Humour, Seriously
Why Humour Is A Superpower At Work And In Life
Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas
Having read it
★★★★☆
A pretty decent read with a well-presented approach, quite a few funny passages and reported moments I could relate to and, to cap it all, even though they were at the bottom, some entertaining footnotes!
A good passage
Remember, the bar for humour in the business world is extremely low. The goal isn’t to elicit, raucous, rolling-on-the-floor laughter, it’s simply to create a moment of connection. Often, all it takes is a mindset of levity to transform a relationship or moment.
A second good passage
[...] of course, plenty of pain becomes funny only after a certain amount of time has passed. The farther we get from the event itself, the easier it is to gain some perspective and see the humour in it.
Like the old saying goes: Comedy equals tragedy plus time.
A third good passage
Using humour in the face of failure can help us manage our emotions so we can learn from our mistakes and bounce back quickly, decreasing the transition time from one failure to the next attempt. As leadership expert Dana Bilky Asher writes: ‘We cannot lead if we cannot learn. And yet, our capacity to take in and process new information – to generate new insights and true growth – shuts down in response to the fear of letting people down. Laughter opens us up again.’