Humor increases the ability to handle
crises, problems and insecurity
When things start heating up…
Unforeseen problems and crises arise in the course of any business’ life. The only predictable and secure factors in our politically and economically unstable world are changes and insecurity. Paradoxically enough, the need for everyone to give a maximum performance is greatest at times when there is a lot of insecurity and each individual employee feels stressed, anxious and desperate. This is often a challenging experience. Fortunately, there is a simple, free and easily accessible medicine that reduces anxiety and increases levels of energy…
Humor can be useful when broadcasting bad news. When Churchill was to inform over the radio that Italy had gone to war on the Nazi’s side, he said: “It has been made clear today that the Italians have gone to war on the German side. This is fine by me. We had to have them the last time.”
Increasing stress at work
A survey made by the Norwegian market research agency MMI for Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority showed that in 2002, one million Norwegians fell ill due to stress at work. When asked if they had experienced lasting stress at work that lead to health problems, no less than 40 per cent said yes.
A survey made by Norwegian research organisation SINTEF and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions concerning the HES (health, environment and safety) situation in Norway in 2001 showed that
à 46 per cent (1.1 million) work with short deadlines
à 43 per cent (946,000) work under constant time pressure due to a heavy workload
“The race of time, all the different requirements of time/ focus which is laid upon the employee in and outside the workplace are central causes of problems (stress, health damages, etc.)”, was one of the main conclusions of the report.
In Japan, there are now 10,000 deaths a year related to stress at work, and it has been given its own term: Karoshi (= death by overwork). Ten to twelve- hour workdays, six to seven days a week is not unusual for many hundred thousand leaders, who work countless hours of overtime – often unpaid – out of samurai-like pride. And stress isn’t something we leave at work. After years of working like this, these Japanese leaders are so tense that they aren’t able to relax in the small amount of spare time they have. When broken marriages come as a consequence, many people often focus even more on work for want of other activities, and a vicious circle has begun.
Ten categories of psychosocial risks
In the status report “Research on workrelated stress” from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work), existing research literature is summarised in ten categories of psychosocial risks. Here are the ten characteristics of a job that may be experienced as stressful and/or which in any other way may lead to damage:
1 The culture and function of an organisation: Bad communication, poor level of support for problem-solving and personal development, lack of definition of the organisation’s goals.
2 The role in the organisation: Ambiguous roles and conflicting roles, responsibility for others
3 Career development: Stagnation of career, lack of security, promotion, low wages, work with low social status
4 Liberty to make decisions/ taking control: Low level of participation in decision-making, lack of control over work
5 Inter-human relations at work: Social or physical isolation, bad relationship with the management, inter-human conflicts, lack of social support
6 The relationship between home and workplace: Contradicting demands from home and workplace, lack of support from the family, double career problems
7 Working environment and working equipment: Trouble with reliability, accessibility, maintenance and repair of both equipment and facilities
8 Design of tasks: Lack of variation, fragmented or pointless work, unused skills, lack of security
9 Workload/ work pace: Too much or too little work, lack of control over the pace, high time pressure
10 Working hours: shift work, inflexible working hours, uncertain working hours, long or unsociable working hours
There’s stress, and then there’s stress
Stress is one of the most often used and misused words in our time. The fact is that it’s not originally a negatively charged word – in medical terms, stress means the tightening and concentrating of the body when we are faced with challenges we think we can’t master. When the Neanderthal went looking for a mammoth he could hit on the head with a blunt object to get himself a good portion of food, a sabre-toothed tiger could suddenly bound out of the bushes to satisfy his hunger. Then the Neanderthal was stressed. As in all stressful situations, he goes through four stages. First comes the understanding or the thought that he is in a dangerous situation and what this situation may entail. Then come the physical reactions, adrenaline and cortisol rush through the body, the heart starts pounding, the muscles tighten and the body is stressed and prepared for an exhausting effort. The third stage is that we feel these physical changes; we get “cold feet” or feel the blood prickle in our temples. Finally comes the need to act in this challenging situation, and the Neanderthal chooses one of the two options we have in a time of crisis: fight or flee. In those days, however, stressful situations were extremely short-lived. One minute or two, and the stress was gone – you had either been eaten or managed to escape.
