The Funniest Thing a Leader Can Do Is Laugh at Themselves

In a meeting, a boss tries to compliment a colleague and says how handsome he is. The room goes quiet and awkward — until the boss catches it: "No — it's great how hands-on he is!" Everyone laughs. One employee adds, "Well, he is handsome too!" and the room laughs again, the tension gone. That actually happened to a learner named Steve in the Greater Good's happiness-at-work course, and it's a tidy snapshot of something most leadership advice gets backwards.

The standard instinct is that authority and humor trade off — that to be taken seriously you keep a straight face, and the jokes are what you allow once the real work is done. Most managers carry some version of that belief, especially newer ones who are afraid that levity reads as weakness.

But the research points the other way, and that gap is the whole reason this is worth writing about. A leader who keeps the straight face that feels safe is treating one of their most reliable instruments as a liability — quietly leaving influence and trust on the table. It turns out humor doesn't dilute a leader's authority — it multiplies their influence. The catch is direction. Humor is a currency, and the only thing that sets its value is which way you point it: aimed at yourself, or at the shared absurdity of a situation, it buys trust and respect; aimed down the hierarchy — the put-down, the status joke — it spends both. So the move for a leader isn't "be funnier." It's "point the joke at yourself, almost never down."

The companion post on amusement and awe was about what humor does inside your own head — how it loosens thinking. This one is about what it does in the space between people, and especially what it does to the one person everyone in the room is reading carefully: whoever's in charge.

Why laughter is social glue in the first place

Before the leadership part, it helps to know why laughter does anything between people at all. The most useful frame comes from the evolutionary account Dacher Keltner describes: laughter likely emerged in our ancestors as a safety signal — a way to tell the group "the unexpected thing that just happened is fine, we can relax" after a moment of tension. Laughter, on this reading, is older than jokes; the neuroscientist Sophie Scott shows in her talk Why we laugh that we laugh far more from being with people than from anything actually funny. It's a relief signal that happens to be contagious.

Keltner puts the physiology plainly:

When friends laugh in unison, their fight-flight response is calmed and mirror neurons fire. Shared laughter becomes a collective experience, one of coordinated action, cooperative physiology, and the establishing of common ground.

That last phrase — common ground — is the hinge. Laughing together isn't just pleasant; it's a small, involuntary act of agreeing that we're on the same side. Which is exactly the thing a team, and a leader, needs more of.

The team-level payoff

Start one level below leadership, with the team. Jessica Lindsey's Greater Good review pulls together the through-line: people who engage in more conversational humor with colleagues report being happier and more satisfied with their jobs, and teams that laugh together tend to feel safer and more cohesive.

That cohesion isn't only a feeling. Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock and Joseph Allen's 2014 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology coded humor patterns in real team meetings and found that humor — especially when it built into back-and-forth between people — was linked to higher team performance. And Tabea Scheel and colleagues' 2017 work frames one mechanism behind it: laughing with colleagues helps guard against ego depletion , the running-down of self-control that a hard workday produces. A shared laugh is a small recovery break that happens to be free.

Feeling safe enough to laugh is the same thing as feeling safe enough to speak up, take a risk, or admit you're stuck — which is why this lands so close to psychological safety . The humor isn't decorating the team. It's part of how the team becomes one.

Humor makes leaders more likeable and more respected — not one at the cost of the other

Now the part that contradicts the gravitas instinct. Lindsey cites a study in which leaders who used humor at work were more likely to reach their unit's target goals and received a higher performance rating from their own supervisor a year later. Not "felt nicer to work for" — measurably better outcomes, a year out.

The mechanism shows up in how employees describe their managers. In one survey she reports, employees who agreed their manager "makes us laugh at ourselves when we are too serious" or "uses humor to take the edge off during stressful periods" were more likely to trust that manager and to feel a sense of belonging and contentedness at work. Humor, used well, reads as I'm steady enough that we don't all have to be tense — and steadiness is most of what people want from someone in charge.

What makes this counterintuitive is the assumption it breaks: that likeability and authority compete. The data says a leader can become more likeable while maintaining respect and influence — the two aren't on a seesaw. That shifted how I'd been seeing it. The straight-faced manager isn't guarding their authority — they're sitting on a currency they're too nervous to spend.

The core move: aim the joke at yourself

So if humor helps, which humor? Here's the finding I find genuinely surprising. Lindsey reports a study showing that when leaders and employees share self-deprecating humor — the leader poking fun at themselves — employees end up gaining more professional respect for the leader, not less.

That's the opposite of what a nervous manager expects. The fear is that admitting a flaw, or being the butt of the joke, leaks authority. The result runs the other way: a leader secure enough to laugh at themselves signals two things at once — I'm confident enough not to need the pedestal, and it's safe for the rest of you to be human too. Self-deprecation is the only demotion that gets you promoted: you step down an inch, and everyone's trust steps up.

Steve's boss did exactly this without planning to — owning the verbal slip, letting the room laugh with him. The handsome/hands-on moment worked because the joke landed on the boss, not on the colleague.

The most public version of the move is someone at the height of their power doing it on purpose. Obama's final White House Correspondents' Dinner was four straight minutes of the most powerful man in the world making himself the punchline — and walking off more commanding for it.

Where humor turns toxic: the direction of the joke

Which sets up the boundary. Not all humor helps, and the line isn't about how edgy or how frequent the jokes are — it's about who they target. Lindsey draws the distinction cleanly: condescending humor that belittles someone's worth or status is corrosive, and it's a different thing entirely from gentle teasing, which bonds people and keeps anyone from taking themselves too seriously.

