Humor is a skill that can be a great tool for making new and complex ideas understandable and memorable.
As a veteran professor with 20-plus years of teaching experience, I conducted my first corporate seminar at the AT&T School of Business in 1986. At the time, AT&T was the largest and one of the most prestigious corporations in the world. Following my first corporate workshop, the VP of Learning (who had a Ph.D. in Adult Education) invited me over for a cup of coffee. He told me the material was perfect for their needs, but my professorial style did not match the learning style of AT&T’s thousands of employees. He asked me to try it a second time but to make it more “fun.”
I had mistakenly assumed that a more formal style was ideal for such an important company. Fortunately, I sought out master facilitators such as Sivasailam Thiagarajan (better known as Thiagi), whose guidance made me a better facilitator and much more comfortable with using humor to teach. A few years later, I invited Thiagi to help me lead a high-visibility program at AT&T for 150 of its future leaders. I have been having fun ever since.
4 Lessons Learned
Here are some lessons learned and applications:
1. Start the fun early. Fun and joy are wonderful icebreakers that put participants at ease and ensure they are ready to learn. Participants in the workshop came because their managers told them they had to learn to “Go Global,” but they had no idea what this meant and they were concerned about their ignorance of the topic (less than 5 percent of the employees had traveled overseas) and those who travelled for business came back with “horror stories.”
Application: When the participants entered the room, I was playing a soothing mix of Asian and Western instrumentals. On the screen was a series of Wuzzles. These were word puzzles that participants had to figure out (i.e., “groPOOLund” which was “In Ground Pool”). As I went around the class introducing myself to the early arrivals, I had them working on a series of these fun activities. This helped set the tone that this may be different, but it can be understood once you know what to look for—much like the content of the program.
2. Use humor judiciously. Tell humorous stories about yourself, never about others. Stories are powerful for learning and remembering core concepts. Ideally, the story will be referred to more than once to reinforce the concept.
Application: I always began the class with a story about receiving a morning wake-up call at a Korean hotel with a friendly operator telling me that “My Time Has Come.” This story lightens the mood and makes the point about language usage across cultures. I then tell the class that their time has come (to go global) and reinforce the message on the last slide.
3. Make the stories real. Case studies are an excellent way to demonstrate and recall core concepts you want your students to retain.
Application:
A. To demonstrate that the same word in English has different meanings in the U.S. and the UK, I show a slide with a headline from the Financial Times, which states that “AXA has tabled a proposal to purchase a competitor.” When asked what happened, the U.S. participants always say the proposal was set aside, while the British participants say the proposal was going to be addressed immediately.
Continue to look for opportunities to add fun to your programs. After all, as organizational psychologist Adam Grant notes, “Play is not a frivolous activity. It’s a path to connection and creativity.”
B. At a high-level meeting between AT&T and British Telecom, an American executive addressed a British executive as Mr. Obe because the British executive’s business card had an OBE after the executive’s name. OBE is a distinguished title that is an acronym for the Order of The British Empire. Mr. “Obe” was not impressed, and the American was embarrassed once he found out why the British executives who heard the mistake were laughing.
C. At the first meeting of an American and Chinese joint venture, gifts were exchanged. The Americans presented the Chinese with an expensive antique American clock. The Chinese were clearly not impressed. When asked why, the American participants thought it was because the clock was old. One American told the class that he gave a clock to a Chinese co-worker as a wedding gift and later was told by the brother of the bride that the gift-giver had cursed their marriage. In China, the word for “clock” and the word for “death” are similar, and giving a clock is a bad luck omen. A simple solution is to ask someone from the culture about appropriate gifts.
4. Incorporate fun activities. Participants recall fun activities, especially if they are somewhat stressful.
Application: Put participants in pairs where they tell a story to one another about an activity they experienced, but every time they use a verb, they must use another verb that has the same meaning, such as walked/strolled or ate/consumed. Created by Dianne Saphiere (dianne@nipporica.com), this “Redundancia” activity helps participants recognize the stress and difficulty non-native English speakers may have when conversing in English.
Continue to look for opportunities to add fun to your programs. After all, as organizational psychologist Adam Grant notes, “Play is not a frivolous activity. It’s a path to connection and creativity.”
If you have questions about using humor in training or good examples you’d like to share, please send them to me at: neal@NealGoodmanGroup.com for a forthcoming book on global business blunders and best practices for training with humor.
