker 2: on mute paddle that she holds up, and so it's
Speaker 2: a way for her to say the things that she's
Speaker 2: going to say anyways, but do it in sort of
Speaker 2: a lighthearted way. So there are lots of examples. I
Speaker 2: think the important thing is it needs to be authentic
Speaker 2: to whoever the person is, and it also needs to
Speaker 2: be appropriate to their status. And so in the book
Speaker 2: and in our teaching, we share that there are these
Speaker 2: four humor styles and everyone can go to humor seriously
Speaker 2: dot com and take a quiz to find out what
Speaker 2: your style is. But in short, those styles are the
Speaker 2: stand up, the sweetheart, the sniper, and the magnet. And
Speaker 2: what we find is that different styles are going to
Speaker 2: work in different contexts, and in particular based on your status.
Speaker 2: So I can do that. I can do that sort
Speaker 2: of silly. There's an envelope taped, dont your desk and
Speaker 2: but do all of that because in that context, I
Speaker 2: have authority. I am a high status person in the
Speaker 2: room because I'm the teacher. Now, when I am leading
Speaker 2: workshops for groups of executives, by the way, that's magnet humor.
Speaker 2: That's like very typical magnet humor. When I'm leading workshops
Speaker 2: for groups of executives, I'll lean more into sniper and
Speaker 2: stand up style humor, which is more biting, not afraid
Speaker 2: to ruffle a few feathers to get a laugh, a
Speaker 2: little more targeted. And the reason for this is I'm
Speaker 2: no longer quote, the most senior person in the room.
Speaker 2: And so there's this rule in comedy that you never
Speaker 2: want to punch down, which means you never want to
Speaker 2: make the target of your joke someone of lower status
Speaker 2: than you. So what that means is, when I am
Speaker 2: the highest person on the totem poll or I'm in
Speaker 2: a position of authority, making fun of myself is a
Speaker 2: really safe place to go. When I'm not the highest
Speaker 2: status person in the room, I can punch up and
Speaker 2: that can actually gain me status and influence.
Speaker 1: That's so helpful to think about. And on the topic
Speaker 1: of presenting, because you would do so much presenting and
Speaker 1: I imagine keynote speaking is part of your work, how
Speaker 1: do you think about the first few minutes of a presentation?
Speaker 2: Setting the tone is incredibly important because it cures people
Speaker 2: that you are going to have some humor and levity.
Speaker 2: So if I am serious, if I'm really serious the
Speaker 2: first two to three minutes, then oftentimes my humor won't
Speaker 2: land later on because people aren't expecting it. But if
Speaker 2: they code me as someone who's intellectually agile in that way,
Speaker 2: because by the way people do code humor as being
Speaker 2: associated with intelligence and agility, if I signal that early,
Speaker 2: then my jokes are going to land better later. And
Speaker 2: so the thing I always do, if possible, is I
Speaker 2: will make a callback reference to something that the earlier
Speaker 2: presenter has said, or or I will name something that's
Speaker 2: happening in the moment. So at conferences, for example, I
Speaker 2: have a placeholder in my first thirty seconds where all
Speaker 2: I'm going to do is I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: reference to the last presenter who had a humorous line.
Speaker 2: If I don't find that, if they don't laugh the
Speaker 2: entire time that the presenter is going then instead, what
Speaker 2: I'm doing in the one minute before I go on
Speaker 2: stage or in the one minute before I start talking
Speaker 2: on zoom is I'm just noticing what's going on for people.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking at people's zoom backgrounds, or if I'm
Speaker 2: in person, I'm looking at the venue. I'm sort of
Speaker 2: making note of something that's happening in the room. And
Speaker 2: so I was on a call yesterday and I was presenting,
Speaker 2: and the introduction was quite dry. There was not a
Speaker 2: moment of humor that happened, and so I started scrolling
Speaker 2: through all of the pictures of people on zoom and
Speaker 2: I came on and I said, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for having me. I just want to start by saying
Speaker 2: that this is an incredibly impressive crowd. I'm really grateful
Speaker 2: to be here, and in addition your professional accomplishments, I
Speaker 2: want to start by giving out a couple of awards
Speaker 2: for your backgrounds, because these are some of the best
Speaker 2: backgrounds I've seen, and so you know, I give an
Speaker 2: award for best plant life, which is like a woman
Speaker 2: who's sitting there with like literally in a jungle. And
Speaker 2: then I give an award for I forget what the
Speaker 2: other ones where. I think someone had pictures of their kids,
Speaker 2: and I gave an award for that. And then my
Speaker 2: third award was someone who was in like a virtual
Speaker 2: background on the moon, and I thanked them for joining
Speaker 2: another ingenuity and getting their Internet connections set up on
Speaker 2: the moon. And so you know what that does is
Speaker 2: it takes people right in the moment. I couldn't have
Speaker 2: planned that out, just like I couldn't have planned out
Speaker 2: the callback. And so again, it signals intelligence, it signals agility,
Speaker 2: and it also signals okay, this is someone who I've
Speaker 2: got to stay on my toes for.
