See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 48 Don’t Take It So Seriously: How to Engineer Fun at Work.
0:45
Alex Shevelenko: In this episode, we're going to have a lot of fun because we're joined by Andrew Tarvin, CEO of Humor That Works.
0:54
Alex Shevelenko: Andrew is the first "humor engineer"—if you've ever heard that term, he coined it—and he has trained over 10,000 professionals in organizations like IBM, P&G, and—notorious for its sense of humor—the FBI, on bringing humor to life. Andrew, welcome to the pod.
1:13
Andrew Tarvin: Excellent, thanks Alex. I'm excited to be here. Hopefully we have some fun. I mean, we're talking about a fun subject, but we can get dry when talking about humor, so hopefully we'll avoid that danger. But we are going to geek out about it, I think, for a moment.
1:26
Alex Shevelenko: Let's geek out! Let's geek out. I think, you know, I have a mandate from my team and my family to improve on my humor quotient. Especially my children, who are not enjoying it nearly as much as I am. So I'm very motivated to learn from you here.
In general, as we were chatting, there's some stuff that we encounter in our business and professional lives that sticks with us. It reminds us of guidelines on not taking life too seriously, or how to take serious situations and make them a little bit more fun and playful. When I look back, we all have our set of playbooks—our stories that we tell—and over the years, we tend to go back to these.
2:25
Alex Shevelenko: These funny moments when something happened in the classroom, at work, or in our personal lives become our database of models. So, I think one of my goals for this conversation is to share those models that you've encountered since this is your job—in many ways—to create and collect them. That way, everybody can have a lot more fun, have beautiful experiences at work, relax, and come up with more creative approaches to solving big problems. So, over to you, Andrew.
3:07
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, absolutely. No, I think you're absolutely right that sometimes someone says something in such a way that it either sticks with you or it interrupts the situation. I think that's what's powerful about humor: it can be a bit of a pattern interrupt. Because it's so much predicated on a sense of surprise, sometimes that's what you need to take a step back and look at a situation a little bit differently.
I mean, I remember I started my career at Procter & Gamble. I have a degree in computer science and engineering, and I started at P&G. I remember being in a meeting at P&G a little bit later on in my career, and it was a pretty tense meeting. It was me and this other person going back and forth. It was like 7:00 p.m. on a Thursday, and we were supposed to have something ready the very next day. It was getting intense; our voices started to get a little bit louder.
Our manager—we both reported to the same person—came in, got us into a room, and as we were going back and forth, he said, "Hold on, hold on, hold on. We have to remember at the end of the day, we sell soap."
4:11
Andrew Tarvin: And we just looked at him, then looked at each other, and just started laughing. We had this high tension for something where, at the end of the day, we sell soap. And we worked in IT, so it's not like we were shipping a physical product the next day. Obviously, what we were doing felt important and was important in the context of that role, but we weren't saving lives. We weren't on the front lines of anything like that.
That moment stuck with me, first, because it was such an effective way to get us to take a step back. We laughed a little bit and said, "Okay, let's actually go home, sleep on it, and come back." We were able to solve the problem relatively quickly the next day. But it was also just that ability to add a little bit of levity in a tense moment.
He wasn't saying, "Hey, your jobs aren't important," or "You all are stupid for doing this." It was just this observation that interrupted the moment. I think humor has the power to do that in a lot of different ways—whether it's tense situations, articulating something in a way you maybe haven't heard before so it resonates with you, relieving your own stress so you're more present for people, or just building better relationships.
If you think about your friend group, chances are it's people that you laugh and smile with. So if you can create that same kind of camaraderie with your coworkers, your colleagues, your potential clients, or customers you're dealing with—whoever it is—one, it's going to make things more fun. You're just going to show up and enjoy it more.
But two, and the reason why I'm so passionate about humor, is that the research shows you'll actually get better results as well. So it's not just about "have fun for the sake of fun." This is why I'm a humor engineer: I solve problems using humor because it gets you results. That's what is really exciting to me.
6:07
Alex Shevelenko: So, let's start at the beginning. Why do some people who can be quite funny in their personal lives...
6:07
Alex Shevelenko: ...and when they're relaxed, show up stiffly at work? What is the blockage? Is there a mental model preventing them?
I'm sure people might look at this and ask, "Why is Alex interviewing Andrew about this kind of serious communications topic?" Well, in communications, people generally know that when you're giving a speech, you want to lighten it up a little bit. You want to start with or include some humor in between, so people understand that.
At the same time, when you look at written business communications, I think we still have a big fight on our hands to add more levity and bring something special there—maybe outside of email, right? Email still has it, but the "funny white paper"—I'm still waiting to see that one! So, I'm wondering: where do we have expectations that humor is permitted, and where don't we?
7:20
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, it's a really important question because it impacts people in terms of their willingness to try. When I started doing research, I found 30-plus benefits of using humor in the workplace—ranging from getting people to pay attention more, to improving understanding of ideas, to building better relationships, to being seen as more attractive (if that's important to you!). People with a sense of humor are liked more...
8:00
Alex Shevelenko: And in Zoom settings, right?
8:03
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah! Where you need it—all of those things. So I was kind of dumbfounded. I was like, "Okay, so why don't people do this more?"
