It was just a couple of minutes of light-hearted fun – a goofy moment when the two bosses donned eyeglasses with the fake noses and moustaches.
Smiling, they posed for a snapshot that quickly found a place on the company’s “humour bulletin board.”
Like a well-told joke, it continues to get a good laugh, says John Simmons, a consultant who specializes in teaching organizations about the benefits of workplace humour.
“The most important thing humour does is flatten the hierarchy,” says Simmons.
“The boss who can joke with you about something becomes more of a co-worker, less a superior. It creates a co- operative atmosphere.”
The bulletin board that Simmons points to hangs at Custom Learning Systems Group Limited, where he works as a consultant for the Calgary-based company.
During his presentations, he discusses the links that humour has to productivity, creativity and employee retention. Small things such as humour bulletin boards help create a sense of fun, a trait many grown-ups have lost touch with.
“Five-year-olds laugh, on average, about 300 times a day and adults laugh 15 to 20 times a day,” says Simmons.
“Some of that natural joy and humour has been socialized out of us and I think we want to recapture that.”
Simmons doesn’t want to turn offices into stand-up comedy clubs. Humour, he acknowledges, can be abused, a diversion from work, and at its worst, insulting.
But too many of us get caught in “terminal adult seriousness” and miss the humour and lighter moments in everyday life.
“It’s not something we can turn on and off whether we are at work or home.”
In his presentations, Simmons provides his audience with tips on Safe Humour and the 10 Ways To Be Funny And Not Get Fired. He even shows people how to tell a good joke.
Injecting joy into our lives takes practice, and anyone wanting to relearn this lost attribute requires a disciplined, conscious approach.
In his workshops, Simmons asks people to think about a particularly grim or distressing aspect of their life or job. Then he has them view the situation from a different perspective. Be absurd, find something funny about it, he says, and break the chain of gloom that restrains our behaviour.
As an example of “reframing” a distressing situation, he talks about his 83-year-old mother who lives out of province. Her health is declining and she shouldn’t live by herself, but she won’t leave her house.
She refuses most help and tells Simmons that she’s just going to have to get better in order to take care of herself. So Simmons often remembers an old joke.
“Question,” he says. “What do elderly parents and harps have in common? “Answer: They are both unforgiving and difficult to get in and out of cars.”
It’s much like a popular bumper sticker he remembers from the ’70s, the one that said: One nuclear bomb can ruin your entire day.
“There is a situation that’s grim, but at the same time you have to chuckle.” In today’s corporate climate, pressure and deadlines are the norm. Simmons encourages people – bosses and employees – to focus on creating an atmosphere of joy.
A leader has a responsibility to keep a light atmosphere in the building, to ensure that employees don’t feel every contract and job is life and death.
Staff too must do their part and especially avoid cynical humour – the negative jokes about the boss that are caustic in nature.
“Those kind of jokes – that management’s doing it to us again – make people feel powerless instead of focusing on what they can do to improve their own situation.”
What can people do? Start with a smile. To cultivate a sense of joy, Simmons tells people they must take time to stop and smell the flowers, enjoy sunsets and see the beauty in children.
While there is nothing overtly funny in these moments, it helps people to view life positively and change their perspective to a more constructive one. Simmons knows that many people feel defeated in work.
A former teacher in the Rocky View School Division for more than 20 years, he and his colleagues faced one crisis after another, much like today’s health-care workers.
“You forget to celebrate your achievements, your test scores, the work of individual students,” he says. “Things become so tense, and intense, you miss the humour in things.”
In his presentations, he offers dozens of ideas that can help transform and support a more light-hearted culture. He points to the company’s humour bulletin board dotted with 4 x 6 snapshots of office birthday celebrations, funny postcards and bosses in goofy glasses.
It’s one little thing that makes people smile each day.