Speaker 1: Hey there it's time for a little ad break. But
Speaker 1: can I ask a favor of you? If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: how I work, I'd be so grateful if you could
Speaker 1: hit pause and pop into Apple Podcasts or wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to this from and leave a review. You might
Speaker 1: want to leave a star rating or maybe a comment.
Speaker 1: And aside from the warm, fuzzy feelings that this will
Speaker 1: give both you and me, it helps other people find
Speaker 1: out about how I work, So thank you in advance. Okay,
Speaker 1: Naomi is going to be back after this short break,
Speaker 1: and we're going to be learning about some other tricks
Speaker 1: that you can use to be funny in presentations, especially
Speaker 1: if you're not that confident in your ability to be
Speaker 1: spontaneously funny. What are some other tricks that people can
Speaker 1: use maybe if they're not confident in their ability to
Speaker 1: be spontaneously funny, Are there any other tricks that people
Speaker 1: can use in those first few minutes?
Speaker 2: Totally, So, one trick that we see people use as
Speaker 2: bringing up a cope presenter that they naturally can bounter with.
Speaker 2: So this obviously isn't always possible, but in instances where
Speaker 2: it is possible, it's a really safe way to showcase
Speaker 2: that you have a sense of humor, that you don't
Speaker 2: take yourself too seriously, but you don't need to be
Speaker 2: the one making jokes. So a couple examples of this.
Speaker 2: Dick Costello, the former CEO of Twitter, He used to
Speaker 2: have people who were not the most senior in his
Speaker 2: organization come co present with him in all hands meetings. So,
Speaker 2: as one example, April Underwood, who was very senior in
Speaker 2: product at Twitter, Dick and April had a very good relationship.
Speaker 2: He was a mentor to her. They had grown a
Speaker 2: real peer relationship, and April had a real biting sense
Speaker 2: of humor. She would often take him down or she'd
Speaker 2: just bring out Dick's sense of humor, and so he
Speaker 2: would have her co present and in doing so, their
Speaker 2: banter naturally came out. Sergey and Larry at Google did
Speaker 2: this too, where early in there in founding Google and
Speaker 2: then throughout the company's growth, they would have these all
Speaker 2: hands meetings where they would both be on stage and
Speaker 2: they would really showcase their natural banter. So that's one way.
Speaker 2: Another way is simply to share something that you find
Speaker 2: genuinely funny or lighthearted and tie it into a content
Speaker 2: piece that you're already going to present. And this is
Speaker 2: actually a lot easier than you think it might be.
Speaker 2: So I'll give an example of one thing I use
Speaker 2: is I use this clip from The Californians. So google
Speaker 2: the SNL the Californians and you'll find this clip. There
Speaker 2: are many good clips there, but my favorite one is
Speaker 2: one where Bill Hayterer, Kristen Wigg and Fred Armison break character.
Speaker 2: They just they can't. They think it's so funny that
Speaker 2: they break character and they're laughing in the middle of
Speaker 2: the sketch, and it always gets people laughing. That the
Speaker 2: most important thing. I look through the zoom screen and
Speaker 2: it just gets people laughing, And so I don't have
Speaker 2: to do anything to be funny. I just play this
Speaker 2: clip and I will make a connection to whatever I'm teaching. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if I'm sharing a study on how when
Speaker 2: people laugh together, they are more likely to share thirty
Speaker 2: percent more personal information in a subsequent conversation, so those
Speaker 2: conversations are rated as thirty percent more intimate and authentic.
