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Dr Austin Tay is an organizational psychologist. In each podcast episode, he will discuss work-related issues that matter in the workplace. Through the lens of a psychologist, Dr Austin will provide tips and advice to his listeners to help them navigate the complex world of work. Email psychchat@omnipsi.com or send via Twitter @psych_chat to send your comments or suggestions.
Dr Austin Tay is the founder of Omnipsi Consulting (www.omnipsi.com).
OmniPsi Consulting specialises in executive coaching, leadership assessment and development, career transitioning, training and workplace intervention.
Welcome to PsychChat, where we explore the psychology behind what really works at work. I'm Dr. Austin Tay, and today we're discussing something that might initially seem trivial, but it's actually very serious business.
Imagine this: You're in a tense quarterly review meeting. The figures are declining. The atmosphere is bleak. Then your CEO leans back and says, "Well, at least we're all consistently disappointing together—that's team cohesion, right?" The room bursts into nervous laughter. Suddenly, everyone can breathe again. Your first thought? Either "Thank God someone broke the tension" or "Is this really the time for jokes?"
That moment of humour might have revealed more about your organisation than any PowerPoint presentation ever could. And the leader who made that joke? They could be wielding one of the most sophisticated leadership tools available.
Today, we're diving into what I call "the humour advantage"—why the leaders who know when to laugh might actually understand their organisations better than anyone else.
THE SURPRISING SCIENCE
For decades, humour at work was viewed as unprofessional and frivolous—more suitable for a holiday party than a boardroom. Yet, researchers have quietly studied workplace humour for the past 40 years, and what they have found is impressive.
Richard Branson once said, "A little humour is good for the soul." And Dwight Eisenhower observed, "A sense of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done."
They weren't just being folksy. They were onto something backed by serious science.
Studies demonstrate that humour not only makes work more enjoyable but also produces tangible business benefits: enhanced team performance (Mao et al., 2017), stronger group cohesion (Holmes & Marra, 2006), increased creativity and innovation, greater employee resilience (Vetter & Gockel, 2016), and more effective leadership overall (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012).
But not all humour is created equally. The kind of humour you employ as a leader can either strengthen your team or weaken it.
THE FOUR TYPES OF HUMOR
Researchers identified four main styles of humour that people use (Martin et al., 2003). As a leader, understanding which one you default to matters.
Affiliative humour is the good stuff. It's inclusive, builds relationships, and brings people together. Think of it as humour that says "we're all in this together."
Self-enhancing humour is the ability to see the funny side of stressful situations. It's a coping mechanism that genuinely works. These are the leaders who can laugh at themselves when things go wrong.
Aggressive humour is a response to problems. It involves sarcasm that stings, teasing that wounds, and jokes made at someone else's expense. It might provoke a laugh, but it damages trust.
Self-defeating humour occurs when you make yourself the punchline to seek approval. Seems harmless, right? But as a leader, it can damage your credibility.
Here's what's interesting: research by Kong and colleagues in 2019 shows it's not about being a naturally funny person. It's about how you deliberately use humour in your leadership.
A meta-analysis by Mesmer-Magnus and colleagues in 2012 validated these patterns across numerous studies. Using positive humour styles appropriately has been associated with improved leader-member relationships, increased employee trust, reduced status gaps, better psychological wellbeing, and higher work engagement and performance (Tremblay, 2017).
Leaders who rely on negative humour styles? The opposite effects occur. Damaged relationships. Lower trust. Disengaged teams.
Humour is an incredibly powerful tool, but you need to know which end to hold.
THE PARADOX DETECTOR
Now here's my favourite part of the research. Researchers Hatch and Ehrlich discovered something fascinating back in 1993: spontaneous humour in organisations often arises during moments of contradiction, incongruity, or tension. When people tell jokes at work, they're often highlighting something deeper—some paradox or ambiguity lurking beneath the surface. Let me give you an example from their research.
They studied a management team dealing with a security issue. The company was installing card-access systems, hiring guards, the whole nine yards. And the managers kept making jokes about it—fingerprint scanners, retina scans, "maybe we should check everyone's chromosomes before they enter the building."