We ran a study—I surveyed over 1,000 professionals—and the number one reason why people don't use more humor at work is because they don't think their boss or coworkers would approve. So it is a cultural thing. People go in, take a look at the culture, see that people aren't necessarily laughing and smiling a lot, and think, "Oh, okay, maybe I need to tamp that down."
I remember feeling it myself. As I mentioned, I started my career at P&G as a computer science engineer. I was doing stand-up and improv on the side, but those two things did not mix for like the first year. I went in thinking, "I'm the youngest person on the team, fresh out of school. I've got to prove myself. I want people to take me seriously." I looked around, and while people were fine and had a bit of a sense of humor, they weren't cracking jokes or telling stories in meetings. So there's this fear, and I think that stems from a cultural perspective.
What's interesting is that it's not exactly a founded fear. In one study, they found that 98% of CEOs prefer job candidates with a sense of humor—they're more likely to hire someone who shows a sense of humor in an interview. In another study, 81% of employees said a fun workplace would make them more productive. And in that same study, something like 50% of employees said they would take less pay if their job was more fun! So it's something people absolutely want.
9:50
Alex Shevelenko: I'll just throw in an example, if you don't mind me interrupting to enliven it. I still remember coming out of Stanford Business School. Again, you have a lot of options and you're picking where you want to work. One of the companies I interviewed with was a really early-stage startup at the time. You go in, and they have a little values dashboard—kind of like value statements that some companies have. While waiting for the CEO to come in, I saw Value #7 or something like that: "It's okay to have an asshole, just don't be one." I think they had the 'a' replaced with a little star or something.
It totally cracked me up! I still remember it, right? It was genuinely part of the company values. It was almost a reminder for the CEO—who could be tough—to also loosen up and compensate for his own toughness. Now that I run my own company, that's one of the values we brought in! It immediately told me, "These guys are an intense Silicon Valley company, but they don't take themselves that seriously." It aligned with me—both the value itself and the way they communicated it through humor.
I'm wondering if you see this as a pattern: does it have to come from the top, or are there culture carriers throughout the organization that cement that feel? Or is senior leadership what matters most?
11:45
Andrew Tarvin: No, it's a great question. First of all, what a great example to share! You're demonstrating a couple of things. One, you're exactly right: having it written down as a value in that way carries a very different sense of humor than saying "don't be a jerk," or "be nice to people." It immediately has a sense of humor, and it stuck with you. It was impactful enough that years later when you started a company, you wanted that same value.
12:15
Alex Shevelenko: Later on, when we became a publicly listed company, it became "don't be a jerk."
12:20
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah! We were selling to HR professionals, so we had limits to hit! But it was really interesting.
12:30
Andrew Tarvin: You have to adapt to the point depending on your customer, but yeah, exactly right. That's the reality of humor: it evolves over time. Also, your sense of humor helps you find "your people" in a sense. It helps you find the people who really resonate with that style. At an early startup stage, you want those very hungry, go-getter types who aren't going to be offended by that value. Later, as you're much bigger and going public, you might need to massage it a little bit.
The other thing you highlighted is what I think is very helpful in a corporate environment: you can absolutely steal ideas—or "share and reapply," as we called it at P&G. If someone has a good idea and a good representation of it, you can take that and put your own twist on it. Don't steal it word-for-word without giving credit and pretend it's original, but acknowledge where you learned it.
To your point about whether it has to be top-down: it certainly helps! If you enter an organization and senior leaders use a lot of humor, you immediately think, "Okay, I can do this too." But it's not required. All it requires is for you as an individual to look at your circle of influence and control, and ask, "What small things can I do?"
What's really interesting is that if the number one reason people don't use humor is because they don't think their boss or coworkers would approve, that means if you don't see humor around you—if you don't see people laughing in meetings you lead, or if you're a team leader and your team isn't laughing and joking with you and each other...
14:18
Andrew Tarvin: ...you're probably the reason why, or at least part of the reason why—not intentionally, not maliciously necessarily—but something about our training and us culturally coming in.
14:30
Andrew Tarvin: I think part of it comes from older generations. I remember when I first started speaking about humor, one of the longest-tenured people at P&G was in one of my meetings, and he came up to me afterward. He said, "I don't know if I agree with this. I was told that work is supposed to feel like work. If it was supposed to be fun, it would be called play."
I think that's such an older mentality. In the Industrial Revolution, where it was all about producing the most widgets as fast as possible, maybe you didn't need humor. But in a knowledge economy, where people's emotions dramatically impact their ability to be effective, pay attention, and be engaging, humor is an incredibly valuable professional skill.
The way we frame it—both for senior leaders and for people in general—is through a very simple, very important, very dumb question.
15:29
Andrew Tarvin: I want you to answer it, Alex, but I will posit that it's a very important question. It's also a very dumb question, okay? The question is: would you rather do something that is fun, or not fun?
15:49
Alex Shevelenko: Fun.
15:51
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, right! It's a dumb question, but the answer is "fun." To 99.9% of humans, the answer is, "Yeah, if I have the choice between fun and not fun—everything else being equal—I'm going to choose the fun thing."
So then it stands to reason: if you were to make your emails just a little bit more fun, would people be more likely to read them? Right! If you were to make your meetings a little bit more fun, would people pay attention more?
