Jeff of All Trades

Lets import a dab of light heartedness for this post. This particular topic is near and dear to me. Work can turn into a serious place. Home can turn into a serious place. Life itself can be a serious place. Death, I presume, is the most serious of serious places. But it doesn’t have to be (well, at least the living portions of that statement don’t).

I have already referenced and I will likely continue to reference frequently my first boss William. I learned much from the guy and I can’t ever say enough good things about him. One of the many many things he taught me revolved around work life balance and just generally being able to know when to be serious and when you can cut up and enjoy life.

When we worked together, we shared an isolated office that had excellent reverb. It was quite the common occurrence for me to be at the desk working on something and William would walk in and begin singing show tunes. I don’t mean mumbling them or humming them. I mean with GUSTO. Particularly he was fond of the ending of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. But William is not Julie Andrews. Julie Andrews ends the song rather quickly with little flourish. William would belt it out like he was singing the Star Spangled Banner at a large sporting event (and he was damn good at it too).

So whats my point? CUT. UP. WITH. YOUR. TEAM. Treat people like people folks. Humor has the be the fastest levelizer among people. Everyone can be at least a little funny and you learn quite a bit about people by their own brand of humor (sometimes more than you’d like but as usual, your mileage may very on under-performers).

Work, as we all know, can be a stressful place. Laughter is a stress reliever. Laughter brings us together. And you might even live longer! Everything about it can be beneficial for a newly formed team storming their way through the muck or even a long standing team that is already preforming (see stages of team development if you are wondering what I’m talking about).

Here’s some of the things I’ve done with my teams over the years

• Singing (sometimes doing my impression of William). I used to keep a guitar in my office also to just spice it up even more (also serves as a great convo starter).
• Telling “Dad” Jokes (something I picked up from my own father, but was also re-re-reenforced by William as well)
• Keeping props on hand
  • Based on a reddit post I picked up two physical copies of these book which contain knowledge of all things! My favorite gag when I’d go on vacation was to take them and set them on the desk of the person covering for me, “if you run into any trouble. Any at all, don’t call me. Everything is in here.”
  • I used to keep an empty box from a bar of Irish Spring soap handy for when I’d get on my “soapbox”. Great for deflating a terribly serious rant.
• Photo manipulation
  • Often time just converting popular memes to some random event at work. Sometimes making outlandish photo edits that give my current boss the arms of a mantis (you’d have to be there).
  • I’ve become particularly fond of creating custom emojis now that I’m at a company with Slack. Gotta do something while your code is compiling
• But more than anything: staying out of HR’s office!

Just don’t force it. Relax a little. Pop a good joke from time to time at least. If you’re serious all the time now, just about any mildly funny joke you drop on folks is liable to be a banger. Again, just make sure you don’t land yourself in the HR office and read the room!

This is a long shot this early in this blogs history, but hey, share your experiences with having a good humored leader. Heck, share your experiences with a leader with no or less than ideal humor (especially if you actually liked them).