CEO Corner: The business benefits of humor

By Kirk Shroyer

Laughter and a healthy sense of humor are among the most overlooked and important tools at the entrepreneur’s disposal. Plenty of studies show stress is released and reduced during times of laughter. There are health and business benefits to laughter.

Laughter can ease tension on presentations and meetings, and make you and your company more approachable.

Laughter is essential. It helps create a healthy company culture, keep the team on the leader’s side, reduce the stress of the rough patches, open new ways of thinking, enable trust and open sharing.

Humor makes things more fluid and less rigid.

Humor lets those around you know you are normal, and sometimes we simply take things too seriously.

Humor is a universal language that everyone understands.

Appropriate humor does not come at the cost of individuals, it is not critical, it is not off-color, it does not embarrass, no slapping, no dirty words, and it should not encourage inappropriate communication or behavior. Avoid politics, special interests, polarized opinions, religion, sex or anything that would make your audience uncomfortable.

Humor causes the teller to seem more self-assured. As long as a joke is appropriate, do not be afraid of a flop – or that not everyone thinks it is funny.

For humor to be effective you must know your audience. Context is everything; the jokes you tell your audience are not the jokes you tell your best friend after having a couple drinks.

A minimal number of very short personal stories are fine. But only those stories with a point – specifically in context to your audience – or only those stories that make a humorous point should be shared.

Being an entrepreneur without really focusing on the fundamental things is like a day without sunshine – or in other words, you know, night (Steve Martin).

Behind every successful entrepreneur is someone rolling their eyes (Jim Carrey). Arrogance isn’t cool. Passion is good. Great work ethic is very needed. Puffed up, pride, ego, out-of-whack self-image are not OK.

Sometimes it is a fine line between confidence and conceit. Strong leaders know how to make the audience feel good about themselves. Strong leaders know it is about others’ growth and opportunity. Let your audience know you are normal with a couple very short examples of how you are human, make mistakes, have fears.

When you arrive at the top and you are CEO, remember no one is too good to take out the garbage.

Authentic leaders modify their behavior to respond to the needs of their audience and situation while remaining true to who they are. They produce results and meaning by helping others be comfortable, be open, and allow innovative and creative thinking. This enables the team to create and embrace new ideas and maybe – just maybe – the CEO is not the only smart person in the universe.

Kirk Shroyer is a business coach and owner of the Maricopa Business Center.

This column appears in the June issue of InMaricopa.