A sense of humour in business and in the office

Having a sense of humour in business guarantees greater chances of building a career: that is what was discovered by a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in an article discussing the undeniable benefits of having a sense of humour in the office.  Be careful though:  according to the same analysis, ambiguous friendships can result in inappropriate jokes, with the risk of repercussions which, from a professional point of view, could have negative effects.

Humour in business is more effective the greater the chances of having good skills and being self-confident.  On the contrary, humour in business is less effective the less chance there is of being able to demonstrate one’s skills and abilities.  This is due to the simple fact that humour cannot be reduced to mere frivolity, but represents an essential tool in determining the hierarchical pecking order present in any group of people.

In order to better understand this reasoning, we might consider two very different examples:  firstly the ex CEO of Twitter Dick Costolo (who built a career on his humour), and secondly the former Public Relations Manager at Iac, Justine Sacco (who was abruptly fired following the publication of a joke in poor taste on one of his social network profiles).

According to experiments carried out during the study, a strong link has been demonstrated between people’s sense of humour and their social status:  as previously mentioned, in reality, a simple joke reflects the teller’s confidence and may improve that person’s standing, but a nasty joke, despite showing the same self-confidence of the person (who dared to tell it) can have a negative effect on their standing.

When does humour in business become dangerous?  In the precise moment that people start to tell jokes which are boring, too risqué or for any reason inappropriate.  Of course this may change slightly if, despite these jokes being of dubious taste, the people listening laugh anyway: in this case any damage to one’s career is reduced but still present.

According to researchers, the ideal is to be very careful when using humour in the office, especially when dealing with people we don’t know well.

Translated by Joanne Beckwith