Healing the Workplace with Humour

I used to think that organizations with a sense of humour were healthier…that is until I read this month’s (March/April, 2008) issue of Utne Reader. I still think humour is good for the workplace but there is a dark side too.

The article in Utne Reader was written by a fellow named Matt Labash and is called, “Are We Having FUN Yet?” The sub-title for the article is…”the infantilization of corporate America”. Matt provides this partial list of fun activities. These are suggested ways of getting a laugh at work and promoted as ways to increase productivity in the workplace:

• koosh balls
• office-chair relay races
• marshmallow fights
• job interviews conducted in Groucho glasses
• wacky Olympics
• memos by Frisbee
• bunny teeth
• etc, etc, etc.

But don’t assume that everyone shares the same sense of humour or that everyone will benefit in the same way.  Introducing humour into the workplace is NOT a quick fix and could do more harm than good.

But I must digress. A few years ago I had the pleasure of attending the Humour in the Workplace Awards in Vancouver. These awards were created and hosted by an organization called Rock Paper Scissors a “corporate entertainment and training company that specializes in evaluation, conflict resolution, creativity training and comedy”.

Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) has been “learning how to make the workplace healthier and happier through humour” for about 15 years. They not only organzed the Vancouver Humour in the Workplace Awards but they have been on the receiving end of the Canadian Comedy Awards.

 RPS believes that to successfully incorporate humour into your workplace you must….

• encourage laughing with and not at your fellow co-workers
• include, not exclude people
• fit with your organization’s culture

They believe that humour can be used to “inspire innovation, increase cooperation, build stronger and more effective teams and generally help people feel more engaged at work”.

So, if we agree that laughter and humour is important and we don’t want to embarass ourselves with silly, juvenille pranks…what else can we do? 

Well, we can stop imposing things and let the people decide. Now how democratic is that???

Laughter clubs are a great way to start incorporating humour in the workplace.

“Laughter clubs are groups of people who meet at a regular appointed time in a designated place to take part in laughter exercises and workouts, and other activities that encourage playfulness, fun and mental balance.”

“ Members enjoy the social as well as phycial experince. There are discussions  of the benefits of laughter and its physical impacct. A laughter club session can take as little as five or ten minutes, as a workplace break, for example, or at the start of a shift or workday.” 

Most workplaces are far too serious.  Laughter is a great stress reliever and when you laugh you are even exercising your internal organs. Organizing fun events brings people together and facilitates teamwork.

Why not start a laughter club at work?

                                                                                             

Driving Fear Out of the Workplace

Back in the 1990’s, perhaps the hey-day of the Quality Movement, I first came across a book called Driving Fear Out of the Workplace: How to Overcome the Invisible Barriers to Quality, Productivity, and Inn0vation. In the book the authors Kathleen Ryan and Daniel Oestreich describe the effects of fear on workplace culture and the quality of work.

For the most part the Quality Movement in the 1990’s focused on the tools and techniques of quality improvement. Although W. Edwards Demming had made reference to fear in his earlier writing–no-one had bothered to connect the way people were treated in the organization with the quality of work they produced.

When Ryan and Oestreich’s book was first published “executives and managers responded by stating that they weren’t interested in driving fear our of the workplace BUT they were interested in how to keep it and use it more effectively”.

Now-a-days this is called harassment or bullying and its getting a lot of bad press. In fact, based on some recent newspaper articles that I’ve read, it appears the court system in Canada is taking a hard line with managers who are convicted of harassment.

But in the 1990’s I guess this was a relatively common occurance. 

When I first read Driving Fear Out of the Workplace, it made perfect sense. It still does! If employees (everyone in the organization is an employee) are afraid to speak up or speak out quality of work suffers and untold damage is done to the organization on many levels.

In researching the book, Ryan and Oestreich found that people don’t speak up for the following reasons:

• fear of repercussions
• nothing will change
• avoidance of conflict
• don’t want to be seen as causing trouble

They also found that when fear is part of an organization’s workplace culture problems occur for both the individuals and for the entire organization.

People at all levels are less committed, less motivated and less confident. People tend to hide mistakes and there is an overall loss of creativity, risk-taking, and problem solving. Individuals suffer from anxiety, stress, depression and their careers may be damaged.

To give management some credit Ryan and Oestreich state that “the greatest percentage of intimidating behaviors are committed unconsciously by managers who have no idea how their behavior is affecting others”. Does that excuse them? I don’t think so.

Unfortunately there are abusive managers (they certainly aren’t leaders) around who know perfectly well what they are doing.  

But if you work in an organization that condones such behavior and the risk of speaking out is too great…what can you do?

Ryan and Oestreich have some suggestions which I’m saving for another post.

Take care!

Healthy Workplaces Need Soul

What comes to your mind when you hear the words “organization and soul” spoken in the same breath? Why isn’t there more attention paid to the souls of the organizations that we spend so much time in? What is the connection between a healthy workplace and its soul? These are important questions but not ones that you’ll find discussed in most organizations.   

I believe that part of the reason that people don’t usually talk about healthy workplaces and organizational soul in the same breath is because an organization’s soul is intangible and invisible. It’s not measurable!  

There are many other reasons of course.