Funny stuff, right? But the humour was revealing something deeper.
These managers needed to implement security measures—playing the role of guards. But they also felt like they themselves were being controlled by these same measures—becoming prisoners. They were simultaneously the controllers and the controlled.
The humour revealed what Hatch and Ehrlich called "the paradox of control." It also highlighted a never-ending cycle: what begins as a solution becomes a problem that demands a new solution, which then creates more problems. Round and round.
The jokes weren't merely jokes; they served as the organisation's method of coping with tension that serious discussions couldn't quite manage.
What do people joke about at your workplace? Meeting overload? Work-life balance? Bureaucracy? Those jokes may reveal where your organisation is facing unresolved contradictions.
WHY THIS MATTERS NOW
I recall working with a client who shared this story with me. His leader constantly changes his strategy, so they no longer take him seriously and often joke about how long these strategies will last or even work.
Funny? Sure. However, it was also revealing that there was a profound lack of trust in leadership's ability to have a coherent long-term vision. The organisation was dealing with ambiguity around direction and purpose.
Another client joked about how his role has changed in the last three months due to a merger. He used to be the CFO of the acquired company, but after the merger, he became a Finance Director, reporting to his new boss.
As a leader, if you're paying attention to when and why humour emerges, you're getting free intelligence about what's really going on in your organisation.
According to sociologist Michael Mulkay, "Humour occurs because mundane, serious discourse simply cannot cope with its own interpretative multiplicity." In other words, humour provides us with a way to recognise contradictions that serious conversation cannot accommodate.
WHEN HUMOR HELPS AND WHEN IT HURTS
Humour isn't a cure-all. Whether it helps or harms depends on several factors. Trust is essential. Research by Lee in 2015 shows that when trust is high, humour enhances relationships and sparks creativity. When trust is low, the same joke can appear insincere or inappropriate. Gender plays a role.
Studies by Decker and Rotondo in 2001 found that female leaders used less positive humour overall, but when they did, it had a stronger effect on perceived effectiveness compared to male leaders. Although this varies across cultures.
Timing is crucial. Even positive humour can fail at the wrong moment. During a crisis? When giving serious feedback? Read the room.
Culture is vital. What is seen as amusing in Western cultures might be viewed as offensive or confusing in Eastern cultures. Research by Yue and colleagues in 2016 shows that humour has traditionally been associated with intellectual superficiality in some Eastern contexts, although these perceptions are evolving.
And here's a significant point: appropriateness. Research by Bitterly, Brooks, and colleagues in 2017 shows that while all humour displays confidence, inappropriate humour signals incompetence and can actually diminish your status as a leader.
Humour is a high-stakes, high-reward tactic. Get it right, and you're strengthening your teams. Get it wrong, and you're damaging yourself.
WHAT THIS ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
So, what does effective use of humour look like in practice? Research has identified several key ways leaders use humour strategically (Rosenberg et al., 2021): to create team cohesion, to navigate power dynamics, to soften difficult messages, and to stimulate creativity.
I worked with a marketing and communications director who employed this approach: whenever her team made a mistake—and in their fast-paced environment, errors were inevitable—she would begin the debrief with a self-deprecating joke about a mistake she had made earlier in her career.
"Okay, this reminds me of the time I accidentally sent the wrong information to our regional counterpart. At least you guys kept it in-house."
What did this do? It immediately reduced defensiveness. It said, "We all screw up, including me." It created psychological safety. And then she'd shift into serious mode to actually analyse what went wrong and how to prevent it.
She used humour strategically to create the right emotional environment, then got down to business.
Another executive I know practices what he calls "tension-spotting." When his team keeps making jokes about the same thing repeatedly, he takes notice. Those jokes serve as data points.
Is everyone joking about how many approvals are needed to get anything done? That's feedback about bureaucracy. If the jokes are all about work-life balance? That's feedback about workload and boundaries.
He doesn't just laugh along. He uses humour as a diagnostic tool to identify what needs to change.