Speaker 2: So I'll share that clip and then I'll say, now,
Speaker 2: I want you to imagine that you're walking into a
Speaker 2: room with someone and having a conversation. So I might
Speaker 2: do that. Another way I might do it is just
Speaker 2: show that clip and then say, great, I know that
Speaker 2: we're joining from all over the world today, so I
Speaker 2: just wanted to kick off here with a California vibe.
Speaker 2: Since I typically do my teaching at Stanford. These are
Speaker 2: totally different reasons that I've given for showing the clip.
Speaker 2: The important thing is just to get people laughing. So
Speaker 2: whatever it is, that you find funny. Of course, that
Speaker 2: is also work appropriate. Try and see if you can
Speaker 2: find a way to lead with that or to include
Speaker 2: it in your presentation and then make a loose tie
Speaker 2: to the content and people will allow you some leeway
Speaker 2: because you've given them the gift of laughter.
Speaker 1: And how about at the end of a presentation, how
Speaker 1: important is it to incorporate hema right at the end.
Speaker 2: So there's peak end theory in psychology, which shows that people, well,
Speaker 2: first of all, there's primacy effect, there's recency effects, and
Speaker 2: then peak end. So all of these things say that
Speaker 2: different moments are really really important in our conversations, in
Speaker 2: our interactions, and in our relationships, so priming. So that's
Speaker 2: what the initial thing that you do is. That's why
Speaker 2: it's important to start with some element of levity, or
Speaker 2: it can be powerful to start with some element of levity,
Speaker 2: because then people are primed to look for and find
Speaker 2: other moments, other reasons to laugh. Now, peak end theory
Speaker 2: says that people tend to remember the most emotionally heightened
Speaker 2: moments and also the last moment. And this is similar
Speaker 2: to recency effect with the last moment that people will
Speaker 2: remember the most recent interaction with someone. And so what
Speaker 2: this means is you want to leave people with some
Speaker 2: little bit of levity or humor. Now I don't stick
Speaker 2: to this really firmly. I think that it's more important
Speaker 2: to end your presentation strong, or end what you're doing strong,
Speaker 2: rather than necessarily to end with humor. And the reason
Speaker 2: for that is if you have used humor along the way,
Speaker 2: people will remember it. I can give an example of
Speaker 2: that in a minute. But the important thing is I
Speaker 2: will never end on Q and A. And this is
Speaker 2: something that I learned from David Nihill, who wrote Do
Speaker 2: You Talk Funny and was graciously a guest in our
Speaker 2: class at Stanford. He wrote a fantastic book where he
Speaker 2: became a stand up comedian and deconstructed all of these techniques.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was really incredibly inspiring work in a
Speaker 2: really good book. And one of the things that David
Speaker 2: taught me is you never end on Q and A, because,
Speaker 2: without fail, you have this incredible presentation that you've been
Speaker 2: prepping and you know exactly what you're going to say,
Speaker 2: you know all your notes to hit, and then you
Speaker 2: end on Q and A and it's sort of like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not something that you necessarily wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about. Maybe you don't have a great answer to it.
Speaker 2: You're sort of bumbling your way through it, and that's
Speaker 2: how you And so the most effective technique that I
Speaker 2: learned from him was you want to do Q and
Speaker 2: A and then you want to leave a three minute
Speaker 2: content piece at the very end. So say, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to take some Q and A now, and
Speaker 2: then I'd love to leave you with a few closing remarks.
Speaker 2: So that's what I would say about ending strong. I
Speaker 2: mean that said, if you can leave with something that's lighthearted,
Speaker 2: that's good too.
Speaker 1: And how about during the presentation, because I remember, really
Speaker 1: early on when I started keynote speaking, I had this
Speaker 1: coach and he would always say, Okay, that's good, but
Speaker 1: be funnier, be funnier, be funnier, like think about laughs
Speaker 1: per minute and so yea, how whenever yeah yeah, Like
Speaker 1: so now, whenever I'm creating a new keynote presentation, I'm
Speaker 1: literally thinking laughs per minute.
Speaker 2: And then I will look over.
Speaker 1: Recordings of presentations and I will be thinking, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: that was like a two minute period where I didn't
Speaker 1: say anything funny. They probably fell asleep I need to
Speaker 1: inject more humor. There is this the quil How are
Speaker 1: you thinking about it for your presentations?
