Humor captures people’s attention and sets them at ease. However, there is a major difference between positive humor and negative humor. Negative humor involves attacks on people or their ideas or focuses on areas of behavior that would not be discussed at the dinner table. Positive humor involves silliness, and if there is any target of the humor at all, it is the joke teller.
In the workplace, use positive humor freely and negative humor not at all.
Louis Siegfried runs a multimillion-dollar mail order business selling computers. While he takes his business seriously, he also takes having a positive attitude seriously. “I think if you have fun, then you do well. We can’t tolerate people who aren’t enthusiastic.”
Louis seeks employees who want to work, and he strives for a workplace where they’ll want to work. “Whether it’s meetings, memos, or policies, most business seems to operate on the premise that if you can possibly make something boring, make it extra boring. We operate under the rule that the best way to get people to do their job well is to get them to want to do their job, and the best way to do that is to make sure there’s a little fun in what we do.”
When negative humor is used in the workplace, it tends to spread throughout the organization; 41 percent see it as a source of division in their office. Widespread positive humor, on the other hand, increases job satisfaction by 5 percent.
Decker and Rotondo 1999