16:18
Alex Shevelenko: Yeah, and it actually works both ways. Sometimes I've noticed that my wife looks at me while I'm on my computer and asks, "Why are you grinning like an idiot?" I'm not watching a movie; I'm actually writing an email! Sometimes I'm imagining the person on the other side, and trying to add a little something in there. It doesn't happen all the time—typically you have to be in a slightly relaxed mode—but sometimes it's that.
So to your point, while the audience may enjoy it (depending on the quality of my humor), at a minimum, I'm enjoying the process because I'm grinning while writing an email. That's a much more fun way to approach it, or a meeting, etc.
17:11
Andrew Tarvin: That's one of the benefits of using humor in presentations as well. You might have some people who aren't paying attention, but you use a little bit of humor and someone laughs. People are going to look up when people laugh in a meeting! They're going to be like, "Wait a second, I want to have fun too." It's like your wife looking at you smile and thinking, "I want to know what you're doing—you're having fun, I want to have fun too." It's contagious in that way.
17:33
Alex Shevelenko: So you're saying I could get my wife to write my emails for me? That would be even more fun!
17:40
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, exactly! You might be like, "Oh, I'm having so much fun writing emails. Do you want to come do one?" I don't know, maybe it'll work out! Maybe she has a great style.
Part of it is recognizing that you are in your audience. Part of using humor is adapting to your audience and making sure they're having fun, and perhaps the most important audience member is yourself. So you're exactly right: if you can find ways to make your own work a little bit more fun, it's going to work.
That's how I accidentally stumbled into using humor more in my own work, because I had that same experience where it was like, "Okay, can I make this email a little bit more fun?" I love puns, so I was like, "Okay, let me put a joke at the bottom." I had this long status report email that I had to send out every single Thursday. I thought, "This is a long email, and I don't enjoy putting it together. I'm going to make it a little more fun by adding a joke at the bottom."
They weren't necessarily good jokes! I think one of them was: "Hey, I spent last night locked in a cell. I wasn't arrested, I just couldn't figure out this one Excel formula."
18:49
Alex Shevelenko: Got it. Not the best joke in the world, but something playful. It works! When it comes to Excel, it's pretty good.
18:56
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, it elicits a smile.
18:57
Andrew Tarvin: It made me smile writing it, and so I would do that!
When I first started doing it, I did it week after week after week. No one really said anything, but it made the process of writing the emails more fun. Then, one day I sent that email, went to lunch, and came back to a bunch of replies.
I was like, "Oh no, did I offend someone? Has someone finally told me to stop doing the jokes, or that I'm not taking my job seriously?" It turned out that I offended people because I had forgotten to include a joke! Everyone was responding: "Hey, where was this week's joke?" "Hey, are you still doing the joke?" "Hey, I only read this because of the joke!"
That was where I started to realize that by making my own work more fun, I was also making it more fun for other people. That's where I often recommend people start: start with what you control. There are a ton of ways you can leverage humor in your work that never once hit another person, or do it in such a small way that the risk of someone saying, "Hey, you don't take your job seriously," is very low. It's not a 100% fail-safe, but there are some really safe ways to get started. What you'll find is that as you do small things, it will resonate with people, and you can do a little bit more and a little bit more.
Obviously, it never replaces the work—you still have to get work done—it just makes the way of working way more fun.
20:29
Alex Shevelenko: All right, so let's do three very practical tips. What can I do right now that would make my work much more fun, with a low risk of offending people?
One thing I've found interesting—at least relative to your team—is that if you're an executive or a founder, you may be slightly less sensitive to what other people find funny or not. So I'm conscious that I may find something really hilarious, but it may not be as effective for others. I need to make sure the audience is on the same page. That's the one area that gives me a little caution.
Also, we have diverse teams, right? If everybody has an identical background from the same country and the same age, maybe there's a shared base. But when it's a very global team, I think you need to be a little bit more thoughtful about what will work well.
So those are my constraints. What would be your top three tips? I think they're pretty universal for a lot of leaders thinking about how to bring this in. Top three tips I could start practicing today?
21:51
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah! I'll give you a bit of variety from a couple of different competencies.
Just for context, the way we frame humor is that humor is a skill—it's something you can learn and master. If you look at that skill, there are eight competencies, or eight ways that people show up. You can have just one and still effectively use humor in the workplace, but you can also learn and build all the others.
In terms of the lowest-stakes way of leveraging humor, I'd say start through appreciation—the first competency—which is simply to laugh on purpose more and intentionally seek out ways to laugh.
What I mean by that is: if you have a meeting on your calendar that is always a little bit stressful or intense—because it's with shareholders or a client you don't enjoy, or maybe you're an introvert like me and a meeting in front of a bunch of people drains your energy—intentionally block out your calendar right after that intense moment to relieve stress.
Humor is one of the greatest ways to relieve stress. You could certainly exercise or do mindfulness, or you could find a funny comedy video to laugh at, or listen to a comedy podcast on the way home from a long day at work so you laugh a little bit and become more present for your family when you get there.
The easiest thing—which has zero impact on other people—sounds very simple: simply finding ways to laugh more automatically reduces stress, increases blood flow, and burns calories as well! That's the lowest-risk way to get started.
