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Humor in Leadership: How to Lead People with Humor

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Humor at Work in Teams, Leadership, Negotiations, Learning and Health

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Psychology ((BRIEFSPSYCHOL))

Abstract

A leader may use humor for a variety of relational goals in a hierarchical relationship. Humor can be used to create cohesion and strengthen solidarity with subordinates, but also to create divisions between them and increase a leader’s status. The duality of humor functions becomes especially apparent in the context of leader-subordinate relationships. In this chapter, we will describe how perceptions of leader humor and leader effectiveness go hand in hand, partly due to implicit personality theories. We will show that the effects of leader humor are stronger in some tasks and for some persons than others, and that the effects of general leader behaviors such as transactional and transformational leadership in part depend on leader humor use. We will explain various response strategies that enable listeners to acknowledge humor and power differences simultaneously. Finally, we will close by pointing out differences in humor use between female and male leaders.

The original version of this chapter was revised: See the “Chapter Note” section at the end of this chapter for details. The erratum to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65691-5_9

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  1. SRH University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

    Christine Gockel & Laura Vetter

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  1. Christine Gockel
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  2. Laura Vetter
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Correspondence to Christine Gockel .

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Gockel, C., Vetter, L. (2017). Humor in Leadership: How to Lead People with Humor. In: Humor at Work in Teams, Leadership, Negotiations, Learning and Health. SpringerBriefs in Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65691-5_4

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