How can humor be used to encourage creative thinking in your team?

Start your team meetings with a lighthearted joke or funny story. This will help to set a positive tone for the meeting and get your team in the right mindset for creativity. Encourage your team to share their own jokes and stories. This will help to create a more inclusive and fun working environment. Use humor to celebrate your team's successes. A shared laugh is a great way to reward your team for their hard work and creativity.

El sentido del HUMOR es fundamental en la vida. Pensaba mientras espero a mis hijas para llevarles al cole, lo importante que ha sido en mi vida el sentido del HUMOR. Recuerdo hace a?os que por motivos de mi trabajo entrevisté a cientos de personas. Cuando les preguntaba “?qué es lo que más valoras en una empresa?”. La respuesta casi siempre era la misma: “el buen ambiente de trabajo por encima incluso del salario”. Creo que tener sentido del humor es uno de los mejores recursos para contribuir a la convivencia laboral y personal más agradable. La madre Teresa de Calcuta decía que el peor defecto es el mal humor. Y recuerda que el HUMOR es una disposición del ánimo, no una “deposición”??. Disfruta de tu día con sentido del humor.

Humor is a powerful tool for creativity within a team. By bringing laughter into the work environment, you create a relaxed atmosphere where team members feel more comfortable expressing unconventional ideas. Humor can break down barriers, stimulate innovative thinking, and encourage a playful mindset. Also promotes a positive and open culture, where individuals are more likely to take risks and think outside the box. Humour helps with connections between team members, collaboration, and enhancing the overall creative process.

Love this one and is one of my favorite methods to use as it can create a more relaxed and playful atmosphere. When people feel relaxed and comfortable, they are more likely to take risks and try new ideas. I think it also works to break down barriers and encourage collaboration. Humor can help people to see things in new ways and to think outside the box.

If being funny is a part of your natural style, it can add warmth and lightness to a heavy topic, and can then allow the team gain a fresh and useful perspective on an otherwise serious issue.

Just like a comedian meticulously crafts a joke, we've learned to weave metaphors into our discussions. It's like turning a daunting puzzle into a friendly game, much like the challenge of untangling a colorful bowl of spaghetti. The beauty lies in the analogy—a tricky project becomes an adventurous quest for the perfect noodle! Suddenly, the overwhelming becomes the amusing, and our creative meetings turn into lively spaghetti parties! Humor and metaphors act like secret keys, unlocking barriers and creating an environment where everyone tosses their spaghetti ideas onto the table. It's not just a meeting; it's a shared experience of creativity.

Analogies can help draw meaningful comparisons between some not-so-obvious and related threads. These can help the team to detach from the predominant perspective on the issue at hand, and look at it through a different lens. Analogies also help in passing the message better, and facilitate understanding on the subject within the group.

Think of metaphors and analogies as the secret sauce in your communication recipe. It's like transforming a dull spreadsheet into a captivating story. Comparing concepts is akin to creating a spell that magically bridges understanding. Your team becomes the wizards, wielding insights with the charm of a well-crafted metaphor. Just be sure your metaphors sparkle like wizardry, staying clear, original, and fitting the magical context of your discussion. After all, in the realm of communication, you're the sorcerer conjuring understanding with linguistic enchantments.

Yes, terrific strategy and the last point about making sure they are relevant is key. Consider the diversity of your team when choosing metaphors and analogies and if you use one and see that not everyone gets it, try to find one that's more relatable and use the information to refine future choices.

Did you know that something along the lines of 80% of our language, the way we communicate with one another, is in metaphor? Metaphors paint the verbal picture. It is the difference between “man, it’s hot outside!”, and “It’s so hot out, my shoes melted in to the lava like side walk!” Metaphors also help us connect and relate closer to one another. Last but not least, metaphors can help us simplify something that is viewed as complex. Bringing relief to all those involved. Metaphors are the ????

Strategies that make us stop and think differently, like this one, definitely help open the doors to creativity. Helping people see situations from different angles and understand that something that at first seems bad could be good also helps people stay in solution mode when challenges arise.

Neuroscience studies show that the production of humorous ideas based on paradoxes, contradctions and the absurd in general, when approriate to the context and moment, not only are beneficial to the "audience" but also to the person producing them. "The ability to generate humor gives rise to positive emotions and thus facilitate the successful resolution of adversity." (Britsch et Al. - 2021). Neuroimaging results indicate that greater cognitive control abilities are associated with the increased activation of normally antagonistic regions of the brain that is behind the production of this kind of humor, that leads to "the generation of emotionally positive ideas and may represent an important neural pathway supporting mental health."

To get your creative geniuses to break out of the square, they first must know that it can be done. Using absurdities with paradoxes can give just the right amount of oxygen to move past convention. Sometimes thinking about the worst idea possible can indulge a flip strategy on the idea to make it work.

