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Humor can be a phenomenal leadership tool...
I visited a manufacturing plant last week. I've had the privilege of partnering with their leadership team for many years.
They have a daily production meeting which brings together the leaders from every corner of the plant; sales, ops, quality, safety, engineering, accounting, you name it. It's about a thirty minute affair with every department reporting where they stand and the expectations of the day.
In the past this daily meeting at this particular plant had been known to be...umm...what's the word...intense.
There has been a regime change, however. The old GM decided his life was taking him in a new direction and moved on. In comes the new.
When I'm there I typically drop in on at least one of those morning meetings as I did last Wednesday, the new GM presiding.
At one point the sales manager pointedly brought up some concerns about ops' scheduling. She, of course, wants her customers served as promptly as possible.
Ops responded calmly but intensely, defensiveness simmering just below the surface.
Sales came back a wee bit more heated.
It should be noted that these two have known each other for years and each was looking for a resolution that would work. Their motives were not divisive, but solution driven. Both are really good at what they do.
Still, it was several minutes of tense, sharp exchanges.
Then silence, the air taut.
And then the new GM made a joke. I couldn't tell you what the joke was. I don't remember. I know it had zero to do with the animated confrontation that had just played out. It was an aside.
But, when he dropped the line, everybody laughed and all of the tension seeped from the room. It was immediate and it was obvious.
Nicely played, Mr. GM.
This little funny line communicated so much in a mere moment in time.
First, as I said, it vaporized the tension.
Second, it communicated that everything is going to be ok; that what we are facing isn't insurmountable; that it is actually quite doable; that the GM is human and isn't so self-important; that we're all in this together and we'll handle it.
It didn't change the challenging circumstances, it didn't make them go away, but it rebooted the mindset of the team and gave them the feeling that the mountain wasn't so high to climb.
One well-placed joke can accomplish that much.
Listen, I don't want a clown as a leader, but a sense of humor, often the self-effacing kind, is a significantly important and effective feature of successful leadership.
It's about humor that former American Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his latest book, A Passion for Leadership, quotes Doris Kearns Goodwin from her fantastic book about Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals:
Modern psychology regards humor as probably the most mature and healthy means of adapting to melancholy. "Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to be borne," wrote George Valliant. "Humor can be marvelously therapeutic," adds another observer. "It can deflate without destroying; it can instruct while it entertains; it saves us from our pretensions; and it provides an outlet for feelings that expressed another way would be corrosive."
As Gates wrote, "Take the work seriously, but not yourself."
Lincoln was a brilliant purveyor of well-timed humor. As, it seems, is Robert Gates.
As was a new GM for at least one moment last week.
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