23:29
Alex Shevelenko: It makes us appear prettier, makes us more attractive!
23:31
Andrew Tarvin: Yep, exactly! You become more attractive with more blood flow.
23:33
Alex Shevelenko: So wait, is the practical advice... obviously the risk is that you start watching endless loops of funny videos on YouTube or wherever you get shorts. Is the idea that it's like a quick two-minute "glass of water" type of thing that gets you out of stress mode? Is it helpful to do before the meeting or after the meeting?
24:03
Andrew Tarvin: Knowing how to do that and having the right resources is key. You're exactly right: if you say, "Oh, I'm just going to go on Instagram or YouTube Shorts for a few minutes," it might end up being 35 minutes or three hours later instead of the three to five minutes you planned.
So, proactively set up the right resources. Have a list ready, or use a curated playlist—we have a YouTube playlist of roughly five- to seven-minute videos that are generally funny that people can go to and say, "Okay, let me watch one of these."
The other thing is that there are entire practices called Laughter Yoga. What they've found is that physiologically, the body doesn't know the difference between a forced laugh and a real laugh. What's interesting is that humans can guess if someone else is fake laughing or real laughing, but our own body doesn't know the difference in terms of physiological benefits. So some people do Laughter Yoga where they just force themselves to laugh.
Personally, I want a prompt—I want something I'm going to watch or follow. That's why I love Taskmaster. I watch Taskmaster clips because they're low stakes, not political, and won't pull me into a whirlwind of something. Find something that acts as a little release valve.
25:22
Alex Shevelenko: Quick question: would you do it before the meeting or after the meeting?
25:26
Andrew Tarvin: Personally, I would do it after, but that's just because I'm an introvert. Being in front of people in a stressful meeting means I need the release afterward. I do think you could do it before, but for me, I prefer music before an event if I want to get into a certain mindset.
I listen to music because it doesn't distract me as much. With humor, you can get focused on the joke or the random thing, whereas music helps you get ready. If I'm getting ready to step on stage in front of 1,000 people, I'm going to listen to music.
26:05
Andrew Tarvin: That's a little bit more hype. If I'm going into a meeting where I need a little bit of calm, but I don't want to be too stressed about it, then I might listen to something classical.
For me personally, music works, but one of the beautiful things about everything I'm suggesting is to experiment. Be like, "Okay, well this week, let me try a funny video before." Did that work? Nope, I was in a different mindset. Great! Next time I'm going to try music or something else.
26:30
Alex Shevelenko: Okay, perfect. So tip one is to have your go-to library to laugh more.
Kind of an adjacent question: there are people in our lives that we think are funny, or who have a great laugh that's just contagious when they laugh. Is just being around that something that evokes more laughter from you as well? Or is that a separate thing?
27:02
Andrew Tarvin: No, it is a thing! Laughter is very much a social thing. It's a form of communication in some ways. For some people, it can feel a little bit involuntary at times—where you're like, "I don't want to laugh at this thing, but it's still so funny. I know I shouldn't, but I still am going to."
A lot of times, it's more of a social thing and it signals information. If I laugh at this thing and you laugh at this thing, it's like, "Oh hey, we're a little bit closer together." In fact, research has shown that when two people laugh at the same thing, they become closer.
The actual act of laughing... there's even a subreddit I follow that I think is very fun called r/ContagiousLaughter. It's videos of people doing something that gets them laughing in such a way that, a lot of times, you watch it and think, "I don't even think that thing is very funny, but I'm going to laugh with them."
I saw one just yesterday: someone asked, "Hey, what was that movie about World War I that had a horse in it?" And the guy on the podcast was like, "You mean War Horse? What was the movie about war with a war horse?" And they just started cracking up! The joke itself is fine, but them laughing so much... just the act of other people laughing is contagious. It's a social thing.
28:12
Alex Shevelenko: Got it. Okay. All right, so: laugh more, however, whatever it takes. What's tip number two?
28:19
Andrew Tarvin: Tip number two is an extension of that from another competency that we call curation. Essentially, instead of feeling like you have to be "the funny person," you can curate humor that you know is proven and works.
It's taking the approach of: "Hey, we really like that value, and now I'm going to have that same or similar value in my own company." That's an act of curation. It's like, "Oh, this thing worked, let me use that here." Or, "I saw this funny meme or video, let me see if it applies in this situation."
So, one small thing you can do to build better relationships: if you see something funny, think to yourself, "Who do I know that would also enjoy this?" It's a low-stakes way to reach out and say, "Oh, I saw this funny video, so I'm going to send it to a friend of mine," right?
You can also do that in reverse. You can ask, "Who is someone I want to connect with?" Maybe it's a client you haven't talked to in a long time, or a prospective client who ghosted you after a couple of emails, or a colleague while networking. Think about what you know about that person and what type of humor they might like. Find something and send it to them.
Again, you don't have to be the funny person. You can use social proof: "Oh, this thing has millions of views, which means people probably like it." The reason that works is because you're taking something that other people have proven is funny and applying it to a situation.
Now, the key there is context. You don't want to just send a meme that doesn't make any sense, but the value is that it's a great way to reach out.
I was working with a salesperson and his sales team, and what he shared with his team was: "I'm fairly certain that a meme has helped me make over a million dollars."