And that was probably the way the Lord had intended stress to work. However, that’s not how it works in our time. When insuperable difficulties arise in our lives – economic difficulties, relationships where the partner refuses to communicate or cooperate, personal conflicts at work with colleagues or superiors, deadlines that are too short or hopeless market conditions – we have these reactions of stress for days, weeks or months. The brain has sent the ancient message to the body that there’s a sabre-toothed tiger around, the situation is critical and we need all our strength to master the situation. But when hours, days and weeks pass with the possible threat of a sabre-toothed tiger nearby, the body gets tired and tries to convey that this can’t be right. The body is not constructed for and can’t bear to be on the alert to fight sabre-toothed tigers for such a long time. Eventually, your body gives you psychosomatic signals that the stressful situation has got to end – it gives you migraine, a stiff neck, back pains, ulcers and other illnesses for you to understand that the body needs some time off from the stress. Finally, the physical pain grows to be as troublesome as the stress that caused it – so now we have two concerns where we originally had one…
That’s why it’s crucial to take control of stressful situations before the stressful situations take control of us – and it doesn’t have to be that difficult.
We cry because the disparity is unthinkable, and we laugh because there is no other thing we can do about it. Laughter erupts precisely as the situation becomes hopeless.
Walter Kerr, Pulitzer Prize winner
Laughable reduction of stress
Medical research shows that humor is one of the most efficient means of reducing stress. Psychologist and professor Sven Svebak at the University of Trondheim has researched the effects of humor for 30 years. His studies show that people with a highly developed sense of humor handle stressful situations better than those with little sense of humor. But those with little sense of humour also handle stress better when they mobilise the humor they’ve got.
In 1999, researchers Cann, Holt and Calhoun made the following experiment to see if humor increases the ability to handle stressful situations better: One group were shown a comedy, another group saw a nature film and yet another sat and waited without any stimulus. Then, all three groups were shown a film about a plane crash and were told to imagine how they would feel in such a situation. All of them felt more anxious and negative after the film. After a remedial stage, the third group still experienced increased anxiety, while the nature film group had the same reduced anxiety as the comedy group. However, after a while, the comedy group regained more of their good mood than the two other groups. Clear differences were registered in how quickly they shook off the uncomfortable feeling from the stress-film, and the participants with the greatest sense of humor recovered from the stress more easily. “No other results from the research show such a clear and positive effect of a sense of humor and of external humorous remedies to master frightening situations as the results from this experiment do,” according to Svebak.
Laughter increases the number of so-called killer cells and the level of bacteria-reducing substances, like immunoglobulin in the immune system, and when we are stressed, all this decreases. The researchers have also measured that when we laugh, the levels of stress-related substances in our body decrease (epinephrine, plasma cortisol and DOPAC).
Dr. Lee S. Berg at the Loma Linda University Medical Center measured the changes in several “stress hormones” after the test participants had watched an hour-long humorous film. He found in this and other following experiments that laughter resulted in a significant increase of immune cells and a clear reduction of the stress hormone cortisol, which reduces the immune system.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer ran his famous hospital in Lambarene in Gabon in Western Africa under very difficult circumstances. The well-known humanist, missionary and doctor was very conscious in his use of humor in order for the young doctors and nurses at Schweitzer Hospital to keep up their courage and enthusiasm. During the meals, he always had a funny story or two, and visitors found it fascinating how laughter had such a vitalising effect on the employees, who were exhausted at times. During one meal, Schweitzer said: “As you all know, there are only two cars within the next 87 miles
Laughter gives control
Losing that overlying feeling of control, like we do in stressful situations, is destructive to our efficiency at work and to our psychical and physical health. In an experiment carried out by K. C. Corley et al, two monkeys were strapped to separate chairs. When the light was switched on, both monkeys got an electric shock. One of the monkeys could turn off the light and thereby stop the shocks, but the other could not reach the switch and was thus dependent on the first monkey to stop the shocks. The second monkey took on the role of the victim and had to wait passively for what was about to happen. Even though both monkeys got the electric shocks, the “victim monkey” suffered more and showed far more physical symptoms than the monkey having a certain degree of control over the shocks.
