Power Play

Humour power

at a glance

• Humour power is using humour skilfully, purposefully and appropriately to influence.
• Humour is a skill that can be taught and learned.
• The journey to harnessing humour power has three stages: amateurs watch and copy; apprentices curate and contextualise humour; masters craft and embody a lightness of being.
• We are often afraid to use humour because we think it might be unprofessional or unsuited to the work context. Most of all, we're afraid that we're simply not funny.
• Generating laughs is an official corporate goal at Southwest Airlines, who encourage the use of humour by crew and even test for humour in their recruitment process. Humour is now serious business.

Focus	Attitude
Learn	Light
Impact	Action
Clout	Practice

Chapter 10 Humour power … why so serious?

Two English shoe salesmen were sent to Africa in the early 1900s to assess potential market opportunities there. Each sent a telegram back to their boss in Manchester. The first wrote, ‘Situation hopeless. They don't wear shoes'. The other enthused, ‘Glorious opportunity! They don't have any shoes yet'.

This anecdote, shared by Benjamin Zander at the start of his TED talk, has the audience roaring with laughter. Zander then links it to his message: that some people think classical music is dying while others see it as thriving.

Zander is passionate about classical music, but he knows that many of his audience will probably roll their eyes at the very mention of it. So he ...