​If you scan the business books published in the past two decades, you’ll find every flavor of leader: servant leader, leader-as-coach, authentic leadership, compassionate leadership, etc. There’s also a great deal written about leaders as storytellers. What about funny leaders?

​Funny at work? Before I lose my data-driven readers, let me share some numbers to remind you of what work looks like:

• The average office worker spends 5 hours a day on email (ref: Adobe email study)
• The average executive spends 23 hours a week in meetings (ref: HBR article by Leslie Perlow, Constance Noonan Hadley, and Eunice Eun)

 
That’s the baseline, people! This is how we’re spending our time. Can we spice it up a bit?
 
Like me, you may be thinking you’re not a particularly funny person. You could not try to crack people up if you tried. But it’s not about stand-up comedy. In the book Humor, Seriously, authors Naomi Bagdonas and Jennifer Aaker remind us that it’s not about having a performative sense of humor. It’s about levity. 
 
Bagdonas and Aaker build the case that links humor to career success. They share that employees who use (work-appropriate) humor are 23% more respected. Leaders with a sense of humor are seen as 27% more motivating, and their employees report feeling 15% more engaged.
 
Let’s face it. Most of the time, work is not fun. When it is fun, we are more creative problem-solvers, and we get more done. And humor is one way to make work fun. 
 
So why do we hold back? Why do we check the funny bone at the door?
 
There are lots of reasons that make us hesitant to use humor at work. I surveyed a few colleagues, and here’s what we came up with:
 

• Fear of being perceived as unprofessional 
• Fear of insulting someone
• Fear of not being taken seriously

 
Those are the primary reasons we avoid humor. There are just as many reasons to intentionally add humor to the workday. The question is how to get there? 

(It’s a ‘yes/and’ kind of situation.) I polled some trusted colleagues for real examples. Here are a few:

• Someone will be absent from a meeting? No problem, you jokingly assign all actions to them
• Open your next meeting by sharing work travel mishaps, e.g., mixing up the hand lotion and shampoo at the hotel; losing your luggage and attending a board meeting in a Hawaiian shirt
• Tell a dad joke; ask others to tell their favorite dad jokes 
• Change your name to “Connecting to Audio…” in Zoom
• You miss something in a discussion? “Mea culpa. I was asleep on the job.”​
• Sing “Workin’ for a living” acapella, in the bathroom
• Add an element of surprise, as you see with this Microsoft note ("Nothing in Deleted Items. Someone finally took out the trash.")

Years ago, my astute officemate noticed something. We were listening to see if the conference room down the hall was going to become available.
 
“The meeting is wrapping up,” she said.
 
“How can you tell?” I asked.
 
“They are laughing. People always laugh at the end of a meeting.” She was right. 
 
Have you ever noticed that there’s often laughter at the end of a meeting? It’s not that someone always cracks a joke at the end of the meeting. It’s that laughter is one of those things we humans do. For politeness, for camaraderie, to connect. Social contagion. Try it.

 As you look at the week ahead, what is that 'something big' that you have the chance to influence? It may be that you...

• Need to socialize the refreshed strategy or FY priorities
• Need to tell others about your serving offerings 
• Are preparing a summary of key findings from your research, or 
• Are updating a roadmap of milestones for your project.

 
Yes? Then, what you need is a one-pager. 
 
Yes, I know. You have a lot to say. There are so many super important details. There’s a lot of context you need to provide, and of course you don’t want anyone to not have the FULL story. Right.
 
Really, what you need is a one-pager.
 
It’s the single most powerful thing you can create to increase your influence and get people on board with an idea. Consultants have known this for years. Busy execs, too. The one-pager is the PowerPoint MVP! It’s the one thing an exec will choose to print out. It’s the thing they’ll grab as they head to a meeting. 
 
The brain science behind it is called Dual Coding (Allan Pavio). With a one-pager, you’re giving equal weight to the words and the visuals. 
 
So how do you create one? How do you get ALL THAT INFO onto ONE page?
 
(And of course we’re saying a “page,” but we’re actually talking about a slide in PowerPoint. But you already knew that.)

Step 1: Figure out what you want to say

• Set a timer for two minutes. Get out a piece of paper and your favorite pen. What is your idea in 20 words or less? Jot it down.
• What images come to mind? Jot down your ideas, or better yet – sketch them.
• Step back and see what you have. Are there groupings or buckets? Is there a sequence or path? Is there a list? 

 
Step 2: Package it

• Open up PowerPoint, and start building your slide. You’ve seen a zillion slides with columns, boxes, cycles, and pyramids. Don’t overthink it. Pick a design that matches the meaning and keep it as simple as possible.
• If you don’t have access to a professional designer, use the smart art, sign up for services such as SlideTeam.com, SlideModel.com, SlidesGo.com, or others.

 
PRO TIP: I keep a “Frankenstein” folder on my desktop where I dismember and re-use good slides. Recycling is efficient!
 