Speaker 2: Like can you be too funny? I love that, So
Speaker 2: it's totally not overkill, and I do the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: Oh good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So remember I mentioned earlier the Jennifer and I
Speaker 2: had this process, our pink fontification process. So I still
Speaker 2: do that with my own talks. I will go through
Speaker 2: my talk and then at least every like every paragraph
Speaker 2: or every other paragraph, there has to be a moment
Speaker 2: that's lighthearted or has some humor in it, or something
Speaker 2: that's going to make people perk up or ideally laugh.
Speaker 2: And so this is something that I really think about
Speaker 2: a lot. And of course sometimes we're really stressed and
Speaker 2: we don't have time for this. And I've also loved
Speaker 2: working with some comedians, and I have a team of
Speaker 2: comedy writers that I've gotten to know over the last
Speaker 2: number of years, and we'll have those comedy writers come
Speaker 2: in and coach our students. And sometimes if I'm getting
Speaker 2: a talk and I'm just like this, this isn't where
Speaker 2: it needs to be, I'll gather three of my favorite
Speaker 2: comedy writers and I'll say, hey, guys, can you jump
Speaker 2: in this document for thirty minutes, Can you just pitch
Speaker 2: either humor or different opportunities for humor or we'll get
Speaker 2: on the phone together and we'll read through it together
Speaker 2: and we'll do that. And so there's this thought in
Speaker 2: business especially that we have to have all the right answers,
Speaker 2: that we have to work in a vacuum and then
Speaker 2: have just the right thing to say, and that the
Speaker 2: reality is that's just not how the comedy world works.
Speaker 2: Anything you see on TV, whether it's sketch comedy or
Speaker 2: a sitcom or a Netflix special, every joke that you
Speaker 2: see on TV has been worked over by ten writers
Speaker 2: in a room together who are laughing. And so if
Speaker 2: you're feeling stuck yourself, then grab it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be comedy writers. It can be grab a couple friends
Speaker 2: and say hey, can you help me, you know, go
Speaker 2: through this and just flag any opportunities for humor that
Speaker 2: you see, or any ways to make this a little
Speaker 2: bit more lighthearted.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of something Adam Grant talks about where
Speaker 1: he talks about having a challenge network, so a group
Speaker 1: of people who you can send your work at to
Speaker 1: for critique and to make it better and to challenge
Speaker 1: your thinking. And like, I think about what you've just said.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like having a human network, like people
Speaker 1: you can draw on to make your stuff funnier. I
Speaker 1: really like that idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of them as my writer's room. So
Speaker 2: comedy is a team sport, and when I was training
Speaker 2: and performing in LA, I was so used to being
Speaker 2: in a writer's room with people, or being on stage
Speaker 2: with seven other people, and so the idea of creating
Speaker 2: comedy in a vacuum by myself alone was like horrifying.
Speaker 2: And so I would sometimes create a writer's room where
Speaker 2: it's really just my friends I know from comedy, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, can we do a quick writer's room
Speaker 2: this weekend and can I run some stuff by you?
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, totally, And so yeah, absolutely, having your
Speaker 2: writer's room or having your what did you call.
Speaker 1: It, like a human network.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. Having your humor network is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Sarah Cooper, So, Sarah Cooper is
Speaker 2: a fantastic comedian. Of course she's become more famous in
Speaker 2: the last couple of years, but Sarah Cooper has been
Speaker 2: wildly funny for many many years. Her books are amazing,
Speaker 2: and she was one of the first guests in our class,
Speaker 2: and I remember her telling our students about how she
Speaker 2: had a set of trusted testers is what she called them.
Speaker 2: And she had a Facebook group that was all her friends, family,
Speaker 2: and colleagues who she trusted, who would give her really
Speaker 2: genuine feedback on her work. And so when she was
Speaker 2: writing her books, first had to look smart in meetings
Speaker 2: and then how to be successful without hurting men's feelings
Speaker 2: were her two books. She would post in her private
Speaker 2: Facebook group, Hey, this is what I'm thinking of writing.
Speaker 2: What do you think about it? And she would get
Speaker 2: really candid feedback about what people thought and whether it
Speaker 2: was going too far, whether it was crossing a line,
Speaker 2: whether it needed to go further. And so this concept
Speaker 2: of not creating comedy in a vacuum, it's just so
Speaker 2: core to everyone who has done comedy in their background,
Speaker 2: and something that we don't necessarily think of in business.