The tell is the direction relative to the hierarchy. Teasing that points sideways or up — or that the target is in on — includes people. A learner named Malika described a coworker doing a funny impression of her, and rather than feeling mocked she felt "more included, and that they know me really well." That's affiliative teasing: it works because it's a sign of closeness, not a status claim. Humor that points down — a manager getting a laugh at a subordinate's expense — does the reverse: the laugh is bought with someone else's standing, and the change never comes back to you.

For a leader the asymmetry is sharper than for anyone else: power is an amplifier you can't switch off. The same dry remark that's harmless between peers comes out louder from the boss — and pointed down, it comes out as a verdict. The safe defaults, then, are narrow and reliable: laugh at yourself, laugh at the shared absurd situation, and let teasing only go toward people who are clearly in on it.

"But isn't humor unprofessional — or just a distraction?"

The honest counterargument is worth stating, because it's partly right. Humor at work can be a problem — Lindsey names the failure modes directly. There's the Jim-Halpert version, where humor is a running distraction from the actual tasks. And there's the worse version, where joking becomes a way to avoid naming a real problem — laughing off the thing that genuinely needs to be fixed.

Both are real, and neither refutes the thesis. They refine it. The issue in both cases isn't humor; it's timing and function. Humor that replaces the work, or that lets everyone dodge a hard conversation, is humor doing the wrong job. That's different from humor that releases tension so that the hard conversation can happen — which is what Steve's boss, and the manager who "takes the edge off during stressful periods," are actually doing.

There's even evidence that joking about a stressor can help you face it rather than flee it. A learner named Mariëlle described joking with a colleague about how absurdly long a government office took to make a decision — and noted that complaining and joking a bit "made waiting for their final call less of a burden. It places things in perspective." The humor didn't make the problem disappear. It made it carriable while she dealt with it.

Where the line actually falls

The cleanest way to hold it: humor is one of the few tools that lets a leader become more approachable and more respected at the same time — but only when it's pointed at themselves or at the shared situation, used to release tension rather than to dodge the work, and never used to get a laugh at someone lower down the org chart.

A few things I'm taking away

• Laughter is older than jokes — it likely began as a safety signal, and shared laughter still calms the fight-flight response and builds common ground (Keltner)
• Teams that laugh together feel safer and perform better — Lehmann-Willenbrock and Allen linked humor patterns in real meetings to higher team performance, and Scheel and colleagues tie it to guarding against ego depletion
• The gravitas instinct is wrong: a leader can become more likeable while keeping respect and influence — likeability and authority aren't a seesaw
• Lindsey cites a study where leaders who used humor hit unit goals and earned higher ratings a year later — humor showed up in outcomes, not just morale
• The most counterintuitive finding: self-deprecating humor raises a leader's professional respect, because it signals confidence and makes it safe for others to be human
• The line between bonding and corrosive humor is direction — at yourself or sideways builds trust; down the hierarchy belittles status and burns safety
• The power gap amplifies a leader's jokes, so the same dry remark that's fine between peers can read as a verdict from the boss
• The real failure modes are timing and function — humor that replaces the work or dodges a hard problem is a liability; humor that releases tension so the work can happen is a tool

If there's one piece I'd hand to a nervous new manager, it's the bit about direction. It's easy to think the brave thing for a leader is to keep a straight face and hold the room with seriousness. The evidence says the braver, and more effective, move is smaller and stranger: be the one willing to be the butt of the joke. That's what Steve's boss did without planning to — he fumbled handsome, caught it, and let the laugh land on himself. He didn't lose the room with that slip. He bought it. The manager who can laugh at their own slip isn't surrendering authority; they're the safest person in the room — and safe is most of what we mean when we say we'd follow someone.

"A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done."

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Sources

• Lindsey, J. — "How a Little Humor Can Improve Your Work Life," Greater Good Magazine, UC Berkeley. Used for: the leadership/humor benefits, the self-deprecation finding, the condescending-vs-teasing distinction, the failure modes, and the Steve, Malika, and Mariëlle examples
• Keltner, D. — quoted in Lindsey (above) and Born to Be Good / Greater Good work on laughter. Used for: the evolutionary safety-signal account of laughter and the "shared laughter / common ground" quote
• Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Allen, J. A. (2014) — "How fun are your meetings? Investigating the relationship between humor patterns in team interactions and team performance", Journal of Applied Psychology 99(6). Used for: humor patterns in real meetings linked to team performance
• Scheel, T. E., Putz, D., & Kurzawa, C. (2017) — "Give me a break: Laughing with colleagues guards against ego depletion," The European Journal of Humour Research 5(1). Used for: shared laughter as a buffer against ego depletion
• Mesmer-Magnus, J., Glew, D. J., & Viswesvaran, C. (2012) — "A meta-analysis of positive humor in the workplace," Journal of Managerial Psychology 27(2). Used for: the broad link between workplace humor, performance, satisfaction, and teamwork
• Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley — Science of Happiness at Work. Used for: the course context and learner stories
• Hoption, C., Barling, J., & Turner, N. (2013) — "It's not you, it's me: transformational leadership and self-deprecating humour", Leadership & Organization Development Journal 34(1). Used for: the primary experiment behind the self-deprecation/respect finding — self-deprecating leaders rated higher than aggressive-humor ones
• Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen, G., Gray, J., & Weir, K. (2003) — "Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire", Journal of Research in Personality 37(1). Used for: the affiliative-vs-aggressive backbone under the "direction of the joke" distinction
• Aaker, J., & Bagdonas, N. (2020) — Why great leaders take humor seriously (TED). Used for: the featured talk framing humor as a leadership instrument
• Scott, S. (2015) — Why we laugh (TED). Used for: laughter as a social/relief signal more than a response to jokes
• Obama, B. (2016) — Complete remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (C-SPAN). Used for: the self-deprecation-from-power example in §5