Top Secret Tips for Successful Humor in the Workplace - Softcover

Berk PH.D. CNN BBC DNA, Ronald A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0982387105 ISBN 13: 9780982387108

Publisher: Coventry Press, 2009

Synopsis

"The definitive guide for injecting humor into the workplace. This is the ultimate step-by-step manual, designed to give you control over your work culture. With humor, laughter, and play, you can create a work environment that will attract the very best people and coax the very best performances out of them." KARYN BUXMAN, President, Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, and Publisher, The Journal of Nursing Jocularity. This is your manual for infusing humor into your business, corporation, college, or university to create a fun work environment. You are probably laughing right now and thinking: Fun in my organization? You must be kidding. You do not know the people I work with. They end sentences with prepositions all the time. It is written expressly for corporate leaders, such as HR directors, managers, and trainers, and college administrators and faculty. Unlike available books on the topic, this one reveals 45 tips that are critical to the success of humor in the workplace and in the classroom, K-college: choosing the right stuff, delivering humor like a pro, practicing your performance, considering the most important characteristics of your audience, and creating an atmosphere conducive to fun. The author presents specific guidelines for setting standards for appropriate humor and also out-of-bounds offensive humor, such as put-downs, sarcasm, ridicule, and sexual content and innuendo. In these turbulent financial times, can you afford to ignore the bottom line? Humor can boost productivity, increase retention, improve recruitment, decrease absenteeism, improve morale, and decrease stress, tension, and anxiety, plus 20 other individual and relational benefits. It is a WIN-WIN proposition. A BONUS CHAPTER is also included on how to create TV, movie, and Broadway parodies you can use in meetings, workshops, team-building exercises, and teaching and training.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald A. Berk, PhD, is Professor Emeritus, Biostatistics and Measurement, and former Assistant Dean for Teaching at The Johns Hopkins University, but he is also a humorist, premier international speaker, and author/editor of 13 books and 140 professional articles and book chapters. He received several teaching excellence awards during his 30 years of teaching. This is his third book on humor. The other two listed with Amazon are Professors Are from Mars, Students Are from Snickers and Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator. Top Secret Tips... draws on his research and experience in teaching more than 6000 students and presenting hundreds of keynotes and workshops to professors and students all over the U.S., Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf. It also reflects his daily challenge of using humor in a super-serious workplace for 30 years.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

SETTING STANDARDS FOR APPROPRIATE HUMOR

WHY DO YOU NEED TO SET STANDARDS FOR HUMOR? Why do you need to read this chapter before planning any type of humor activities in your business? The reason is (Are you ready? Do you want the truth? Can you handle the truth?): Humor in our culture is OUT OF CONTROL. What we see on TV, YouTube, and Comedy Central, and in movies, theaters, and comedy clubs is now stretching the limits of decency. Much of this material is blatantly offensive and would be inappropriate in the workplace. I am not saying this offensive humor is not funny; it just doesn't belong in your cubicle or boardroom.

Offensive Humor in the Culture

I think some comedy writers may have lost their minds. Has Hannibal Lecter dined on their brains? Why do so many stand-up comedians and writers for commercial media seem addicted to humor that pushes the boundaries of profanity, vulgarity, and sexuality, or is just plain out there to offend? Rather than reflecting prevailing norms and tastes, the humor in these products of our culture seems to be lowering them. The producers have trained consumers (a.k.a. employees out on the town) to accept progressively lower standards of language and behavior. This sinking enables their work to stand out in an increasingly crowded field. Profits outweigh whatever criticism results. Falling standards, consequently, become self-fulfilling. Each new breach of the existing standard establishes a new, lower standard that comes to be seen as the norm, at least until the next breach. (Note: This is not the type of standard you want to set in your organization.)

One example is gross-out body humor, which is breaking box-office records. A few years ago, a series of films from Hollywood began a trend that is still deeply entrenched in the movies. It seemed to start with There's Something About Mary and American Pie. Those flicks struck a nerve because there was enough grotesque, low humor to ensure that every single viewer would be shocked by something. Keenan Ivory Wayans, director of Scary Movie, feels that you have to stay one step ahead, that is, take it up a notch. You can't settle for less, not in the number of laughs or in the gross factor. You have to push the envelope because the audience expects it. And push he did in Scary Movie 2, 3, and 4.

Other popular movies responded to this challenge. One in particular was characterized by relentless obscenity and crude and explicit sexual innuendo. It included sex jokes involving a girl in a wheelchair, the molesting of children, an accident-prone child injured over and over again for laughs, and depictions of animal abuse and disgusting, gross-out comedy designed to offend everyone. Ads stated that the star of the movie "doesn't cross the line . . . He stomps on it!"

Setting the Standards

Now do you see the problem? Where do you draw the line, set the standard, for humor in your business? Despite the types of humor your employees might enjoy outside work, you need to determine the boundaries for what is appropriate and inappropriate in your work environment. Those boundaries must also be communicated to your employees. If humor is being used to foster casual banter among employees and customers, to lighten up serious meetings, and to facilitate learning and memory in workshops, you need to lay out the rules. The process includes five critical steps:

Edition details

• Publisher: Coventry Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0982387105
• ISBN 13: 9780982387108
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 132