We can maintain the feeling of control and reduce stress in difficult situations by looking for the humor in them. Then, we see the problem more from a distance and take in the total picture; we assess more clearly and objectively and gain enough perspective to see how we can avoid a catastrophe. And because we stay in control, we perform actively and creatively instead of becoming passive victims of spine reflexes.
Humor also has an interesting effect of blocking anger – it’s hard to be angry if we’re able to laugh at the situation. This way, we will deal with the problem in a far more constructive way than if we merely let our primal instincts nurture primitive revenge- and vendetta activities. Most of us have learned that behind the wheel, in traffic, the Neanderthal emerges rather quickly. Those who drive more slowly than us are idiots, and those who drive faster are savages. We are provoked by the fact that nobody drives normally but ourselves, and then we start with hazardous overtaking – or aggressive signs with the longest finger to those overtaking us. Everything we’ve learned about traffic safety and caution is gone with the wind. But try to laugh – at least a resigned laugh – at all the silly people in traffic and let the car take you where you’re going at a pace set by the traffic. You’ll then keep your distance and your cool in your judgments, and the chances of a close encounter with the traffic police or the nearest hospital are reduced considerably.
A clown is like aspirin – but he kicks in twice as fast.
Groucho Marx
Humor has an immediate stress-reducing effect that you can’t get from any pill. When you see that you are far behind schedule on the day before deadline because the task is a lot more extensive than you thought it would be, you have a sick child waiting at home and your colleague has to leave the project in its final stages due to other urgent tasks, you start to panic and run around like a hamster on amphetamine in a wheel and finally, you are convinced that you won’t survive this… Then comes that sudden, disarming sarcastic remark, you burst out in laughter, your shoulders and your blood pressure both drop. In a nanosecond, you distance yourself from your problems and your project, you’re able to separate the essential from the unimportant, and you realise that there are actually worse things in life – it starts to sink in that you probably will survive this after all, and you suddenly see new solutions…
Doctors Rod A. Martin and Herbert M. Lefcourt at the University of Ontario, Canada, studied the connection between humor and the ability to adjust to big and stressful challenges in life. The test persons went through four tests designed to measure the ability to use their sense of humor under different circumstances. Three out of four tests showed that those who valued humor the most were also the best at handling tension and serious personal problems. Dr. Annette Goodhart, a psychologist from Santa Barbara, found that with humor, you confront your personal problems in a more relaxed and creative manner.
During Hitler’s bombing of London, there were signs on buildings all over town that shops were “Open as usual”. One shop which barely had one wall left, had hung up a sign saying “More open than usual”. Humor like this probably helped the British to keep up their spirit and stand together in the fight to conquer Hitler.
Mentally, laughter is the opposite of stress. Both may be reactions to things that don’t turn out the way we want them to. But with humor, we don’t perceive the imbalance to be threatening, like we do in a stressful situation. These two completely different perceptions of a difficult situation lead to at least three other dissimilarities:
1 When we laugh at our problems, we don’t feel like we are losing control in the same way we do under stress.
2 The mental horizon does not shrink into a tunnel vision with a focus limited to here and now, as in stressful situations; with humor, we are more able to keep our distance to the problem.
3 While stress takes control of us, we can think more clearly and more easily separate the important from the unimportant with humor, and we can also make better decisions to get ourselves out of the situation.
