Humor and leadership style

Abstract

Drawing on authentic workplace interactions, this paper examines the ways in which effective leaders use humor as a discursive resource to construct particular aspects of leadership style. The conventional wisdom in leadership studies suggests that humor is an important tool for “good” leaders who inspire and challenge their subordinates. The management studies literature suggests a basic distinction between a traditional transactional style, which is rule-driven and task focused, and a more favored transformational style, where leaders encourage creativity and innovation, and are characterized as inspirational. Using data collected in a range of New Zealand organizations, this paper explores and illustrates the wide range of functions served by humor, and the ways in which humor contributes to aspects of the construction of leadership styles. Our analysis supports recent proposals that many effective leaders combine aspects of both transactional and transformational styles of leadership.

Humor in organization: From function to resistance

“…The role of humor in relation to change is also linked to the work on humor and leadership which mostly takes the form of exploring how humor enhances leadership style and effectiveness (Anderson 2005;Crawford 1994;Decker and Rotondo 2001;Priest and Swain 2002;Rizzo et al 1999;Vecchio et al 2009). Others are more circumspect (Holmes and Marra 2006) and discuss humor and the leader in the manner of the fool or jester such that humor is involved in challenging leadership (Kets de Vries 1990;Westwood 2004).…”

Incongruity in the generation and perception of humor on Facebook in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution

“…Through humor, Tunisians maintained and created ingroup boundaries and constructed group cohesion. According to Holmes and Marra (2006), uniting against an absent other makes specific aspects of individual and social identity salient. This explains why making fun at Ben Ali is a way for Tunisians to implicitly communicate their disapproval of the identity projected by this person and to make the social identity that they want to display and to be known for be brought to the forefront of attention.…”

Analyzing structure and function in humor: Preliminary sketch of a message-centered model

“…How ever, consideration of the banter that follows provides stronger evidence that members actually were united. Holmes and Marra (2006) describe how group members "work together to supportively develop the topic" (126). The chaining of humor by several individuals and the instances of general laughter confirm that, for the most part, the humor did seem to serve a unifying function.…”