***WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER***\n'A smart, funny, brilliant book on how to be smart about being funny, brilliantly' Sarah Cooper\n'This book has finally convinced me that joking around can actually be important and powerful' Ed Gamble\n'Eye-opening, important and utterly enjoyable. Come for the humour, stay for the insights' Arianna Huffington\nHumour is a superpower. If you're not using it, the joke's on you.\nWhen we're kids we laugh all the time. The average four year-old laughs as many as 300 times a day, while the average forty year-old laughs 300 times every two and a half months! We grow up, start working and suddenly become "serious and important people", trading laughter for bottom lines and mind-dumbing zoom calls.\nBut the benefits of humour for our work and life are huge. Studies have shown that humour makes us appear more competent and confident, strengthens our relationships, unlocks creativity and boosts resilience during difficult times.\nDr. Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas are on a mission to help everyone discover the power of humour. Based on the popular Stanford Business course, this book will show you how to mine your life for material, explore the Four Deadly Humour Myths and help you figure out which style of humour you fall into - The Magnet, The Sweetheart, The Sniper or the Stand Up.\nDrawing on behavioural science, advice from world-class comedians and stories from top leaders, Humour, Seriously will show you how to harness the power of humour every day.

Humour, Seriously: Why Humour Is A Superpower At Work And In Life

Business & Money

Aaker, Jennifer

Bagdonas, Naomi

Job Hunting & Careers

Portfolio/Penguin

WALL STREET JOURNAL, LOS ANGELES TIMES, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER * Anyone--even you!--can learn how to harness the power of humor in business (and life), based on the popular class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. &nbsp; "The ultimate guide to using the magical power of funny as a tool for leadership and a force for good."--Daniel H. Pink, #1&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestselling author of&nbsp;When&nbsp;and&nbsp;Drive There exists a mistaken belief in today's corporate world: that we have to be serious all the time in order to be taken&nbsp;seriously. But the research tells a different story: that humor can be one of the most powerful tools we have for accomplishing serious things. Studies show that humor makes us appear more competent and confident, strengthens relationships, unlocks creativity, and boosts our resilience during difficult times. Plus, it fends off a permanent and unsightly frown known as "resting boss face." Top executives are in on the secret: 98 percent prefer employees with a sense of&nbsp;humor,&nbsp;and 84 percent believe that these employees do better work. But even for those who intuitively understand humor's power, few know how to wield it with intention. As a result, humor is vastly underleveraged in most workplaces today, impacting our performance, relationships, and health. That's why Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas teach the popular course Humor: Serious Business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where they help some of the world's most hard-driving, blazer-wearing business minds build levity into their organizations and lives. In&nbsp;Humor,&nbsp;Seriously,&nbsp;they draw on findings by behavioral scientists, world-class comedians, and inspiring business leaders to reveal how humor works and--more important--how you can use&nbsp;more of it, better. Aaker and Bagdonas unpack the theory and application of humor: what makes something funny and how to mine your life for material. They show how to use humor to make a strong first impression, deliver difficult feedback, persuade and motivate others, and foster cultures where levity and creativity can thrive--not to mention, how to keep it appropriate and recover if you cross a line. President Dwight David Eisenhower once said, "A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done." If&nbsp;Dwight David&nbsp;Eisenhower, the second least naturally funny president ever (after Franklin Pierce), thought humor was necessary to win wars, build highways, and warn against the military-industrial complex,&nbsp;then you might consider learning it too. Seriously.

Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.)

Personal Finance

Crown Currency

Chapter 1\nThe Humor Cliff\n“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”—Mark Twain\nIt’s the first day of spring quarter at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Fifty students excitedly file into a lecture hall, a few still wondering whether the course they’ve registered for is an elaborate joke played by the administration. “Humor: Serious Business” is about to begin.\nWhiteboards line the walls; all the chairs and tables have wheels, for easy rearranging. It’s a setting that’s ideal for workshopping and terrible for napping. Jennifer, in her self-appointed role as DJ, has David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” blasting. Naomi has a clip from SNL cued up to kick off the lecture.\nAnd yet trepidation hangs heavy in the air.\nBefore class begins each semester, we have our students complete a “Humor Audit,” a self-reflection exercise / terrifyingly personal quiz about how they use humor in their lives. It includes questions like “Who or what makes you laugh the most in your life?” and “Who do you feel the funniest around?” and “Please submit complete documentation of your income, expenses, and assets for the previous fiscal year.”\nSo it’s understandable that the students feel spooked: A sense of humor is like a muscle—it atrophies without regular use. Unfortunately, we find that in most students and executives we start working with, atrophy abounds. Just look at these responses to the question “When was the last time you really laughed?”:\n“I honestly can’t remember. Is that terrible?”\n“I’ve been thinking and am drawing a blank! I know I laugh. Or at least I thought I did, which now I’m questioning . . .”\n“On Tuesday, I did not laugh once. Not once. Who knew a class about humor could be so depressing?”\nThe good and bad news about these responses is that our students are not alone. And it’s not Tuesday.\nThe Humor Cliff\nThe collective loss of our sense of humor is a serious problem afflicting people and organizations globally. We’re all going over the humor cliff together, tumbling down into the abyss of solemnity below.\nAt the bottom of that abyss we’re joined by the majority of 1.4 million survey respondents in 166 countries who revealed in this Gallup poll that the frequency with which we laugh or smile each day starts to plummet around age twenty-three.\nTo some extent, this pattern makes sense. As kids, we laugh all the time. The average four-year-old laughs as many as three hundred times per day. (The average forty-year-old, by comparison, laughs three hundred times every two and a half months.) Then we grow up, enter the workforce, and suddenly become “serious and important people,” trading laughter for ties and pantsuits.\nBefore long, we lose levity entirely in a sea of bottom lines, slide decks, and mind-numbing conference calls. Our sense of play is repressed by a dizzyingly complex and dynamic professional environment, full of social land mines that are difficult to gauge and feel safer to avoid. As a result, most of us choose to keep our interactions sterile, measured, and professional; we go to work each day and leave our sense of humor—and so much more of ourselves—at the door.\nThis response signals a fundamental misunderstanding about how to work—how to solve important problems, how to conduct ourselves, and how to be successful.\nWe don’t need more “professionalism” in our workplaces. Instead, we need more of ourselves, and more human connection—especially as in-person meetings are replaced by video chats and more relationships are sustained entirely by email. Often, all it takes is a hint of levity to shift a moment, or a relationship, from transactional and robotic to relational and authentic.\nSo what’s holding us back?\nOur research reveals four common misperceptions—or, as we like to call them:\nThe Four Deadly Humor Myths\nAfter we surveyed more than seven hundred people across a wide range of industries and levels about what holds them back from using humor at work, four themes emerged, each rooted in a myth th

Management & Leadership

Random House LCC US

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