Transcript Humor as part of your business culture

HUMOR AS PART OF
YOUR BUSINESS CULTURE
Sonya Huff
Organizational Communication
HUMOR
• “Humor, when boiled
down to its essence, is
simply an attempt to
communicate with
others and have the
message interpretive
as being funny”.
(Mciheran, 1)
• Humor is used in a positive and a negative aspect of leadership.
• Humor promotes effective communication and increases the ability
to communicate.
• Humor facilitates expression or feeling that otherwise would not be
socially acceptable.
• Allows managers to express themselves without hurting the feelings of
others or making the relationships sour amongst the employees.
BENEFITS TO HUMOR IN A BUSINESS CULTURE
1. Group Cohesion
• task force
• Team projects
• Focus groups
2. Stress reducer and helpful in improving moral
• Emotional regulation
• Adaptive coping mechanism
• anxiety heightener
3. Creates physiological and emotional changes by improving wellness
PUTDOWN HUMOR
• iNSULTING
• dEMEANING
• tEASING
• sARCASM
HUMOR AND DIVERSITY
• Different etic groups can respond to different humor responses in different
ways.
• Example
• Someone from down south compared to someone from England.
• African Americans from the United States compared to African or
Caribbean immigrant.
• Companies are now recognizing that humor is one of the most effective
ways to deal with workplace stressors and challenges. (Caudron, 1)
• Kodak
• Gave presentations to employees groups in which they would talk about
humor in the workplace. They wanted to create awareness of the value of
humor.
• Upper level managers were impressed and started a fund for a humor room.
• Created a humor room in an ideal way to facilitate camaraderie and
teamwork.
• There are 4 different rooms
• Recourse Library In the room they have joke books, cartoons, bill Crosby
video tapes, comfy chairs for employees to relax in the middle of the
stressful day.
• Group meeting area to allow 20 people to meet comfortably for group
meetings and problem solving. They have pictures of Charlie Chaplin and
Groucho marks.
• The Toy store Stress reducing gadgets, boss doll allows employees to take
out aggression by pulling its hair and arms off. They also have rubber
eyeballs, Saddam Hussein punching bag.
• The high-tech area personal computers called humor processors have
software to help employees with creative problem solving, speech and new
ideas.
• (Caudron, 5-6)
CONCLUSION
• Sarcasm, sexual and ethic references along with insults have no place in the
workforce especially using humor as a starting point.
• When using humor don’t overload your captive audience, just use enough
to grab their attention and humor yourself in an appropriate way that
everyone will understand and not find offensive.
• Keep your message in a professional, likable manor. If you don’t know what
to do stick to general ethics, morals and beliefs of the company.
REFERENCES
• Caudron, S. (1992). Humor is healthy in the workplace. Personnel Journal,
71(6), 63. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/219756444?accountid=28644
• McIlheran, J. (2006). The use of humor in corporate communication.
Corporate Communications, 11(3), 267-274.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13563280610680849
• Miller, K. (2015). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes.
Stamford, Connecticut: Cengage Learning
• Smith, J. W., & Khojasteh, M. (2014). Use of humor in the workplace.
International Journal of Management & Information Systems (Online), 18(1),
71-n/a. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1477974639?accountid=28644