{"id":40715,"date":"2025-09-25T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=40715"},"modified":"2025-09-27T04:49:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T11:49:54","slug":"why-you-seriously-need-to-stop-trying-to-be-funny-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-you-seriously-need-to-stop-trying-to-be-funny-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you seriously need to stop trying to be funny at work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peter McGraw<\/a>, University of Colorado Boulder<\/a><\/em>; Adam Barsky<\/a>, The University of Melbourne<\/a><\/em>, and Caleb Warren<\/a>, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can you get ahead in your career and still enjoy the ride?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One solution offered in business books<\/a>, LinkedIn posts<\/a> and team-building manuals is to use humor<\/a>. Sharing jokes, sarcastic quips, ironic memes and witty anecdotes, the advice goes, will make you more likable, ease stress, strengthen teams, spark creativity and even signal leadership potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are<\/a> professors of marketing<\/a> and management<\/a> who study humor and workplace dynamics. Our own research \u2013 and a growing body of work by other scholars<\/a> \u2013 shows that it\u2019s harder to be funny than most people think. The downside of cracking a bad joke is often larger than what you might gain by landing a good one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, you don\u2019t have to tell sidesplitting jokes to make humor work for you. You can learn to think like a comedian instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humor is risky business<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Comedy works by bending and breaking norms \u2013 and when those rules aren\u2019t broken in just the right way, it\u2019s more likely to harm your reputation than to help your team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We developed the \u201cbenign violation theory<\/a>\u201d to explain what makes things funny \u2013 and why attempts at humor so often backfire, especially in the workplace. Essentially, humor arises when something is both wrong and OK at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People find jokes funny when they break rules while seeming harmless. Miss one of those ingredients when you tell a joke and your audience won\u2019t appreciate it. When it\u2019s all benign and there\u2019s no violation, you get yawns. When it\u2019s all violation and not benign, you could end up triggering outrage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard enough to get laughs in the darkness of a comedy club. Under fluorescent office lights, that razor-thin line becomes even harder to walk. What feels wrong but OK to one colleague can feel simply wrong to another, especially across differences in seniority, culture, gender or even the mood they\u2019re in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An advertising study<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In our experiments, when everyday people are asked to \u201cbe funny,\u201d most attempts land flat or cross lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a humorous caption contest with business students, described in Peter McGraw\u2019s book on global humor practices, \u201cThe Humor Code<\/a>,\u201d the captions weren\u2019t particularly funny to begin with. However, the ones that were rated by judges as the most funny were often also rated the most distasteful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being funny without being offensive is of paramount importance. This is particularly true for women, as a robust literature shows women face harsher backlash than men for behavior seen as offensive or norm-violating such as expressing anger<\/a>, acting dominantly<\/a> or even \u201cmaking asks<\/a>\u201d in negotiations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might end up getting no respect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Research by other scholars who examine leader and manager behavior in organizations tells a similar story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one study, managers who used humor effectively were seen as more confident and competent<\/a>, boosting their status. Yet when their attempts misfired, those same managers lost status and credibility. Other researchers have found<\/a> that failed humor doesn\u2019t just hurt a manager\u2019s status \u2013 it also makes employees less likely to respect that manager, seek their advice, or trust their leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when jokes land, humor can backfire. In one study<\/a>, marketing students instructed to write \u201cfunny\u201d copy for advertisements wrote ads that were funnier, but also less effective, than students instructed to write \u201ccreative\u201d or \u201cpersuasive\u201d copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another study found that bosses who joke too often push employees into pretending to be amused<\/a>, which drains energy, reduces job satisfaction and increases burnout. And the risks are higher for women<\/a> due to a double standard. When women use humor in presentations, they are often judged as being less capable and having lower status than men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bottom line is that telling a great joke rarely gets you a promotion. And cracking a bad one can jeopardize your job \u2013 even if you\u2019re not a talk show host<\/a> who earns a living making people laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flip the script<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Instead of trying to be funny on the job, we recommend that you focus on what we call \u201cthinking funny\u201d \u2013 as described in another of McGraw\u2019s books, \u201cShtick to Business<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe best ideas come as jokes,\u201d advertising legend David Ogilvy once said<\/a>. \u201cTry to make your thinking as funny as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Ogilvy wasn\u2019t telling executives to crack jokes in meetings. He was encouraging employees to think like comedians by flipping expectations, leveraging their networks and finding their niche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comics often lead you one way and then flip the script. Comedian Henny Youngman, a master of one-liners, famously quipped<\/a>, \u201cWhen I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up \u2026 reading.\u201d The business version of this convention is to challenge an obvious assumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Patagonia\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Buy This Jacket\u201d campaign, which the outdoor gear company rolled out Black Friday in 2011 as a full-page ad in The New York Times, paradoxically boosted sales<\/a> by calling out overconsumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To apply this method, pick a stale assumption your team holds, such as that adding features to a product always improves it or that having more meetings will lead to smoother coordination, and ask, \u201cWhat if the opposite were true?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll discover options that standard brainstorming misses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Create a chasm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When comedian Bill Burr has his fans in stitches<\/a>, he knows some people won\u2019t find his jokes funny \u2013 and he doesn\u2019t try to win them over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve observed that many of the best comics don\u2019t try to please everyone. They succeed by deliberately narrowing their audience. And we also find that businesses that do the same build stronger brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, when Nebraska\u2019s tourism board embraced \u201cHonestly, it\u2019s not for everyone<\/a>\u201d in a 2019 campaign, targeting out-of-state visitors, web traffic jumped 43%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people want hot tea. Others want iced tea. Serving warm tea satisfies no one. Likewise, you can succeed in business by deciding whom your idea is for, and whom it\u2019s not for, then tailoring your product, policy or presentation accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooperate to innovate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stand-up may look like a solo act. But comics depend on feedback \u2013 punch-ups from fellow comedians and reactions from audiences \u2013 iterating jokes in the same way lean startups may innovate new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building successful teams at work means listening before speaking, making your partners look good, and balancing roles. Improv teacher Billy Merritt has described<\/a> three types of improvisers. Pirates are risk-takers. Robots are structure builders. Ninjas are adept at both, taking risks and building structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A team designing a new app, for instance, needs all three: Pirates to propose bold features, robots to streamline the interface, and ninjas to bridge gaps. Empowering everyone in these roles leads to braver ideas with fewer blind spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gifts aren\u2019t universal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Telling someone to \u201cbe funny\u201d is like telling them to \u201cbe musical.\u201d Many of us can keep a beat, but few have what it takes to become rock stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why we argue that it\u2019s smarter to think like a comedian than to try to act like one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By reversing assumptions, cooperating to innovate, and creating chasms, professionals can generate fresh solutions and stand out \u2013 without becoming an office punchline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter McGraw<\/a>, Professor of Marketing and Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder<\/a><\/em>; Adam Barsky<\/a>, Associate Professor of Management, The University of Melbourne<\/a><\/em>, and Caleb Warren<\/a>, Professor of Marketing, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter McGraw, University of Colorado Boulder; Adam Barsky, The University of Melbourne, and Caleb Warren, University of Arizona How can you get ahead in your career and still enjoy the ride? One solution offered in business books, LinkedIn posts and team-building manuals is to use humor. Sharing jokes, sarcastic quips, ironic memes and witty anecdotes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":40716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,826,7,1862,42,10,296,36,38],"tags":[16945,7014,7269,885,891,886,860,184,16944,7683,471],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40717,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40715\/revisions\/40717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}