I was like, "Okay, you've got my attention, I need to know more!"
He explained: "We have a multi-step email sequence. After we have a conversation with someone, we send an email. If they don't respond, we send a second email. If they don't respond to that third email, we send a meme. It's just a picture of a dolphin that says, 'Are you ignoring me on porpoise?'"
30:46
Andrew Tarvin: Right? It's not the greatest joke in the world, but he said that meme is so silly and different that it has the highest reply rate of any email in the sequence! People respond with, "Hey, that made me smile, I'm still thinking about it," or "That made me smile, let's have another conversation," or "That's so dumb, but let me chat."
It's just a way to re-engage people through a small sense of humor. Again, you don't have to be the creative one coming up with a perfectly crafted setup and punchline. It's just: "Let me give you a specific thing that I know works because other people have shown that it works."
31:26
Alex Shevelenko: Can I ask you a question around that one in particular? We live in the sales and go-to-market universe, and as executives, we get bombarded with these things. There are those types of emails and memes you get.
I think it worked for me at the beginning—there's a timing thing, like when nobody was doing it, it kind of worked. But when people start doing it too much, right, it becomes gimmicky.
31:58
Alex Shevelenko: And that's actually one of the worries for people selling serious or enterprise solutions. When they're trying to evoke a laugh, it almost feels like they could be trying too hard, right?
When you're trying too hard... as we know with a lot of comedians, there's often something in their childhood that was missing or needed attention and validation. That's where a lot of the pain and awareness comes from, or they were entertaining to help their family, right? So when we're seeking humor, there can be a "Hey, I just want to have fun" vibe, but sometimes there's a "trying too hard" motion.
What have you found that helps people feel comfortable that they're not trying too hard, that it's easy and fresh? Maybe it's not the most popular meme, but at least it's original and authentic to them. Any advice here?
33:06
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah. I think it's important to make a distinction between humor and comedy. You're exactly right: comedy on a stage performed for entertainment is very different. It comes from a specific voice, and it may or may not come from pain.
What I talk about is humor in the workplace. The distinction I make is that humor includes comedy—comedy is a form of humor—but humor is way broader than that. It also includes something that's just a little bit silly, or something slightly different that gets people to pay attention a little more.
33:43
Alex Shevelenko: So you don't need to be the full-on Louis C.K. action hero?
33:53
Andrew Tarvin: Exactly. In fact, you probably shouldn't in a workplace! You probably shouldn't even try to do stand-up.
34:00
Alex Shevelenko: So the barometer is not trying to make work "funny," just trying to make it a little bit more "fun"—a much lower bar. You don't need to try to... and that way you don't seem like you're trying too hard, but there's a smiley face there somewhere. Typically, that pattern is: one serious thing, a second serious thing, and the third thing is funny. People don't expect the third thing to be funny, so the setup is similar, but you don't need punchline after punchline.
34:31
Andrew Tarvin: No, you're not creating a comedy set! The goal isn't, "Oh, this would be amazing if I saw it on Netflix." Part of the skill of humor is knowing there's a big difference between what's appropriate in the workplace versus the goal of stand-up on stage. Sometimes the goal for people on stage is to be edgy; the goal with workplace humor is not to be edgy. That's one key point.
Also, the device you mentioned—serious, serious, then funny—is a comedic device called a "comic triple." There are a lot of different devices you can use.
The metric for not coming across as trying too hard comes down to having a clear purpose or goal for using the humor. The way we train applying humor in the workplace is through what we call the Humor MAP:
Medium
Audience
Purpose
The Medium impacts what you're saying, because an email is very different from what you would say in person, which is different from what's shown on a slide.
The Audience matters because, like you said, using humor with someone from your same generation and general upbringing is very different than using it with someone from a different generation who grew up speaking a different language, lived in another country, and has different contextual knowledge and goals. Your humor is going to change based on that.
Then there's your Purpose—the reason you're doing it. In the curated example of "Are you ignoring me on porpoise?", the goal is simply to restart the conversation. It's not to sell your services or prove you're the right fit; it's simply to get them to open the email, have a positive connotation with you, and hopefully respond.
That's different from: "I want to use humor so they understand why my service is better than all the other potential products out there," which is different from: "I'm using humor to nullify objections before they even have them."
Having a clear goal—and sometimes letting people know what that goal is—removes that "trying too hard" feeling. A good friend of mine, Vin Jang, who speaks a lot about communication, says you can tell anyone almost anything if you follow it with: "And the reason I told you that is..."
You can share a meme, a story, or a video for humor, and then say, "Okay, so we're laughing a little bit. The reason I sent that meme to you is..."
37:11
Alex Shevelenko: Would you literally follow up afterward because you don't want to pre-explain the joke too much?
37:15
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, typically you want to follow it up. It depends on the context and the situation.
When I'm speaking—like for my TEDx talk—I do what's called a "cold open." A cold open is when you immediately start with something without an introduction. It comes from shows like Saturday Night Live, where they jump straight into a sketch before introducing the show.
If you're addressing a big keynote audience, you can start with a cold open by jumping right into a story. You trust that at the end of the story, you can say, "Okay, the reason I told you that is..." and state the thesis of the day.
