How fun are your meetings? Investigating the relationship between humor patterns in team interactions and team performance.

Abstract

Research on humor in organizations has rarely considered the social context in which humor occurs. One such social setting that most of us experience on a daily basis concerns the team context. Building on recent theorizing about the humor-performance link in teams, this study seeks to increase our understanding of the function and effects of humor in team interaction settings. We examined behavioral patterns of humor and laughter in real teams by videotaping and coding humor and laughter during 54 regular organizational team meetings. Performance ratings were obtained immediately following the team meetings as well as at a later time point from the teams' supervisors. At the behavioral unit level within the team interaction process, lag sequential analysis identified humor and laughter patterns occurring above chance (e.g., a joke followed by laughter, followed by another joke). Moreover, humor patterns triggered positive socioemotional communication, procedural structure, and new solutions. At the team level, humor patterns (but not humor or laughter alone) positively related to team performance, both immediately and 2 years later. Team-level job insecurity climate was identified as a boundary condition: In low job insecurity climate conditions, humor patterns were positively related to performance, whereas in high job insecurity climate conditions, humor patterns did not relate to team performance. The role of job insecurity as a boundary condition persisted at both time points. These findings underscore the importance of studying team interactions for understanding the role of humor in organizations and considering team-level boundary conditions over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Let's get this meeting started: Meeting lateness and actual meeting outcomes

“…Next, we compared the frequency of observed negative socioemotional behaviors during the actual meeting, in the 10‐min‐late condition versus the control condition, respectively. To account for differences in meeting duration, we related all of the observed frequencies (e.g., absolute number of interruptions in each group) to a 20‐min period by dividing the absolute frequency of each behavior by the time on task and multiplying by 20 (for a similar procedure, see Lehmann‐Willenbrock & Allen, ). Based on these relative frequencies and thus controlling for meeting duration, criticizing statements was not more frequent in meetings that started late ( t = 1.10, ns).…”

“…In terms of the meeting, students were informed that the college was revising the general education requirements and that they were seeking recommendations from current students through these small group discussion meetings. We chose a 30‐min time frame for the meetings, with a hard‐stop, consistent with the minimum length of many organizational meetings as well as frequent practices (e.g., Kauffeld & Lehmann‐Willenbrock, ; Lehmann‐Willenbrock & Allen, ; Schulte, Lehmann‐Willenbrock, & Kauffeld, ). However, the actual duration of each meeting depended on the condition.…”

“…To analyze these processes, we used the act4teams coding scheme for team interactions (e.g., Kauffeld & Lehmann‐Willenbrock, ; Lehmann‐Willenbrock & Allen, ). Given our theoretical framework and particular study aim, we focused our analysis on negative socioemotional behaviors observed in the premeeting period of these groups.…”

Personal need for structure as a boundary condition for humor in leadership

“…Nevertheless, future studies should also take non‐dispositional affective controls such as liking or the enjoyment of working with a humorous leader into account. Moreover, future studies could rely more on observational methods rather than subjective ratings in order to assess humor in leadership (e.g., Lehmann‐Willenbrock & Allen, ).…”

“…Moreover, it may be interesting to have a closer look at the dynamics between humor in leadership and humor shared among colleagues. In a recently published study, Lehmann‐Willenbrock and Allen () have shown the importance of humor in meetings without the attendance of a formal leader. Comparing the effects of humor in such meetings to the effects of humor in meetings with the leader taking part might provide important insights in the social dynamics and functions of humor in social situations and the workplace in general.…”