Ubiquitous in advertising, humour leads a sadly shadowy existence in corporate communications. It’s unjustly labelled as lacking gravity and seriousness. But in fact, the opposite is the case. A well-placed witty comment makes you look super competent and establishes a sense of conspiracy with the person you’re talking to.

At many companies, unfortunately, deadly serious speeches, deadpan website copy and dry internal communications are the order of the day. Suggest to their communications managers that they could perhaps lighten things up a bit with a joke or witty comment and they’ll be at pains to stress that while their internal culture is very easy-going, the organisation has to present a serious face to the outside world.

“Serious” is the iceberg lettuce among adjectives: everybody eats it, but nobody really likes it. When copywriters and people giving speeches play it safe and completely forget about colour for the sake of being serious, they actually don’t come over as competent at all. They seem remote, and in the worst case sound boring, like they were taking themselves too seriously. That’s not going to impress either customers or prospective employees.

Laughter is human
Humour takes a bit of courage, but it’s worth it. That’s why I challenge you to stop only laughing behind closed doors. More than anything else in communication, humour makes us human. People who laugh together understand one another and feel closer. Humour releases tension, even if the joke sometimes falls flat. One of the signs of a bad working atmosphere, by contrast, is people telling cynical jokes on the sly.

Anyone able to crack jokes about their own field of work comes over as competent. A good example: the physicist Stephen Hawking. Indisputably one of the smartest people who ever lived, he liked to spice up his writing with humorous comparisons and jokes, making works on quantum physics into bestsellers. He once said “life would be tragic if it weren’t so funny.”