Using Laughter
The Tao of Humor and Child Support Enforcement
By Tim Gard
Dec 19, 2006 - 9:45:18 AM

Good humor, used strategically, can be a powerful and positive force at work...

As you read the title to this article, did you ask, "Does this guy really think there is something funny about children with absent parents and families in need?" My answer is, no, but the title of the article is still appropriate.

I was asked a similar question when I was the keynote speaker at a State Conference on Hunger and Homelessness. Before my program, I was interviewed for a local television station. The interviewer asked me standard questions like, "How many years did you work for Social and Rehabilitation Services?" and "How long were you a fraud investigator?" She also asked me about my upcoming Developing a Comic Vision keynote. When she asked me to give a one-sentence summary of my talk, I replied, "I help people harness the power of laughter and use good humor as a skill at work and at home." She replied, "What's so funny about hunger or being homeless?"

I think my answer surprised her as I said, "I don't find anything funny about hunger or being homeless. However, the people who work to help hungry and homeless people often work in a very stressful environment. If they can't deal with the stress, then they burn out and quit. Everyone loses." I explained that I use my background in human services as a foundation to understand the stress these folks experience, then I show them how anyone can use humor to avoid stress or insulate against it. They can laugh at themselves. As C.W. Metcaff says, "To laugh not with ridicule, but with objectivity and acceptance of self."

I believe the same is true about the child support enforcement professionals who work equally hard under stressful circumstances. I suspect there are child support enforcement professionals reading this who understand the power that humor can have; they just haven't been shown the Tao or the proper way of how to apply it.

How about you? Have you found your way? If you use humor now or if you want to use humor more, I suggest you develop your Comic Vision. How?

Be a professional: First and foremost, be a professional who uses humor as a skill to strategically improve or enhance your ability to do your job and enjoy life. I suggest you develop this ability as one of the other skills or business "tools" that professionals maintain in their individual "toolboxes." For example, today, I'm not a stand-up comic or a clown. I’m a professional speaker who chooses to use humor as a skill in my seminars and my work. To do my job, I travel over 100,000 miles a year and use humor as I travel. Occasionally an airline will lose my luggage. I know this and am prepared. I carry a photograph of me hugging my baggage. When they lose my bag, I don't yell at them (what good does that do?) and when they ask me what the missing bag looks like, I hand them the photo and lament, "We've only been together a few weeks." They always laugh and find my bag. (I rarely get the photos back, however.)

Our ability to use it properly and strategically is the measure of our individual humor skill. As a fraud investigator, when I was confronted with an angry client, I couldn't always respond the way I wanted to when I was told things that didn't quite add up. However, later, after a stressful interview or situation, I might go to the break room and read things like, "776 of the Stupidest Things Ever Said" and laugh. This active attempt to use humor helps me vent the stress, return to reality and avoid carrying the stressful situation around with me like baggage. Humor helps me renew myself between interviews and stressful encounters. I suggest you find the situational stress factors in your job, realize they will not go away and work to find comic solutions to them.

What about the misuse of humor at work? Good humor, used strategically, can be a powerful and positive force at work. However, humor used inappropriately or negatively can be a source of stress and even EEO complaints. Simply asking, "Can't you take a joke?" after bad humor does not make inappropriate humor acceptable. If you have to argue or rationalize that something is appropriate at work, chances are it is not. "When in doubt, leave it out."

In a nutshell, good humor is positive humor that does not cause stress or pain while bad humor does. I'm not telling you what is funny or not funny at work, but just because something is funny does not make it appropriate at work. For example, although I have seen many funny cartoons targeted toward human services professionals, I would not advise publicly posting any that poke fun at our internal and external customers. Be aware of the "accidental audience" all around you.

Don't limit your potential humor skills. One of the most common things I hear before my seminars is someone saying, "I can't tell a joke to save my life, so I can't use humor!" These folks incorrectly think you have to tell jokes to use humor. In fact, I believe that you don't have to tell or even understand jokes to use humor. Instead, find toys that make you smile. Throughout my programs, I give examples of how to use ordinary items, such as toys, in extraordinary ways. For example, I have a hand puppet that looks like an orange crab. I call it "cube crab." I like to crab-crawl along the top of coworkers' cubes with the crab. When they see just the crab, I say in my crab voice, "Are we being a little crabby today?" (Then I run away!)

Finally, establish your own Comic Vision tradition to close out your day. At the end of every day, it's important to leave work and not drag all the situational stress home with you. I suggest the last thing you should do is throw your arms in the air and do your best impression of a gymnastic "dismount". Then, as you leave your cube, point at your desk and say "STAY" and then go home. Leave work at work. It will all be waiting for you when you arrive the next day to again "do that voodoo you do so well."

In short, having a Comic Vision is harnessing the power of your unique sense of humor as a skill at work and at home. More than anything else, use it to have fun and be happier and healthier.