If it's a shorter, one-on-one meeting, you might say, "Before we start, I want to share a story that I think represents what we're trying to accomplish today." Then you go into the story, come back, and say, "So the reason I shared that is because just like X happened, we have Y."
You can do both if you feel you need to, but a lot of times it can be helpful to start with a little bit of humor, come back, and connect the dots. It all depends a bit on the audience—plus your own confidence in delivering it.
38:22
Andrew Tarvin: I think what can prevent that feeling of trying too hard is if you're doing the humor for yourself. If you have the confidence where you think, "Whether you laugh or not, I'm having fun and enjoying this process," that really helps.
I wish I could tell you—the engineer within me wishes I could tell you—"Okay, use humor exactly 11.3% of the time. 11.2% is too little, and 11.4% is too much." The reality is there is no exact number because it's all context-dependent. But having that Humor MAP—thinking about the medium, audience, and purpose—helps.
The last thing I'll say is that part of humor is predicated on surprise. If everyone starts using the same meme or technique, you have to evolve and change it over time. Maybe you even call it out: "So many people are sending you memes these days, so I'm going to send you this instead." You can play with it a bit.
39:24
Alex Shevelenko: One thing that will blow some minds for our audience in the marketing, education, and communications world is any tips you have on how to talk about changing behavior—in a way that the person engaged in that behavior doesn't feel stupid?
This is tricky. I've experienced it in our own startup. We transform important documents, complex presentations, and portals. There was a part of me that wanted to make fun of the old way—saying, "Hey, my grandma sent this along with a fax from her basement 20 years ago." My initial instinct was to be dismissive to highlight that there's a new, much more fun way. I wanted to highlight the challenges—like, "Here's Attachment #1, go to page 54; Attachment #2, go to page 105."
On the other hand, you realize that some of the people we're selling to are actively engaged in doing that. They may not like it or have thought much about it, and the ridiculousness isn't obvious to them because they don't have a solution to sell in that market. So there's this tension between exposing something in a lighter way and not offending the audience.
How do you drive that change without being overly aggressive or putting people down in the process? Is the answer telling stories about others, or making fun of yourself?
41:37
Andrew Tarvin: It depends on what the exact change is, but you've already named some great strategies!
One is putting yourself in that position through self-deprecating humor. Self-deprecating humor is a form of humor where the target is yourself, and it's very effective when you're in a high-status position. If you're in sales, have a microphone, or are the expert in a situation, you naturally hold a higher status position. Using self-deprecating humor to walk through that story helps: "I remember when starting this, I thought this was the crème de la crème of processes. I thought it was amazing—and then I realized how many clicks it took to get there!"
Self-deprecating humor is best used sparingly. If it's the only type of humor you use, it gets old, and people start wondering if you have self-esteem issues! But in a higher-status role, starting with yourself and showing how you slowly learned is a great approach.
Overall, experience is the best teacher. The second-best teacher is a story of that experience because we relive people's lives through stories. Telling a story about someone who did the thing we want the audience to do helps guide them along the hero's journey.
If you are going to poke fun at someone, target yourself or use a "straw man" or "straw woman" character. In formal debate, a straw man is a fallacy, but in humor, it's very effective: "We had this wonderful, relatively successful client, and here's what they did..." You put it on them without turning them into a bad guy, or you say, "When we were first starting out, someone on our team did it this way..." You can also speak generally: "I know some people think X, Y, or Z..."
The last piece for creating actual change is getting people to experience it—ideally in a fun, playful way. A lot of the training programs we run for sales, marketing, or HR teams use applied improvisation. We take exercises from improv and have participants physically experience what we're talking about. The "aha moment" becomes their own.
During the debrief, we ask targeted questions, and they end up saying, "I found out it was a lot easier if we did X, Y, and Z." Then we can point out, "That's interesting, because that's exactly what our solution does." Finding a way for them to experience that revelation themselves makes it resonate far more.
45:09
Alex Shevelenko: How do you think about situations where the audience doesn't have the time to experience it, but there's a metaphor—or like you said, a meme—that is so ridiculous, memorable, and fresh that it propels that breakthrough "aha moment"?
I feel like I'm often hunting for metaphors because they're memorable and funny. But I don't know if a metaphor alone is enough. We get insights and good quotes all day long, but that doesn't necessarily propel change. At the same time, an amazing metaphor can anchor an entire conversation.
What have you found works best regarding metaphors or quotes that set the frame for the conversation while allowing the rest to be more playful?
46:29
Alex Shevelenko: Associations—of which metaphors and analogies are types—what we broadly talk about as associations are phenomenal for improving understanding and adding a little bit more memorability. Associations can be big or small, but you're right: they can be used just for a comedic purpose and a way to maintain engagement.
46:53
Andrew Tarvin: Exactly. For example, we were doing some work with the Red Cross, and they were giving a presentation on geoengineering—specifically, one potential solution to combat climate change, which is releasing a bunch of sulfur particles into the air to act as tiny little umbrellas.
When we were working with the presenter, we were like, "Okay, when you talk about the umbrellas, one option is you could sing the Rihanna song: Umbrella, ella, ella, eh..."
The guy was like, "I'm never doing that in a thousand years!"
We said, "Okay, well, you could also mention Mary Poppins."
