Is it OK to make jokes at the workplace? No. Just kidding! But seriously, just because something is a joke doesn’t mean it’s harmless. After all, just look at Dave Chappelle, who angered many in the LGBTQIA+ community for transphobic jokes in his Netflix special The Closer. With jokes especially, it’s important to think about intention versus impact.
Intention is how you want a joke to land and impact is how it actually lands. It’s one thing to make fun of yourself, it’s another to make fun of other people without their permission. Pay attention to other people as you’re communicating. If you make a joke, what happens to the room? Does the energy drop? Do people get quiet? Are they laughing nervously or half-heartedly? If so, it’s likely your joke has some sting to it.
Especially at the workplace, if a joke is offensive or hurtful, people usually laugh it off because they want to fit in, they want to please the person making the joke, and they care about keeping the peace at the office. However, that doesn’t mean the comment was well-received.
For instance, let’s say your boss cracks the joke: “Adam is getting all his work done and the rest of you are just slackers.” Externally, you might laugh, but internally, you might be thinking, “Is she right? Am I a slacker? Am I not doing enough? Was that comment about me?” A supposedly “harmless” joke has repercussions. Some coworkers may say, “Oh, well, that’s just her, don’t take it seriously,” but that allows your boss to continue to act like a jerk and who wants to work for someone who acts like a jerk? No one.
If you approach your boss about her joke, she might say, “Geez, can’t anyone take a joke these days? Why are you so sensitive?” Her underlying message is, “I’m going to continue doing what I want to do. I can’t be bothered to change.” OK, sure, that’s an option. Don’t change. But what happens in that scenario? How are things functioning at the office if the culture stays the same? Is there a high turnover rate? Are your teams less innovative? Is the business thriving? Nothing changes if nothing changes.
The Importance of Psychological Safety
A few years ago, Google studied the secret weapon to building a great team. For “Project Aristotle,” the firm researched 180 teams and interviewed hundreds of executives, team leads, and team members. The number one factor in a team’s success? Psychological safety.
Psychological safety is the belief you won’t be punished or humiliated when speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Dr. Timothy Clark says, “Innovation is never easy to think of. It requires creative abrasion and constructive dissent — processes that rely on high intellectual friction and low social friction.”
Low social friction means not making jokes that result in people feeling uncomfortable. Yes, humor relieves pressure and tension. It can create space for people to give you feedback or to lighten things up. Jokes help people relax, but if you want to create a culture of innovation, you have to create a culture of psychological safety. In order to do that, you get to be mindful of how you are speaking and the crowd you’re speaking to. In other words, read the room. A man making a joke about how women are overly emotional and therefore shouldn’t be in positions of leadership will land differently in a room full of men versus a room with one woman in it. I wouldn’t advise men to make that joke at all, ever, but it’s an illustrative example of how the joke will be received differently in different contexts.
A Twist on the Golden Rule
The Golden Rule says, “Treat others how you’d like to be treated.” I say, “Treat others how they want to be treated.” That sort of mentality drives mutual respect and care. You can’t always know when you’re going to hurt someone, but what you can do is be open to feedback and changing your behavior. It means being open and available to this type of conversation. It’s asking, “Has anything I said offended you? I’m open to feedback.”
Not only will being curious and open about interpersonal dynamics support you in being a better leader, it also feels good. When you have a positive effect on someone it feels good and when you have a negative effect on someone it feels bad. Part of the problem is our society doesn’t have good practices or models for repairing emotional hurt and harm.
If you want to change the culture at your office, keep the following principles in mind:
- Be aware. Understand that impact is not the same as intention.
- Ask for feedback. When asking for feedback, remember if someone is hurt, their hurt is coming from their past, from conditioning and possible trauma. You’re not responsible for their hurt, but you can have a response to it and be responsible for the repair.
- Be discerning. Learn which jokes are really working and which ones are creating unintended harm.
How to Handle a Hurtful Joke
If you’re in a situation where you’re hurt by a joke, try feeding back the words. One of the most useful phrases we have at LUMAN is, “I think what I’m hearing you say is___.” To quote George Bernard Shaw, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it’s taken place.” That’s the thing — we may be trying to deliver humor, but someone has to receive it. If you respond, “Am I hearing you say that I’m a slacker?” it relieves some of the tension, and it gives back the ridiculousness of what the person is saying. Your boss probably doesn’t think you’re a slacker, but at least they’ll have a sense of what they’re saying. And if they do really think you’re a slacker, you open up the dialogue about improvement.
However, sometimes we say things because we’re just repeating them, they’re not ours. Culture is passed down, so if your past bosses used sarcasm to cut people down, you’ll likely adopt it as well and pass it on to the next company where you work. It can be hard to spot things like this, which is why you don’t have to do it alone. We at LUMAN are here to foster authentic communication and guide you in revealing your company’s culture so that you can create a culture that works better for everyone and focus on your company’s purpose.
