Special Delivery Part 6: Why Humor is Not For Everyone
This is part of a series on special delivery, answering a reader question from Spencer. Read the previous posts here:
Special Delivery Part 1: Universal Skills
Special Delivery Part 2: Specialized Skills
Special Delivery Part 3: The Four Core Delivery Skills
Special Delivery Part 4: Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses
Over the last few posts, we explored the difference between universal and specialized skills and how to use them to maximize your performance. Today, we tackle humor.
How Humor Works
The mechanics of humor go beyond the scope of this post. For now, we just need to know one thing about it: it works by defying and highlighting an expectation.
A man in a tuxedo walks through a hotel lobby. His nose is in the air. He knows he looks good. The front desk clerk says: “Welcome back, sir. I have something for you to sign.”
“I’m too busy today,” he replies without looking at the clerk.
At the bottom of the stairs, a sweet little old lady asks him: “Please, would you help me find the elevator?”
“I’m far too important for that,” he replies. He skips up the stairs two at a time. At the top, a pie flies out of nowhere and hits him in the face. He tumbles back down the stairs, flailing wildly, shouting: “Ow! Ow! Ow!” on every step. He narrowly misses the old lady who is now halfway up. He lands at the base of the stairs in a pile of crust and cream, his perfect outfit ruined. He’s not hurt, but he’s terribly embarrassed.
This is slapstick, one of the most primitive forms of humor. The obvious part of the joke – the pie flying out of nowhere – is far less than important than the setup, which builds an expectation to subvert.
Consider this inferior joke:
A man in a hazmat suit stands in the middle of a field. “Go ahead,” he says. His assistant throws the pie at his face. He wipes it off the mask. Everyone is bored.
The joke only works if the pie hits someone who is not expecting it; someone who needs to be taken down a notch. The man has an expectation about how his day will go and how other people will treat him, and that expectation is highlighted and subverted by the pie. Sophisticated forms of humor do the same thing, but with more creative setups and subversions.
So What’s the Catch?
Subverting expectation often undermines other goals. We like funny people. We don’t necessarily relate to them, or trust them, or believe in them. Challenging convention is only useful to people who want to maximize their sympathy.
If you want to have the most gravitas in the room, humor is the last tool you want to use. You’re tearing down conventions when you want the judge to buy into them and believe that you are the master of them.
Maybe you want the judge to be fired up about orphans. If you’re doing your job, a joke should come off as tasteless and inappropriate.
There are other ways to increase sympathy outside of humor, like being cute. Many speakers inspire utter adoration in judges, but if they try to tell a joke, it feels forced.
So, to review:
1) All speakers should have a minimum level of likability. Likability has no risks or tradeoffs and does not require humor.
2) Some speakers should go beyond likability and maximize sympathy, trading away other possible strengths.
3) Most – but not all - sympathetic speakers should incorporate humor.
Big picture, only about 20% of speakers benefit from consistently incorporating humor into their speeches. About half should never use it at all.
In the next speech, we’ll apply everything we’ve learned so far to the original email.