By Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas
Leveraging humour for professional success
Subject
Themes
Somewhere around age twenty-three, people stop laughing. A Gallup poll of 1.4 million respondents across 166 countries reveals a precipitous drop in daily laughter as adults enter the workforce, trading joy for professionalism. The average four-year-old laughs three hundred times a day; the average forty-year-old manages that number every two and a half months. This "humor cliff" is sustained by four myths: that serious work has no room for levity, that a failed joke is catastrophic, that only naturally funny people can use humour, and that the skill cannot be learned. Each myth crumbles under scrutiny. Research shows that appropriate humour boosts perceptions of confidence even when it does not get laughs, and that simply signalling a sense of humour makes managers significantly more respected.
Somewhere around age twenty-three, people stop laughing. A Gallup poll of 1.4 million respondents across 166 countries reveals a precipitous drop in daily laughter as adults enter the workforce, trading joy for professionalism. The average four-year-old laughs three hundred times a day; the average…
The argument that humour belongs in professional settings emerged at a particular cultural moment. By 2020, remote work had become the default for millions of knowledge workers almost overnight, collapsing the already thin boundary between personal and professional life. Digital communication…
Laughter is not merely a social nicety; it is a neurochemical event with measurable consequences for the brain and body. When people laugh, their brains release dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with reward and pleasure. Oxytocin floods the system simultaneously, building trust and deepening…
The crisis of trust in modern leadership is stark. Fifty-eight per cent of employees trust a complete stranger more than their own boss. Nearly half of Americans have left a job specifically to get away from their manager. In this environment, the traditional model of leadership, built on authority,…
One of the most persistent barriers to using humour at work is the belief that it is an innate trait, something people either possess or do not. This assumption, labelled the "Born With It Myth," collapses under scrutiny. Carol Dweck's growth mindset research confirms that humour, like any other…
Organisational culture is not an abstraction; it is the accumulated effect of daily rituals, physical spaces, and the signals leaders send about what is valued. At Pixar, Ed Catmull deliberately fostered a culture where scooter races, costume Fridays, and "Pixarpalooza" concerts coexisted with some…
The fear of crossing a line keeps many people from using humour at work, and that fear is not unfounded. What one person finds hilarious, another may find offensive. The Spectrum classroom exercise demonstrates this vividly: students viewing the same joke, tweet, or advertisement position themselves…
Stanford MBA students filing into a class called "Humor: Serious Business" complete a "Humor Audit" and struggle to recall the last time they truly laughed. Their experience reflects a broader pattern. A Gallup poll of 1.4 million respondents across 166 countries reveals that the frequency of…
Laughter triggers a cocktail of hormones: dopamine for happiness, oxytocin for trust, lowered cortisol for reduced stress, and endorphins for euphoria. These neurochemical effects translate into four concrete workplace benefits: power, bonds, creativity, and resilience. On the power front, Naomi…
A visit to Seth Meyers' Late Night writers room reveals that comedy is a learnable craft, not an innate gift. The writers treat humour as a structured discipline, breaking down what makes something funny into identifiable, repeatable components. Two foundational principles underpin everything: truth…
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis holds that language shapes cognition and behaviour. Writing like a corporate drone leads to acting like one. Brian Fugere at Deloitte confronted this problem head-on by creating "Bullfighter," a software tool that scanned emails and documents, assigning each a "Bull Index"…
Leslie Blodgett, founder of bareMinerals, took out a full-page ad in The New York Times during the 2008 recession. Rather than polished corporate copy, the ad was personal, vulnerable, and funny, listing a direct phone number to the company receptionist Hilda. Callers could actually schedule a…
Pixar's culture of scooter races, costume Fridays, and "Pixarpalooza" concerts was no happy accident. Ed Catmull, the company's former president, believed that levity and play were foundational to building productive, creative teams. Research on 352 employees across 54 teams validated this…
A classroom exercise called Spectrum reveals just how subjective humour can be. Students view real-world jokes, tweets, and advertisements, then physically position themselves along two axes: funny to not funny and appropriate to inappropriate. The resulting spread is often surprisingly wide, even…
Jennifer Aaker's mother has volunteered at hospice for nearly forty years, and the stories she brought home to the dinner table shaped Jennifer's lifelong interest in what people wish for in their final days. Those wishes, it turns out, cluster around five consistent themes: boldness, authenticity,…
By Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas
Subject
Themes
Somewhere around age twenty-three, people stop laughing. A Gallup poll of 1.4 million respondents across 166 countries reveals a precipitous drop in daily laughter as adults enter the workforce, trading joy for professionalism. The average four-year-old laughs three hundred times a day; the average forty-year-old manages that number every two and a half months. This "humor cliff" is sustained by four myths: that serious work has no room for levity, that a failed joke is catastrophic, that only naturally funny people can use humour, and that the skill cannot be learned. Each myth crumbles under scrutiny. Research shows that appropriate humour boosts perceptions of confidence even when it does not get laughs, and that simply signalling a sense of humour makes managers significantly more respected.