We can therefore conclude that results from research give us good reasons to believe that a well-developed sense of humor and an increased use of humor will reduce pain from stress over time.
The time to laugh is when you don’t have time to laugh.
From an Argus-poster
Freud and humor
Sigmund Freud saw cheerfulness as a very useful means to prevent nervous tension, and that humor could be used effectively in therapy.
In 1905, he wrote the book “Jokes and their relation to the unconscious”. In it, he tells us that the meeting between the silly and meaningless is a source of pleasure, and that the purpose of the joke is merely to protect this effect of pleasure from being neutralised by critical reasoning. According to Freud, an essential feature of the joke (and humor in general) is that it’s economical, which means that it saves us the hassle of having to think sensibly all the time or the hassle of being morally superior and humane. The purpose of humor is to make us forget the troubles and worries of everyday life, maybe drive away boredom and hopefully provide us with new insight, like Freud proves that the joke can actually do, if only it is intelligent enough.
Freud provides the following example in the book: “A criminal on his way to be executed on a Monday says: - Well, at least this week is off to a good start.” This is truly a man with gallows humor, who knows that it will definitely go wrong. But despite the tragic undertones in grim and black humor, this type of joke maintains its similarity to the harmless joke, since the aim is to create a release, a feeling of pleasure in the recipient. “The point of the joke is to be pleasant in an unpleasant culture. In Paradise, there would be bleak smiles at the most, no humor. Angels don’t tell jokes. But Freud does,” writes Tor Ulven in the introduction of the Norwegian translation of Freud’s book.
Having a sense of humor is a skill that helps us to handle stress, frustration, discomfort and other daily problems.
Sigmund Freud
It’s neither wise nor correct, that of which many bosses have consciously or unconsciously given us the impression: “you should be working at work. Laughing should be done at home, while watching funny TV shows or reading funny books or telling funny stories to your friends – but at work, we work.” Humans are the most complex beings on earth, and we live in the most complicated society ever. We have to use humor in order to care for inter-human relations and to gain distance and breathing space for handling all internal and external challenges we’re faced with. Just think back on yesterday at work: At least once during the working day, probably many times, you and your colleagues laughed or used humor – a humorous glance, a funny body movement, a cheeky remark – which provided that little break from the stress and seriousness, and strengthened the social bond at the same time.
The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr
People in very difficult situations under pressure have always turned to humor: all the jokes about the leaders at the Kremlin and the absurdities of the old suppressing Soviet Union, the occupation humor in Norway during the war and the morbid humor used by doctors and nurses to cope with the pressure and being responsible for people balancing between life and death. Humor and laughter helps us to handle difficult situations under pressure.
In an experiment, Svebak and Kristoffersen assessed factors that affect the quality of life of patients with chronic kidney failure, an illness that causes a lot of stress for the patients. Once to twice a week, they have to go through quite an uncomfortable cleansing of the blood. It turned out that there were no differences in the quality of life between those with moderate and high degree of kidney failure. The length of time they had been ill was not decisive either. “The only factor clearly important to the quality of life was the patient’s sense of humor,” writes Svebak. “Those with the highest developed sense of humor also had the best quality of life, regardless of the duration, the degree of kidney failure or the method used in the dialysis.”
Or to put it more simply: It’s not how you have it, but how you deal with it.
We laugh at the difficult things
Humor and jokes often refer to things that are problematic and complicated – what’s taboo, provocative, offensive, embarrassing and hard to talk about and be serious. Just think about what the stand-up comedian talks about; it’s almost always about things he’s struggling with, things he can’t do, the time he last made an idiot of himself, things that aren’t how he wants them to be. We are pleased when our expectations and our actual experiences come together. When we disregard the absurd and the unhealthy, insulting humor (which will be dealt with later in the book), a lot of what brings out the laughter in friends and colleagues is simply what went wrong, what is problematic, and sometimes what is downright tragic. Some of the humor at work is based on things that go wrong, blunders, unforeseen problems and hopeless clients.