Speaker 1: What do you do when a joke fails? Because I
Speaker 1: guess that's probably one reason why people maybe stay away
Speaker 1: from humor because of fear of failure. So what do
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a great question. So I delineate between
Speaker 2: two important types of failure. So type one of failure
Speaker 2: is you try to make someone laugh and it doesn't
Speaker 2: go well. But it's benign, right, it's totally appropriate. It's
Speaker 2: just you misjudged, you didn't craft your humor in the
Speaker 2: right way, and you just you know, you don't get
Speaker 2: it right. In that case, a powerful technique can actually
Speaker 2: be to double down and acknowledge, just name what happened.
Speaker 2: So you try and make a joke and you say
Speaker 2: either well, you know that one didn't land here, or
Speaker 2: thank you all be here all day, or something else,
Speaker 2: to just acknowledge the fact that you just tried to
Speaker 2: make a joke and there was radio silence. Oftentimes just
Speaker 2: doing that will get a laugh. You know, you diffuse tension.
Speaker 2: You allow people to laugh at the fact that that
Speaker 2: didn't go well, and that's a great way to sort
Speaker 2: of move past it. The type two of failure is
Speaker 2: you cross a line, you offend someone, or you make
Speaker 2: someone feel bad. And in this case we give a
Speaker 2: framework in our book of recognize, diagnose, and make it right.
Speaker 2: So step one just recognizing the fact that you have failed,
Speaker 2: which weirdly gets hard when you rise in status because
Speaker 2: we know that the more status and power you gain,
Speaker 2: the harder it is to stay calibrated because people will laugh,
Speaker 2: not necessarily because you're funny, but because you are the boss.
Speaker 2: So one of my favorite illustrations of this, by the way,
Speaker 2: was a group of social psychologists ran this study where
Speaker 2: they had a research assistant. It was actually an interview simulation,
Speaker 2: but the people walking in the room didn't know that
Speaker 2: this person in the simulation was a research assistant. They
Speaker 2: thought that it was just another person. And so in
Speaker 2: one situation, they made the participants believe that this person
Speaker 2: was high status, that they were an important person, a
Speaker 2: powerful person. And in the other group, they made the
Speaker 2: participants believe that this person was a subordinate, that they
Speaker 2: were lower status than the participants. And so in this study,
Speaker 2: all the research assistants delivered the same joke, and that
Speaker 2: joke was two muffins are baking in an oven. One
Speaker 2: of them yells, wow, it's hot in here, and the
Speaker 2: other muffin replies, holy cow, a talking muffin. Now this
Speaker 2: is objectively a grade A dad joke. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is a bad joke. And what they found was that
Speaker 2: participants in the condition where they thought the joke teller
Speaker 2: was low status, yes, crickets absolutely no laughter. People in
Speaker 2: the high status condition, people who thought that the joke
Speaker 2: teller was high status like roaring laughter, right, And anyways,
Speaker 2: this research is really interesting. It doesn't even matter if
Speaker 2: the person's in the room. If they watch a video
Speaker 2: of someone high status, they're more likely to laugh. And
Speaker 2: so what this means is that we think like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have to recognize when I fail, but it actually
Speaker 2: can be harder than we think. And so especially if
Speaker 2: we fail in ways where we think we could have
Speaker 2: crossed a line where there's an appropriateness issue, you have
Speaker 2: to get really good at recognizing that. And by the way,
Speaker 2: that was Seth Meyers's number one piece of advice for
Speaker 2: our students. So Seth Meyer's former head writer of Saturday
Speaker 2: Night Live, and he has his own show, Late Night
Speaker 2: with Seth Myers. He joined as a guest in our
Speaker 2: class and we were wrapping up and we said, great, Seth,
Speaker 2: what's the one thing you want to leave our students with?
