Humour and Psychological Safety

Guest Post By Jason Rawding

Humour and Psychological Safety 

Being funny at work can feel a bit risky – especially in front of a group, or in an email that many people will see.  In trying to make others laugh, we are taking an interpersonal risk, and it’s that very feeling of risk which can signal psychological safety – or lack of it. I find that teams and workplaces that enjoy comedy together show greater trust, openness and collaboration.

We can create a virtuous cycle between the two – good natured humour and comedy will cultivate psychological safety and vice versa.

I encourage teams to incorporate humour at work and I don’t just mean having a giggle with your work bestie – which is awesome by the way – I mean incorporating humour into your actual work like presentations, meetings, comms, emails, webinars and campaigns.  

This is paramount for leaders and teams responsible for culture – comedy is a great way to improve employee engagement.  It potentially helps leaders feel more authentic and some research also suggests that shared humour and laughter is positively correlated with team performance.  

Barriers to Humour at Work

That being said – I have identified three main barriers which might make the idea of promoting comedy at work feel uncomfortable.

1. Professionalism – an outdated concept which makes us think we should be only serious at work and project a certain image of ourselves in order to appear competent. Aside from this charade being exhausting – it is not compatible with team collaboration, innovation and job satisfaction.
2. Fear of Failure – In my workshops and conversations about humour, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: people often put way too much pressure on themselves to be funny and worry if they are funny enough. Changing perspectives and approaching comedy as being creative can actually help to improve wit by removing unnecessary pressure to be funny.
3. Inclusion  – A common concern with workplace humour is the fear of crossing a line, the old “I don’t want to end up in HR” feeling. This often stems from the belief that comedy needs a victim. In reality, the most effective humour doesn’t target anyone at all.

These reasons can make infusing comedy into our work feel problematic – but we can overcome them by simply understanding more about humour.

Humour Theory

My approach is to teach people about the theoretical side of comedy.

The main types of humour relate to the two theories of superiority and incongruity.  

1. Superiority Theory

The superiority theory states that we laugh when we have a sense of pride or think we’re better than someone or something.  

This is an outdated general theory but it is a type of humour which has a broad spectrum – some superiority humour is unacceptable and inappropriate but other aspects can be playful – it all depends on the level of threat.

Banter is one form of superiority humour that can be used playfully as part of social bonding – but it’s important to have an awareness about other people’s comfort levels, and knowing it’s a form of superiority humour and can therefore exacerbate power gradients is important.

As an example of how banter and other forms of superiority humour often miss the mark, I remember the first humour workshop I ever delivered over Zoom.  I was running the workshop on behalf of a wellbeing agency whose client had about forty employees and I was feeling quite nervous beforehand. 

As participants started trickling into the virtual session – the guy from the wellbeing agency started to take the mickey out of something in my background.  It was something to do with a plant looking unhealthy and how I had neglected it.

Whilst that’s obviously quite tame and was hardly threatening to me personally, because I already felt a bit tense and it was directed at me in front of a group who I didn’t know – it made me feel even more flustered. It wasn’t a great way to start the workshop.  Plus – no one found it funny anyway.  

Banter is often best kept private between two people who trust each other – not directed at someone in front of a group.  In my example, if a close friend had made a similar remark in private, it would probably have been way funnier.

A more positive example is to do with my neighbour, who’s become a good friend.  We play tennis together and sometimes go to the pub.

A few months ago, for some reason, we drifted apart.  I started playing tennis with other people and we stopped talking.  When we did see each other it was awkward and this went on for about three months. Until just recently – we started playing tennis again and we are back to normal and one of the main signs that things are now OK between us is that we occasionally poke fun at each other.

Humans are weird.

The closer and more trusting the relationship – the more acceptable light-hearted banter becomes – but awareness is needed to avoid banter becoming humiliation – as mentioned before, my general rule for this is to keep banter private.

Self-deprecating humour would also fall under the superiority category but it reverses expectations and turns the joke on yourself.  This can be used strategically by leaders to come across as approachable – but again, having awareness is good so you don’t inadvertently damage your own self confidence.

2. Incongruity Theory

The other main type of humour which I prefer and promote is rooted in the incongruity theory.  It involves highlighting or creating unexpected and absurd moments and laughing at the folly of life and human nature.

There is some absolutely sensational comedy being produced by content creators on social media which harnesses the absurdity of life.

Notice there is no victim to incongruity comedy.  We simply observe unusual aspects of life and add our own twist of absurdity.

You can harness this type of comedy in your line of work.  You can either take mundane and ordinary aspects of work and blend in some absurdity or spot unexpected moments and add a dose of quirkiness.

Incongruous humour has four key ingredients; unexpectedness, absurdity, relevance and non-threatening. I help my clients harness this type of humour in my workshops.

Release the Beast 

A great way to unleash comedy at work and this is a particularly powerful way of creating psychological safety, involves sharing funny personal stories which combine empathy and vulnerability.

A ‘beast’ is an unlucky or embarrassing experience you later laugh about.  At the time, these experiences can feel awkward but they make fantastic stories and are a powerful way to connect with colleagues. There’s also some fascinating research showing how this exercise helps to boost creativity and reduce self-censorship.

This is one of the easiest ways to access and release comedy which has additional benefits of addressing failure in a light hearted way – helping foster psychological safety.  

Improving storytelling skills combined with other tactics can harness these stories into a powerful employee engagement strategy which is at the core of the work I do with MyBeast.

Using Humour More Strategically

Instead of just relying on humour to arise spontaneously, I believe organisations should employ humour and comedy as tactics to create human-centred cultures.

We can create a virtuous cycle between psychological safety and good natured humour which has the potential to improve employee engagement, innovation and wellbeing.

If a human approach to your line of work and company culture is important to you – then comedy should be too.

Thanks for reading! 

Further Reading and References

Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Allen, J. A. (2014). How fun are your meetings? Investigating the relationship between humor patterns in team interactions and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(6), 1278–1287. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038083

Interested in learning more?

We have a Humour and Psychological Safety open enrolment workshop in the planning – contact us to be added to the ‘first to find out’ list and we’ll let you know once we get dates confirmed.

About our guest writer

Our guest writer Jason Rawding is an expert in all things comedy and humour, and a firm believe in embracing the funny side of life. He believes that achieving great things and enjoying good (inclusive) humour go hand in hand.