Step 3: Test it

• Give your draft slide to a trusted friend. A good one-pager is like a kids’ picture book. It tells a story. Ask someone who is seeing the slide for the first time to voicetrack it for you. (“If you were presenting this slide, what would you say?”) Ideally, there’s enough info on the slide to build the narrative. 
• Listen to what they say, and in what order. That will tell you how the eye “reads” the slide. Adjust your one-pager accordingly.

 
PRO TIP: Remember, word economy. Every word counts. Avoid long narratives and phrases that may cause confusion or have multiple meanings.


You ready? Now get going! 
​

Gathering lessons learned is one of those things smart organizations make time to do. For one, never let a crisis go to waste. Also, things move so rapidly that it sometimes takes a deliberate exercise such as a lessons learned activity to force reflection on what worked, so we know to repeat it for next time. And share the goodness beyond the group that was engaged in the work. We can all learn from it.

​So here it goes. Lessons learned on lessons learned.

For each person you interview, you’ll want to understand their role in the effort. The questions below are a great starter kit. You may want to share the questions in advance to allow for the ideas to percolate.
 

1. As you reflect on ___, what’s one thing that went particularly well?
2. What contribution(s) are you personally most proud of? Where do you feel you made the greatest impact?
3. How did you communicate? (Meetings, emails, chat, shouting across the room…)
4. What resource (could be technology, a person, etc.) did you rely heavily on?
5. What was a pain point? Think back to a moment of particular frustration (if there was one). What was happening?
6. What do you want to remember to never repeat?
7. What surprised you?
8. If you had to repeat this activity/project, what’s on your wishlist?
9. What do you know now, that you wish you knew at the start?
10. What can others learn from your experience?

 
 
Once you have all your notes and sit back, squint your eyes a little, and see what stands out, you’ll be in a position to write up the lessons learned. I find that the more time you spend refining the takeaways and themes, the better. And if you can get it down to an exec summary one-pager, you’re golden! 

“She is an excellent listener.” This is a real piece of feedback, early career days, from one of my first performa​nce reviews. It jolted me back to grade school, when my report card was hand-written in perfect Catholic-school-teacher cursive, and always would include something to the effect of, “She’s a pleasure to have in class.”
 
In both instances, my reaction, masked by a polite smile, was the same: That’s the best you got? 
 
You see, what I wanted to be recognized for was the stuff that came hard. The things I had to work at. The big things. 


Fast-forward a few years, I get it. 

Now, as a communications consultant, most of what I do starts with listening. Many communications consultants have the equivalent of x-ray hearing. We’re paying attention to how things are said—tone, pitch, intonation, turn taking, who’s talking over whom, who speaks last—and (just as important) what’s not said. We’re thinking about what conversations are missing, and how we force that gust of info through an organization. We’re also standing up in the lighthouse, looking out for confusion. Some dogs are trained to sniff for truffles—I can sniff out a misunderstanding. 

(Thank you for indulging that jumble of metaphors and not judging.)
 
So what’s my process? How do you listen better, more deeply? 

1. Board the boat: Setting the context for a meeting up front, and making sure everyone is “on the same boat,” as one of my colleagues often jokes, is essential. “We left off that ___ and we want to discuss ____.” Bonus: levity. The boat reference always brings a chuckle, and science tells us that we do better work when we also share a laugh.
2. Slow down: If you’ve ever transcribed a minute of talk, you know you have to STOP, REWIND, REPLAY…several times. We can’t possibly catch everything that’s said the first time around. In a discussion, that means rephrasing, asking for clarity, and—yes—slowing things down if needed. “Let me make sure I got this right…” You’ll feel unpopular. Our culture rewards speed and getting things quickly. Yet I have found that spending a minute or two up front to ensure understanding is worth hours of rework at the back end.
3. Listen with your eyes: I was in a meeting last week with a group of leaders who were looking for ways to be more present with their staff. One of them had been “scolded” by a team member, who asked her to “listen with her eyes.” It speaks to the times. Even in meetings, we’re tempted to “quickly respond” to a text or IM. “It’ll just take a second,” we think. Maybe so. But ask for a minute’s pause if you need to tend to something that pops up. Avoid sidebars. Put up your “do not disturb” and hold a pencil if you can’t keep your hands off the keyboard. 
4. Double check: At the end of meetings, I am often the one who stops to check everyone’s understanding of action items and follow ups. “Let me recap what I heard…” It feels annoying sometimes, I’ll admit. It’s a lot of who’s on the hook for what, by when. But it results in a lot of, “glad I checked” moments. 

 
I recently heard design guru Bruce Mau speak about his book, Mau: MC 24, Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work. One of the things he said is, 

(Here’s the link to that talk, if you have 30 min.)
 
Yes! Listening plays a big part in that.

Image credit: Mary Engelbreit