Speaker 2: And he paused, and he said, get really good at
Speaker 2: recognizing your own fake laughter, the laughter that you make
Speaker 2: that isn't genuine. Because once you get good at that
Speaker 2: and you'll start noticing other people's fake laughter, and that
Speaker 2: gets really important as you get hiring status. So we
Speaker 2: always tell our students if you do fail, recognize it, apologize,
Speaker 2: and make it right immediately, so a genuine apology, and
Speaker 2: really try and understand why your humor failed. So ask
Speaker 2: the person what did I miss? What went wrong? When
Speaker 2: our humor fails, it's really easy to lean on, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, they probably didn't get the joke or it's
Speaker 2: their problem, rather than saying, actually, I may have done
Speaker 2: something wrong here. And then third is so recognize, diagnose,
Speaker 2: make it right. And then we always tell our students
Speaker 2: that there are these common reasons why humor fails that
Speaker 2: you want to try and avoid. So, for example, never
Speaker 2: punch down. We've talked about that on before number two,
Speaker 2: minding your medium. So a really quick tip here is
Speaker 2: sarcasm is the most wrongly interpreted form of humor in writing,
Speaker 2: so people think that they're much better than they actually
Speaker 2: are at conveying sarcasm. Another one context switching, so it
Speaker 2: goes without saying that humor's context dependent, that something that
Speaker 2: lands in the living room won't necessarily land in the boardroom.
Speaker 2: And yet it can be really tempting if we're sitting
Speaker 2: around our colleagues and we think of something funny to
Speaker 2: just sort of let it come out. So we have
Speaker 2: to be really aware of context switching. And then the
Speaker 2: other thing that we dive into more fully is those
Speaker 2: personal humor pitfalls based on your humor style. So each
Speaker 2: of those styles, you know, for example, the magnet and
Speaker 2: the sweetheart, they're more likely to over index on self
Speaker 2: deprecation and so they can actually take away their power
Speaker 2: when they do that. On the other side, you have
Speaker 2: stand ups and snipers who can alienate or offend with
Speaker 2: their humor. So really getting to know what's your humor
Speaker 2: style and therefore what are your personal pitfalls can help
Speaker 2: you avoid those humor fails.
Speaker 1: And I'll put a link to that in the show
Speaker 1: note so that people can die is the personal humus style? Now, Naomi,
Speaker 1: my final question if people want to consume more of
Speaker 1: what you're doing and get the hands on a copy
Speaker 1: of Humors Seriously, which seriously people need to do? It's
Speaker 1: just brilliant. How can people do all that?
Speaker 2: The book is available anywhere books are sold, but come
Speaker 2: on to Humor Seriously dot com and you can find
Speaker 2: links to our book. And then we also have a
Speaker 2: twenty one day Humor boot camp that is SMS space,
Speaker 2: so you'd get text messages to your phone more to
Speaker 2: WhatsApp whenever your preferred method is. That's a twenty one
Speaker 2: day program where every day you get a little audio message,
Speaker 2: some activities, you interact with the program in a way.
Speaker 2: And the goal is really to have us make behavior
Speaker 2: change right that they are these small changes that we
Speaker 2: can make in our day to day that will have
Speaker 2: monumental impact on the thing that's most important, which is
Speaker 2: are we navigating our lives on the precipice of a smile?
Speaker 1: Oh that's so. I'm I'm devastated that we've run out
Speaker 1: of time because I've just loved chatting to you. This
Speaker 1: is like a highlight of my week, if not month.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for all the amazing stuff that
Speaker 1: you've imparted. And I wish I didn't have to let
Speaker 1: you get on with your day, but I think I
Speaker 1: do well.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. And I have
Speaker 2: to give you props that your email to us to
Speaker 2: ask us to join you on the podcast in it
Speaker 2: you signed off with and keeping everything cross that you'll
Speaker 2: say yes. And I remember reading that and reading what
Speaker 2: you had said about the book and thinking, Okay, Amantha
Speaker 2: gets this, and I really can't wait for this conversation.
Speaker 2: So I've been looking forward to this one for a
Speaker 2: long time. And thank you so much for having me
Speaker 2: and for the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh. If you enjoyed my chat with Naomi, and if
Speaker 1: you know someone that you think might enjoy it as well,
Speaker 1: why not share this episode with them. Also, if you
Speaker 1: are looking for more tips to improve the way you work,
Speaker 1: I write a short fortnightly newsletup that contains three cool
Speaker 1: things that I've discovered that are helping me work better,
Speaker 1: which range from interesting research finding street gadgets that I'm loving.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co.
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: The producer for this episode was Jenna Coder, and thank
Speaker 1: you to Martin Nimber, who does the audio mix for
Speaker 1: every show and makes everything sound so.
Speaker 2: Much better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.