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The Business Times: How women leaders benefit from using humour

21 May 2023
New research suggests that being funny helps leaders gain influence, and that women benefit more than men from using humour in public speaking.

Originally found at The Business Times

“A SENSE of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done,” said Dwight D Eisenhower. The ability to make light of a situation and make people laugh, as the former US president and statesman noted, is undoubtedly a handy skill for managers. But there is a specific group of leaders for whom humour could be even more potent: women.

This is the main finding of a study Julia Bear, Emuna Eliav and I conducted on the benefits of using humour to influence others. In our analysis of 2,407 TED talks by prominent speakers presenting new ideas in their areas of expertise to live and online audiences, we found that humorous speakers were more influential, especially women. Female TED speakers who used more humour were more popular and perceived as more influential than less funny women and comparably funny men.

Our study, published in Academy of Management Discoveries and recently featured in Harvard Business Review, tracked how often the audience laughed to quantify humour. Audience ratings, independent evaluations and online view counts were also used to measure its impact.

Continue reading the original article at The Business Times.

Read the original research in Academy of Management Discoveries.

Read the Academy of Management Insights summary.

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