Steve Cody, 57, is co-founder and managing partner of Peppercom, a mid-size communications agency based in New York. He’s also an amateur stand-up comedian, performing frequently at the New York Comedy Club.
“About five years ago I was suffering through an endless business dinner, when the guy next to me said he performed stand-up when not doing IT,” recalls Cody. Intrigued, he decided to take a course and start performing himself. Soon he noticed a happy crossover to his professional life, where he was employing humor more often, listening more intently to clients and becoming better at holding audiences’ attention during presentations.
Cody wanted his employees to reap the business benefits of comedy too, so he launched a 90-minute comedy workshop for his new recruits and staffers to attend every two months. He says it infuses them with confidence, bonds them with coworkers, teaches the nuances of reading an audience and environment, and livens up their presentations. The new refreshed and fun culture is also helping him secure business. “It’s a point of differentiation,” he says. “When all things are equal, clients will pick the firm they want to work with.”
Are funny people more successful in business? Old-school HR people are quick to say that humor is dangerous in the office: It too easily offends or falls flat. However, researchers and companies alike are beginning to tout the individual and company-wide benefits of a well-placed punch line. Those looking for an edge may want to think more critically about their funny bones.
“Humor has three primary impacts: cognitive, emotional and physiological,” says psychologist Steven Sultanoff, Ph.D., former president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. He explains that workplace humor may offer some perspective on a situation, which helps people process it. After a company leader sent a memo saying they needed to “shrink” a difficult problem, Sultanoff recalls, one employee posted a tiny copy of the memo on a community bulletin board. Also, because we can only feel one emotion at a time, humor creates an emotional lift by displacing frustration with the joy of the joke and a physiological reduction of stress hormones.
Sultanoff says that people who are funny likely will be perceived as more enjoyable and as better employees because they are in fact more successful. “If someone is using humor then they are connecting with people and building relationships, which creates opportunities that other people may not have.”