Leading with Laughter: The Power of Humor in Leadership | Paul Osincup | TEDxNapaValley

I want to start by addressing what I'm pretty sure everyone is thinking right now: man, that guy looks like Bruce Willis and Danny DeVito had a kid. Yes, thanks. I actually wish it wasn't so much fun. I have always done it. I loved to joke, not necessarily always at my expense. I mean, like anyone else, I was a dumb, dumb kid, but eventually it's time to grow up, get serious and get a job, and I did. I got my master's degree. I got a great job appointed in the administration of a large university. I will never forget my first day I walked into my own office and my own administrative assistant had placed a cup of coffee next to the computer and the newspaper on my desk so clearly for me. my own head at this point I'm a big deal now, don't let me fool you, although I mean the job itself was interim, which means it's your job now, but if you suck, we'll replace you, so I knew that.

I had to make him have an impact early on in that position. I had the opportunity to go to an out-of-state conference with seven other colleagues in Wisconsin with seven other colleagues from the institution. I thought this is a great opportunity for me to get to meet these people, they will come back and tell my bosses how great I am and I'm sure I'll keep that job for a long time, so on the last day of the conference we had time plenty before a flight left, so the eight of us went to a mall, everyone split up and went to the department store they wanted to shop at, except me.

I wasn't feeling very well and maybe too many fried cheese curds or something the night before we were in Wisconsin, so I went to the department store that I was sure had a bathroom and a little later a little later I'm leaving the stand where I was I stopped because I heard a strange sound it was like clip-clop clip-clop and I thought that's a strange sound to hear in a men's bathroom that sounds like high heels and then I heard a voice from outside saying: "It's okay, Barbara, we'll wait for you out here" and I thought, oh man, is she going to I feel silly when she realizes she's in the wrong bathroom, but then I think about my hasty entry into the bathroom and I think you know what I don't I remember seeing no urinals on my way and I started to sweat a little. of freaking out and then I really thought about it that morning when I was sitting in the lobby with all my new colleagues who I'm trying to impress sitting in the hotel lobby no joke there was a news story that day about a guy who had been arrested in an airport in Florida for going into people's bathrooms, so now I'm kind of freaking out, wondering what I did.

They will arrest me here while a lion has formed in the bathroom and there are only two bathrooms, there is one. I'm in and I guess Barbara is next to me so I'm like one of my options here. I knew I had to wait until the line had cleared and I could get out of there, but in the meantime, what if someone knocked on the door and said hey, is everything okay there? I'm like, oh, just a second, no, I just like to own it and be like, wait a minute, I'm busy, you know, like, oh my gosh.

I hope he's okay, but I knew I had to take my time waiting until the line cleared and then I ran out of there as fast as I could without being detected as I ran out, although there is a little boy walking towards the bathrooms and he He looks at me and I look at him and I was like, yeah, make your own decisions, kid, and I run out and meet my colleagues and they're all excited about the clothes they have, you know, they're like, oh, me. I have this cute tank top and these capris. Paul would give you and I was like don't I get arrested but I didn't have to tell him what happened but I did and they didn't have to laugh at me the whole way home. but they did and they should and to me, but I don't think it costs me credibility or professional respect in a weird way, it brought us closer.

I have always been interested in role,

humor

and not taking ourselves too seriously. plays into our interaction with other people we live in a world right now where interacting with other people is becoming optional and people long for leaders and mentors who they can relate to and who are imperfect and God forbid a little silly sometimes I know some of you like stories and anecdotes but others think yeah okay man I need to see some graphs and charts of concrete data so I prepared one for you every presentation should have a mandatory chart but in my experience , the seriousness with which other people take us is inversely related. to how seriously we take ourselves, I mean, if we can't laugh at ourselves, there is always someone there to do it for us and today people are turning their backs on impersonal and bureaucratic management and

leadership

;

In fact, sixty percent of Millennials are leaving their jobs. within the first three years because they feel that it is simply not a good culture fit for them and when asked to describe the characteristic traits of the best leaders in their organizations, terms such as work ethic and sense of

humor

are mentioned with double frequency than any other. trait or characteristic now shouldn't be a big surprise because some of the greatest leaders in history didn't take themselves too seriously. Abraham Lincoln is a great example. He was giving a speech and someone interrupted him and shouted in the crowd.

If you're two-faced Abe Lincoln, he might get angry, yell something in response, or just pretend like he didn't hear it, but when they yelled, you're two-faced Abe Lincoln, he just smiled and said: If I had two faces, do you really think I'd choose to wear um, everything points and that's funny, I mean, it's funny for obvious reasons, too soon I say, I know it's only been 150 years, you like to take it easy on Abraham Lincoln, man, but I didn't say it, he did it because it did not. It doesn't take seriously the fact that humor reduces social distance between people and makes leaders seem more approachable and less stressful, and it's also great for organizations.

Humor boosts morale and productivity and sparks creativity and confidence, but it may be one of the best things. What humor does for us is that it often leads to

laughter

, and it turns out that

laughter

is actually good for us. Laughter actually increases blood flow in our body, reduces muscle tension and laughter actually massages our internal organs. I don't even know what it does. Hell, that means, but that sounds great in the meantime, since I got internal organ massages, ha ha ha, oh, I think that was my pancreas, very nice, okay, and you know, laughter actually burns calories.

You're burning calories right now. A full minute of laughter. could have a similar effect on your body as 10 minutes on a rowing machine, yeah, now everyone's going to go home and say, "I'm going to go to Nick Donald's," it's good for us, it's good for us and You don't even have to really laugh. to get those physiological benefits because your body doesn't know the difference between a fake laugh and a real laugh and coincidentally I don't know the difference between a fake laugh and a real app either, so if I say something that's not so funny, I feel free of just laughing anyway for your own benefit yeah, great example, great example from the beginning, very good, oh, now you're just bragging, uh, but laughter is really good for us and you know who understands that, our children, how many of you have children or was I once a child Oh, some of you are fine, some people are still like me, no.

I was born an adult straight out of the womb and went to my first board meeting, then took an afternoon spin class, but for those of us who have kids or were kids, you might notice that kids laugh a lot more often than we. You know, the average four-year-old lasts 300 times a day, the average 40-year-old, and even little babies laugh, which blows my mind because I'm like a baby, why? You laugh, you don't even know what's funny yet right, but they must laugh because it naturally feels good to them, at least that's what I tell myself because I walk up and look at a baby and then they just start to laugh and me. "Yes, they must laugh because it feels good or I have met many incredibly rude babies, but children love to laugh and there is something really cool about being childish and finding 300 things a day to laugh at, in fact, I was showing it to them to a friend, you know, if you look up the word childish in a thesaurus, you actually get the word clever and she says I am and I think it's naively I don't know, so I hummed in yourself means the same thing, it.

Whatever, okay, I like witty, let's go with genius, okay, okay, but it's not just kids, it's not just kids that love to laugh, in fact, in your book, top five regrets of the dying, a muscular hospice nurse, she says that One of the most common regrets of people in hospice is that they wish they had stopped pretending to other people in their lives so often and that they wish. simply having laughed more often and had more nonsense in their lives again. I work at the University and then I even got promoted and in fact that year the Vice President asked me if I would host the University Staff Awards Banquet, which of course I agreed to do dressed as a fictional star character. of 70s college basketball, because why not who cares about life? like me is too short we all have a childish spark inside us that we just need to let out more often a witty nonsense that is a gift to the people around us in our lives that says "hey, when you're with me, you don't" .

I don't have to be perfect and serious all the time and when you're around me we can have fun and make mistakes and be ourselves because in the end life is too important to be taken seriously.