For some of us, humor sometimes becomes a way to let out frustration and thoughts that social boundaries (luckily…) do not allow us to talk loudly about. Racist jokes are mainly told by people with xenophobia, those who feel insecure and anxious and have little knowledge and experience with people with another background, another temperament; maybe they’re afraid that they will take their jobs. However, in our society and most other societies, it’s a social taboo to speak seriously about your racist point of view, most people don’t want to be projected as a racist. But in these jokes, it is still acceptable to make fun of immigrants and other ethnic and social groups. Note that most racist jokes make the ridiculed group seem less intelligent. And that’s only natural – if you have an angst-ridden relationship with these groups, you probably feel better and stronger the less intelligent they are portrayed in the stories. (But don’t consider this as a defence of racist humor, it’s only a sad example of how some people try to make up for their insecurity with unhealthy humor.)
Sexuality is one of our strongest instincts, but in most societies, it’s a taboo and you don’t talk about it. Many people find it offensive, provocative and embarrassing, and we seldom speak of sex seriously, even with our partners. But thoughts and fantasies about sex run through our heads time and again, without us having a socially accepted outlet for them. With one exception: through humor and jokes. There are a number of “daring” jokes around, from the innocent and elegant to the rude and vulgar. We are quite sure that sex-jokes make up the largest category of jokes. And that’s not surprising; one of our strongest instincts is under strict control, and when making jokes is one of the few socially acceptable places to let them out, they will naturally flourish.
Sometimes we experience tragedies that are almost too painful to endure. You lose your job, someone gets a serious illness or someone in the family or among your friends dies. At this time, humor always comes out in some form or another. Three days after the acts of terror on 11 September 2001, the first text messages started ticking in on mobile phones all over the world: “Latest news from United Airlines: We fly you straight to your office.” Or: “Hello! Just wondered if I could stay with you for a couple of days. Everyone is mad at me and I need a friend. From: Osama bin Laden +009 911 166 611.”
Some people will say that this is in bad taste and disrespectful. We don’t think so. When terrible things happen, we use the humor in the situation to create a little distance to process these painful experiences, and to give ourselves some breathing space in the grieving process. Most of us have been to funerals of friends or relatives, and we have felt terribly sad that this person is gone forever. But during the gathering after the funeral there’s almost always a very nice atmosphere, often with a lot of laughter, and everyone remembers the pleasant and funny sides to the person who has passed away. And afterwards, you go home to work on your loss, but you have taken a break from grieving, which makes it easier to continue the process afterwards. “Humor is tragedy plus time”, said comedian Carol Burnett. That’s why we should respect how long it takes each of us to distance ourselves from a tragedy before we can laugh about it. The first jokes about 11 September came a few days afterwards, and most people were able to smile a little about them. But for those who lost their relatives or friends in this tragedy, it possibly took months or years before they could laugh about it. In their study, Lefcourt and Martin saw that the functionally disabled who laughed at handicap-jokes, were also the ones who had already accepted their disablement and were able to see the humor in these problems with less bitterness. But if it was less than three years since they had become handicapped or received such a diagnosis, they were less likely to see the humor in the situation. Humor and laughter makes us as individuals able to handle difficult situations, pressure and problems in a better way. To an organisation, this means that the collective ability to face challenges and insecurity in the surroundings will be strengthened by employees with an ability to laugh at themselves and at the humorous in problematic, and even tragic events. A business with this kind of culture internally is fit to face unpleasant and surprising challenges in a more constructive manner, with quicker and better solutions, and with less frustration. In short: it pays off to ensure a good sense of humor in the organisation. And the staff will enjoy themselves, too. ******************* This is an excerpt from Jon Morten Melhus' and Trond Haugen's success book "Play and Profit - about humour and enthusiasm at work" (2003), Norways most sold business book in 2004/05. More information at www.begeistring.bo or by mail to [email protected].
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