He was like, "Okay, that still seems silly, but maybe."
This presenter was a scientist, so he was like, "I want to see if humor actually works." We got permission to record the audience watching the presentation, and we ran that footage through MIT Mood Analytics so it could capture their engagement and mood throughout.
There was a peak right at the mention of Mary Poppins! It wasn't a big metaphor or a huge thing—it was just an association to get people to pay attention a little bit more because they weren't expecting it. All he said was a very low-stakes line: "Imagine a bunch of sulfur particles in the air like tiny little Mary Poppins floating down." Engagement and mood peaked, and then slowly started to drop off—which is why you need to use different humor consistently to keep it up.
48:19
Alex Shevelenko: So basically, what you're saying is that one big thing is not enough, right?
48:22
Andrew Tarvin: Yeah, exactly. It's why I give caution regarding the advice people often hear: "Start a meeting with a joke." They'll find some random joke off the internet that has nothing to do with the topic, tell it at the top, and then the remaining 59 minutes and 30 seconds of the meeting are terribly boring and dry. That's not effective humor—you need sprinkles of it throughout.
There is also a form of association where you can make it much bigger, becoming an extended metaphor. You can base this on content your audience knows. If you're meeting someone and see on their LinkedIn that they post and talk about golf, ask yourself: "Can I create an association between our product and golf?"
To build that, we like using a 5x5 List:
Create a list of 5 things related to the topic you want to teach or sell (your product, service, or new solution).
Create a list of at least 5 things related to the metaphor topic (in this case, golf).
Start looking for connections!
For instance, you might find: "Oh, there's a caddie in golf. This solution is like your caddie—you're still the expert playing the game, but it's there as your caddie."
The value of an association—especially for people selling serious services or working in serious industries (we've worked with emergency responders, suicide prevention trainers, etc.)—is that you can introduce golf, add a little humor about it, and then connect the dots.
My dad loved to play golf, partly because whenever people asked how he played, he could say, "Subpar!" You never knew if that was good or bad—subpar because he shot under par, or subpar because he played poorly! He just loved dad jokes like that.
So you could share a little humor about golf, and then say, "The reason I bring that up is that, in some ways, golf is a great analogy for what we're doing because of X, Y, and Z." Now I've made fun of golf, kept the core topic serious, and connected the dots for people. If the person resonates with golf, the service becomes far more memorable: "Oh, that's right—the service is like my caddie. I wish I had a good caddie; maybe I do need this thing."
50:58
Alex Shevelenko: What you're saying is to find something topically familiar—golf maybe isn't as intimidating as a complex product or service, and it's seen as a bit more playful—and then connect it either to a specific individual or a broader audience.
And as a reminder, the bar here is very, very low, right? We're not crafting a Netflix comedy-level analogy; we're just doing something to get the person to pay attention and lean in a little bit more.
Andrew, what's the role of AI in adding more humor?
51:49
Andrew Tarvin: Currently, AI is not very good at making jokes itself, but it can be good at identifying where jokes could go.
If you have a sales pitch, you could feed it into AI and ask, "Where could I add some humor?" It might attempt some jokes, and maybe 1 out of 100 times it'll be pretty good. More often, it'll try a joke that doesn't make sense, but it will highlight, "Oh okay, I could put a joke or an association right there."
52:23
Alex Shevelenko: It starts the creative process.
52:27
Andrew Tarvin: Exactly! It's the same thing if you want to brainstorm setups. Sometimes you have a setup and know a joke could end it—like a comic triple.
As we mentioned before, a comic triple is a list of two serious or expected things, and the third thing is playful or unexpected. In comedy, I might use a comic triple like: "As a kid, I used to like taking things apart and putting them back together—things like clocks, radios, and my parents' marriage." (Which never quite worked out, right?) That's slightly edgy for workplace humor, but the format can apply to something like your client list.
When I talk to people, I might share: "I've done work for Microsoft, NASA, and the International Association of Canine Professionals." That last one isn't hilarious, but it makes people think, "Wait, what did you just say? What's a canine professional?" It gets them leaning in.
Anytime you have a list of three—whether it's in your LinkedIn bio, a list of product benefits, or your company values—ask yourself: "Could I add something unexpected or playful at the end of this list?"
53:47
Andrew Tarvin: And if you can't think of anything, that's where AI could help. You could go into AI and say, "I have this list. I want to add something playful. Give me 10 things that would fit this list, but would be kind of funny or interesting." It might give you 10, 9 of them are terrible, and you pick the one that works.
54:03
Alex Shevelenko: The part where I think it can be authentic is—let's say you love Robin Williams, Woody Allen, or whoever your comedian of choice is—you can pick whatever their style is.
For example, Woody Allen was creating almost "AI-generated" stories when he was writing his short stories because he had one that really struck me: What if Impressionists were dentists? It was basically transposing two different themes together. He did it much better, but taking two concepts that generally wouldn't talk to each other and exploring how they would is a way to come up with original ideas.
So you can train AI a little bit on the style you like, and that way it can be more authentic. If you really know that style, you can tweak it in an intelligent way. When I have time, I play with that. AI certainly gives you a rough draft—something to react to.
