Take My Mic, Please - You Should Be Funny At Work

I've wanted to be an entertainer since I was probably an infant. As a very young boy, I was a fashion model at a local department store one time. I told other people's jokes onstage at a talent show once (I didn't know you weren't supposed to do it). I performed in several school bands, faking my way through (I couldn't read sheet music, but I played by ear rather well). Later, I formed crappy rock bands to try to impress girls (middling success). And I gave my first attempts at talks in 2006, my first paid gig in 2007.

My role as an executive baffles me every day. Like a lot of people, I wonder, "Should I really be doing this?" Well, I mean a lot of people wonder if Chris Brogan should be an executive. Trust me, the jury is still out.

The topic today: should you (and I mean me, but okay, you too) be funny at work?

The Case AGAINST Being Funny at Work

There is no case against being funny at work. You know who loves a good joke? People on a cancer ward. I'm NOT joking. (Weird - I'm writing about joking so I have to be explicit when I'm trying to be serious.) I know there are some serious moments at work. You know what my company tends to do with me when something really serious is going on? Nothing. They trust that I can navigate and self censor when something's delicate.

I'm just joking. They tell me don't say anything trying to be funny. (Little do they know, I'm always simply TRYING to be funny.)

Oh. By the way, get it? The avocado is holding the case against being funny at work.

Why Do I Believe Humor is Important At Work?

Look, there are serious matters that come up. For everything else, there's Mastercard. Oh wait. But MOST of work is just shenanigans. I'm in a group chat on Slack right now where we're discussing how best to market the stuff we sell. The conversation is (and I'm not making this up) about whether we call them "apps" or "tools" or just "product." It's like when someone introduced me at an advertising party as "inventory." Literally. She said, "This is Chris. He's got lots of inventory."

Humor is important at work because so much of work is stupid. It's necessary and stuff, but we talk about the dumbest things. And sometimes, for no particular reason, we take it very very seriously when it doesn't have to be that way.

I take making my CEO successful very seriously. I take encouraging leadership at every level very seriously. BUT you want to know what I do? I tell my CEO the worst jokes pretty much every day. I tell people that I talk with or coach that I'm only doing it so that they'll make me rich one day. I tell them I'm counting on them to make me rich enough to buy a pony.

The Problem With Humor at Work

Mike Birbiglia said it best (one word of this is NSFW):

This is from Thank God for Jokes, two specials ago on Netflix.

That's the big problem with humor. A lot of people are really bad at trying to be funny. We joke about the wrong things. Sometimes, we do it because we think we're giving someone well-natured ribbing, but I can tell you for sure that because there's always a tiny bit of truth in a lot of people's attempts at humor, it rarely goes over well.

My own personal style of jokes is to say the thing I absolutely shouldn't say. In a company offsite with lots of really important people, my CEO said some really poignant things about why it's important to build the right team around what we're doing, and how important it is to have great colleagues to work with.

I stepped in and said, "And because he can't say it, I'll add - 'look - it sucks to work with dicks. No one wants to work with someone who's a dick. So let's not hire any dicks, shall we?'"

Clearly, I don't mean the term as a reference to male body parts. Other terms I've used when trying to be more politically correct (bwahahahaa) are "jerkfaces," "poo poo heads," and so on.

Again, my thing is to say what should NOT be said. Why? Because it's stress relief.

Ohhhhhh. There it is.

Humor is a Free Release Valve

There are two great things about throwing something funny into an otherwise serious (but doesn't have to be) situation. One is that it builds a free release valve. I was at an offsite training and we're working on this really really important timeline. And to do it, we have these MASSIVE whiteboards, and little magnetic cards that you can write on and stick onto the whiteboard in various orders. The cards say things like, "Prepare public relations materials" and things like that.

There were also several blanks with dry erase markers. So, naturally, I had to write "updog" on one and stick it on the whiteboard. To my pure joy, NO ONE fell for the joke, which made it even better for me. I'll show you why.

The show "What We Do in the Shadows" is a mockumentary following around a house full of vampires. Colin Robinson (featured in this little video clip) is an "energy vampire." The joke being he's the guy who drains the energy in the room by saying dumb things, arguing for no reason, etc. He tries for an entire episode to get someone to complete the updog joke.

See what I mean? This is stupid. But because I put it on the board, over a dozen really important people read the card, laughed, and refused to play along with my dumb joke, which in turn made ME laugh.

So, humor is a relief. That's why we LOVE to laugh. Humor release endorphins. It's a free hit of a drug our body loves! (And dogs can't sniff and report.)

The OTHER thing humor does is it primes our brains.

Humor as a Brain Tool

We humans love to be clever. We love it. Do you know that the prevailing theory on why songs get stuck in our head is as follows: we'll hear part of a song but it gets cut off or we get distracted. Our brain (against our will) finishes that little bit of the song and kapow. It's locked in our head for days. This assumes you know the song in the first place. If I play you some music from The Hu (no, not those British people), you wouldn't likely finish it because you don't know many Mongolian throat singing metal band numbers. (No, really.)

Humor is an opportunity for your brain to be clever. But there's a trick to it. If I tell one joke, it usually catches you off guard and you might or might not laugh. The trick is this: whatever I say NEXT you'll quite likely pay more attention to because your brain is like a clapping child in that moment: "Again. Again. Do the thing again."

(Provided I'm vaguely funny.)

That's why my speeches for years have involved comedy bits. I want you to laugh THEN think. It's my own personal Mary Poppins drug deal(spoonful of sugar, etc).

Do It Your Own Way

I'll end this somewhat lengthy message in a moment. (Sorry. I woke up with this stuck in my head and wanted to write it out. Blame my CEO for boy-giggling at me earlier today when he realized he needed my help deleting a LinkedIn post. Why was he laughing? Because he knew exactly who to call - the guy in the company who's been asked to delete the most LinkedIn posts.)

One very important detail about comedy/humor: you've got to be your own person. My friend Cody plays his role as the "poor southern boy without a lot of smarts" who is obviously smarter than a Fiat stuffed with raccoons. My friend Kerry's humor is acerbic (which is not a foreign language). My favorite comedians run a very wide gamut from the above-mentioned Birbiglia to the absolutely don't look him up Anthony Jeselnik. (Absolutely don't look him up.)

You have to be your own kind of funny. And here's the truth: you really have to know when to be funny and when not. The answer is: be funny more than you think, but never when you shouldn't be. Easy, right? Why do you think they pay people with C-level titles to get me to delete my posts?

Knock knock.

Chris...