Talking about “soul” makes some people uncomfortable…unless of course you are in a place of worship or an organization that has a mission that is related to religion or faith.  

Have you every worked in an organization that has ”soul”? Can an organization have soul? What is soul in this context? A growing number of books are being written about this subject but few connect the health of a workplace with the need to recognize and nurture its soul. 

In my humble opinion organizations without souls are unhealthy! I believe that workers in these organizations feel disconnected and suffer more stress and mental illness than in organizations that are soulful. 

Soul might be intangible and invisible, BUT it is noticeable when it is absent!

 Dr. John Izzo sees corporate soul awakening “when individuals are truly alive in the workplace, pouring their creativity, energy and passion into their work”.

What do organizations do to make this possible? Core values are the foundation of an organization’s soul. The vision shows the way and the values explain how to get there. Organizational cultures are created when values are known, shared and lived. 

According to Alan Briskin, the author of The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace,  ”Soulfulness requires both inner work–finding meaning and purpose–and outer work–seeking avenues for expression.”

                                                                                                                                                

Can the workplace be a place of spiritual growth? Should we expect our jobs to provide us with a sense of meaning, connection, satisfaction and purpose? Perhaps the workplace with all its challenges is a place where we can grow spiritually. 

I’d like to think so but there’s another way of looking at this. 

In “Fire Your Boss” Stephen M. Pollan argues that there is a danger in seeking meaning and satisfaction at work. “For most of American history people didn’t look to derive emotional satisfaction from their jobs…emotional and spiritual satisfaction came from family, home, church, community and hobbies.”

The danger in seeking this satisfaction from work is that we are now spending most of our time looking in the wrong place and as a result we are tired, dissatisfied, and have become disconnected from our families and community.   As much as I hate to admit it Pollan has a point.

                                     

Seems like there are many more questions than answers. What do you think?

Organizations are NOT Machines

This week I came across an article written by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers called “The Irresistible Future of Organizing”. The article was written in 1996 but the content is still relevant today and I highly recommend that you have a look at it.

In the first paragraph the authors ask the question, “Why have the best efforts to create significant and enduring organizational change resulted in so many failures?”

Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers go on to share their thoughts on the subject and they have an interesting tale to tell.  They start off by introducing us to the idea that organizations are like machines.  In their article the authors compare organizations as machines to organizations as living systems. 

The theory that organizations function like machines can be traced back to the 17th century when scientists first began to describe the universe as a great clock. 

Fast forward 300 years and you’ll find that the language of the machine is alive and well in our organizations today. 

According to Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers we still search for “tools and techniques” and “change levers”; we attempt to “drive” change through our organizations; we want to “build” solutions and “reengineer” for peak efficiencies.

Now, this might seem rather silly to you but believe me this is the language currently in use by organizational development specialists who are responsible for facilitating change in many of our organizations.

I observed this firsthand when I worked in a large health care organization with a department called “change initiatives”. Change initiatives refers to all of the major organizational changes that are needed to improve performance and to keep the organization moving forward.     

The CEO who created this change initiatives department was often heard telling people that he wanted the organization to be “flexible, nimble, and able to adapt to change”. Like most leaders today he wanted the organization to be successful in how it responded to the continuous challenges that it was facing.

This leader, like many others, wanted an organization that was adaptive, flexible, self-renewing, resilient, learning, and intelligent.

BUT, according to Wheatly and Kellner-Rogers these are attributes found in LIVING SYSTEMS not in organizations that operate like machines.

In their article they acknowledge that, like the CEO mentioned above, “we want our organizations to behave as living systems, but we only know how to treat them as machines”.

Also, there is a much more fundamental issue at stake here…leaders who understand that their organizations are living systems treat the people who work with them VERY differently than leaders who see their organizations as machines.

This begs the question, “Why would leaders operate their organizations like machines?” I think that the answer to that question boils down to one word…CONTROL.

On the one hand leaders today want their organizations to be flexible enough to adapt quickly to change BUT on the other hand they want to maintain control of what goes on in these same organizations.

Does anyone else see the flaw in this logic?

Kindness in the Workplace

I’m always on the lookout for new ideas to share with you. So, what’s happening in the world of work this week? Of course, there are lots of things I could focus on but this week I’d like to tell you about a program that I came across a few years ago. 

The program is called “Kindness to Colleagues” and it focuses on three themes:

• Kindness to Oneself
• Kindness to Colleagues
• Kindess in the Community

You can find out more about this program by contacting Kind Acts. Kind Acts is a B.C.-based organization whose mission is ”to inspire human connection and activate the practice of kindless, locally and globally”.  

So, why do we need to focus on kindness in the workplace anyway? Isn’t kindness a given? Aren’t we supposed to treat each other with kindness and respect?

My dictionary describes the word kind as ” showing gentleness and consideration”. In a perfect world we would all act this way but since we don’t live in a perfect world someone has started an international movement to help us to become more aware of how we are behaving.

Perhaps it’s because of the challenges that we increasingly face in the workplace that common courtesy is not as common as it once was.

Fortunately we don’t need to look very far for inspiration.   Olivia McIvor has written a book called the Business of Kindness. If you go to her site you’ll find links and resources to use in your workplace. 

Have a great week and remember to be kind to yourself!