THE HIERARCHY TWIST
Humour works differently depending on your position within the organisation. This is one of the most fascinating findings from recent research (Rosenberg et al., 2021).
For frontline leaders, positive humour is beneficial but not essential. You can make up for it with other leadership skills.
However, the higher you progress, the more crucial humour becomes—specifically, the right kind of humour. Consider it from your team's viewpoint: when a senior executive displays genuine humour—especially self-deprecating humour—it stands out. It fosters trust in a way that humour from someone with less authority might not. It signals "I have power, but I'm not taking myself too seriously. I'm human, just like you."
But aggressive humour from a senior leader lands differently, too. When someone with that much power uses humour to belittle or exclude, it doesn't just sting—it destroys psychological safety across the entire organisation.
The higher you climb, the more your humour matters. Specifically, the more you need the humility to laugh at yourself, not just at others.
HOW TO ACTUALLY DO THIS
So, how do you develop this as a leadership skill?
First: Understand your default style. Are you naturally affiliative? Aggressive? Self-deprecating? Knowing your baseline helps you adjust your behaviour. Martin and colleagues created the Humor Styles Questionnaire in 2003 to help individuals identify their tendencies—it has been widely used in research ever since.
Second: Use humour strategically. Don't just be funny for humour's sake. Ask yourself: what's the purpose? Am I building connection? Diffusing tension? Creating psychological safety?
Third: Build trust first. Humour works best when there's already a foundation of trust. If your team doesn't trust you, your jokes will land differently than you intend. Lee's research in 2015 found that the relationship between humour and positive outcomes like creativity becomes much stronger when trust in the leader is high.
Fourth: Observe patterns carefully. When does humour surface within your team? What topics are people joking about? Are there recurring themes? That's your organisation speaking to you.
Fifth: Read the room. Take into account context, culture, and individual differences. What works in one situation might fail in another.
Sixth: Be genuine. Forced humour is worse than no humour. Find a style that matches who you truly are.
Here's a simple exercise to try this week:
Notice when humour emerges naturally within your team—during meetings, on Slack, or elsewhere. Record what people are joking about and look for patterns.
Are there recurring themes? What tensions or contradictions might these jokes reveal? Then ask yourself: is there something I need to deal with that these jokes highlight?
THE BIGGER PICTURE
This isn't just about being more amusing at work. It's about understanding how humans handle tension, ambiguity, and paradox.
Modern organisations are full of contradictions. We must act quickly and also slow down to do things properly. We need individual responsibility and team cooperation. We must focus and remain adaptable.
These paradoxes generate tension, and humour often helps us handle that tension without directly confronting it in a serious discussion.
Leaders who understand this—who see humour not just as comic relief but as organisational intelligence—have an advantage.
They can better understand their organisations. They can resolve tensions before they escalate into crises. They can develop stronger, more resilient teams.
And yes, they also establish workplaces where people genuinely want to attend. We spend a large part of our lives at work. If we can't genuinely laugh there—laugh in a way that unites us rather than divides us—that's a lot of life spent in gloom.
The leaders who understand this? They don't just achieve better results. They create the kind of workplace culture where people truly thrive.
YOUR CHALLENGE
Here's what I want you to try:
This week, focus on humour in your workplace. When does it appear? What form does it take? What might it reveal?
Then, try intentionally using positive humour once. Perhaps a self-deprecating remark when something goes bad. Maybe an inclusive joke that unites the team during a tense moment. Notice what happens. My guess? You'll discover something about your team and organisation that serious conversations couldn't uncover.
And if you'd like to share what you discover, please feel free to reach out to us on social media using #PsychChatHumor or email psychchat@omnipsi.com. I'd love to hear what you find.
Remember what Eisenhower said: "A sense of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done."
In today's complex, ambiguous work environments, that art has never been more valuable.
Thanks for tuning into PsychChat. If this resonated, share it with someone who might need to hear it. I'll see you next time when we explore another aspect of workplace psychology that could change how you view work. Until then, stay curious. And remember to have a laugh.