To create your own paradoxes and contradictions, consider applying the Benign Violation Theory, which says that humour occurs when all 3 are fulfilled: 1) There is violation, i.e. the situation goes against norm or our usual understanding 2) The situation is benign. You can create this harmlessness through time, space, relationships, or imagination. 3) Both 1 and 2 occur concurrently. To illustrate: In a Mr. Bean episode, he drove up to a red light. A cyclist got down, 'cheated' by pushing his bicycle past the red light without waiting. So Mr. Bean decides to do likewise. This scenario violates the norm. Yet, it is benign since we know Mr. Bean is imagined. Of course, audiences laughed also because of Rowan Atkinson's funny delivery.

Se debe tener un dominio más fino de estos recursos, son de mucho impacto pero cuidado con los da?os colaterales. Para saber si efectivamente la acción impacto debe medir el retorno, al momento de la reflexión.

In this day and age, despite how much I appreciate sarcastic humor at times, I would not bring it in to the workplace. It's too easy to be misunderstood and offend people. We have a wide range of cultures and generations in the workplace now and once someone has been offended it can be hard to win back that trust.

I would ONLY use sarcasm and irony in self-deprecating humor. Even then—it must be genuinely funny and make a point! It can work when you’re making light of how clueless, ineffective or in denial you USED to be. For instance, “I used to spend 3 hours creatively procrastinating each day before I picked up the phone and made a sales call!” It can be a way to gently hint that others may still be self-sabotaging in the same way… yet owning the behavior as your own past behavior rather than pointing fingers at others.

Nos dias atuais do pós-pandemia usar da técnica de sarcasmo e ironia em reuni?es ou em coaching pessoal pode ser além de um grande desafio um método perigoso. Mesmo sabendo que estimula a desenvolver a criatividade e a encontrar rotas alternativas para propor grandes solu??es, as pessoas e colaboradores de uma maneira geral est?o mais sensíveis e menos receptivos. Todavia, quando usado, pode transparecer um deboche ou uma afronta pouco positiva. Normalmente em grupos com menos envolvimento pessoal a técnica do sarcasmo tende gerar falta de integra??o e conflitos no contexto profissional. Use essa técnica somente em ambientes ou equipes que possuem um longo e afetivo envolvimento pessoal e profissional.

Laughing, whether a giggle or a belly laugh, stems from a shared perspective and connection. The values of humor, lightness, comic relief, and connection are held dear by many. When appropriate, I bring lightness to meetings—by sharing a relatable story of when I was stuck in a similar situation. Then we laugh together at the silliness, absurdity, or truth of what we humans make up and how one can stay in a fixed mindset. I also like using exaggerated questions: Are you going to throw the baby out with the bathwater? That sounds great now, but how will you feel in three months without a safety net? When team members loosen their grip on their point of view, they process new perspectives and creative ideas and solutions start to flow.

Sarcasm and irony should not be part of a leader’s repertoire. There are so many alternative ways to use humor to energize a group. One exemption only - making sarcastic or ironic comments about oneself.

I think that having a sense of humor and being able to to crack jokes or make sarcastic comments is great, BUT it’s super volatile. Volatile because some can use humor to undermine or be disrespectful without even realizing it’s happening. For example, you’re having a leadership team meeting and you have a new member on the team. The CEO is there and someone cracks a joke about “Tuesdays are great because the CEO is remote those days…” and everyone laughs or chuckles. For that new employee the first impression is huge. It completely takes away the respect for the authority of the CEO. There’s a time and a place for humor, but many don’t know how to wield that power. Hence, why I think it’s volatile. It’s a hard road to walk.

Practice the art of “reversals.” A classic comedian’s trick, if you will. Chris Rock’s “we need bullies” is a wonderful example. Basically, go from “This is a thing everyone agrees is bad and we should change it” to “Well, here’s the upside to this thing” Buckley’s Cough Syrup used a similar method. People weren’t buying their product so they asked why. “It tastes awful.” Buckley’s wound up using that to their advantage. “It tastes awful, and it works.” The rose to #1 in the market.

Vulnerability is such a valuable trait in a leader. Be self-deprecating about a time you were trying to be creative and it failed. This may immediately create a safe space for the team to think more creatively without the risk of embarrassment.

Je me remémore avec délice l'anecdote d'une jeune consultante évoluant dans un univers à la fois masculin et plus expérimenté. Son manager absent, elle se voit confier la direction d'une réunion avec un client éminent. à son entrée dans la salle, ce dernier, la salue à peine et lui suggère de lui préparer un café. Sans broncher, elle s'acquitte de cette tache. Quelque temps après, alors que le client s'enquiert de la présence du supérieur hiérarchique qu'il pense rencontrer, elle lui répond avec un sourire éclatant : "C'est moi !" Ce recadrage subtil mais diablement efficace lui a permis de reprendre le contr?le de la réunion avec brio. Se plier aux attentes pour mieux surprendre s'est avéré être une le?on d'humour magistrale !

Die F?higkeit, über sich selbst lachen zu k?nnen, ist ein entscheidender Schlüssel für Selbstführung und echte Beitr?ge und spürbare Wirksamkeit.