55:11
Andrew Tarvin: One of our competencies is consideration—going back to the point of whether something is going to offend someone or what's going to be the right fit based on different cultures—but it's also about taste. Consideration is about taste, and in a world of AI, your personal taste and ability to identify what's good and bad becomes more and more important. It's so easy for AI to spit out something where you think, "That sounds brilliant," but if you don't know much about it, you don't realize it's a cliché, or everyone says it, or it doesn't even make sense. So you do need to build that taste and refinement—having your own style of humor.
The challenge I've experienced personally is that you can't just put something in and feed people exactly what AI says. Telling AI, "Write my pitch as Jerry Seinfeld" can be funny if the audience knows you're trying to be Jerry Seinfeld. If you're addressing an abstract audience that doesn't know you're playing on those tropes, they'll just think, "This doesn't quite make sense."
It requires refinement and improvement. The biggest thing with using humor is that you have to get it out there. You've got to see how people respond—see if it makes someone laugh, smile, cringe, or whatever—and it's just about repetitions and tweaking over time.
56:28
Andrew Tarvin: This is where data comes in. The data might be people's faces, your click-through rates, open rates for subject lines, or close rates for sales pitches. But it is very much an iterative process. That's why, for most people, having techniques to pull from is helpful, but making the choice is even more important. It's saying, "Okay, I'm intentionally going to try to incorporate more humor." Over time, what that humor looks like will evolve, but it starts first with being intentional.
57:04
Alex Shevelenko: Got it. If I summarize the journey we went on in this podcast:
Let it go: You don't need to be perfect in everything. Obviously, there's consideration for the audience, but as you said beautifully, "We're just making soap," or selling software, or doing a podcast. It's not the end of the world. Just like meditation people would say, you're on a planet among 10,000 other planets and billions of stars—just enjoy it. That's mindset number one.
Be authentic and have fun: You are the "audience of one" to begin with, and you'll gravitate toward what you enjoy.
Be intentional and iterate: Start putting more humor out there—don't just have fun once a day, have it more often. It's an iterative cycle just like in improv: you have your audience, you get feedback, keep doing it, and tweak it over time.
Did we capture the overall themes? Did we miss anything essential from this episode?
58:39
Andrew Tarvin: I think so! You started with "Let It Go," so I was kind of hoping you were going to do a summary using only Disney songs at first!
58:47
Alex Shevelenko: It's a whole new world when you start using karaoke humor! Ever since I gave up my Elsa wig, it's just not the same.
58:59
Andrew Tarvin: You're just not feeling it the same!
I think you nailed it. The one thing I would add is the recognition and reminder for people that humor is a skill, which means it can be learned.
I am not a stereotypically funny person. Growing up, I was not the class clown; I am very much an introvert, and I had to learn this skill later. Anyone can learn it.
The other thing to recognize—which relates to the "audience of one"—is that by inherently using humor, you are probably going to find some people who think, "That person is not funny, I don't get it." If you look at the comments on my TEDx talk, it has over 16 million views and 300,000 likes, but it also has over 6,000 dislikes! Some people think it's the funniest TED Talk ever, and other people comment, "How could anyone possibly enjoy this? It's terrible."
1:00:02
Andrew Tarvin: Look at any comedy video and people are going to have that kind of take. So recognize that while you might have some people who feel, "Not for me," you're going to have way more people who resonate with it. It goes back to that "audience of one"—you're the one working all of those hours, right? You're the one person experiencing all of it, so if you can find ways to have more fun, you get to enjoy life a little bit more, and you also do your work better.
In terms of next steps, I think the biggest thing is to make that choice. We've got a bunch of free resources for people who say, "This is good, but I need some additional support." You can go to humorthatworks.com for those.
As you mentioned, we have the assessment where people can take a five-minute test to learn what they naturally do well, what they don't do as well, and how that applies in the workplace. We have a couple of books out there, like 501 Ways to Use Humor at Work, which is literally a list of 501 ways to use humor. So if you're like, "Okay, I want to get started, but I don't know how," you can use that as a resource—there's a whole section on email, so you can try one of those methods.
We also recently launched a coaching app trained on my content. It has weekly lessons where I talk through each of the competencies, alongside a day-to-day AI-driven experience trained on my material. It helps with situations like: "Here's my situation, how would I use humor?" or providing a daily practice to start using your humor notebook a bit more.
Find ways to get repetitions—whether it's through us, finding an improv class, or connecting with a colleague who has a good sense of humor and saying, "Hey, can I run this story by you?" Whatever it is, find those safe spaces to practice intentionally, and over time, you're going to refine your skills and get better.
1:01:45
Alex Shevelenko: Beautiful! Well, I'm really inspired. Right now, my kids don't find me that funny—that's a tough audience! If we improve that even by 10%, there is much, much to gain there.
Andrew, thank you so much for sharing these nuggets. This was a lot of fun. I really salute you for making this serious business.
For our clients running HR, employee benefits, and employee engagement solutions, this is super relevant—how do you have fun with dry materials like employee benefits and broadly bring this through the culture?
And for our clients and audience in marketing and sales: you know how important this is, but it's also something we tend to do sporadically. We get into the habit of a few things and don't try new ones. I think, Andrew, you can shake people out of complacency with your resources on this. We encourage people to check out Andrew's website and beyond.
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for joining us!