Humor at Work: What works best and when

They say laughter cures all. They also say laughter is truly the best medicine -- and that can be true at work, as well as at home.

Laughter on a regular basis improves blood pressure, stimulates the organs and can reduce pain, according to studies. So if it helps promote all those things, why don't we have more humor in the workplace? A daily dose of fun - humorous quotes, timely (and appropriate) jokes, fun events, and other forms of humor at work can help relax employees, increase morale, and energize the social aspects of the workplace. Workplaces that see humor as a tool often find themselves with happier and more productive employees. This in turn can create a better business, one that sees regular increases in profits and results.

But in today's workplaces, the stresses often outweigh the lighter moments. Sure, companies say they have a happy, positive culture, but are they faking the culture? There are telltale signs that a company's culture is lacking in the workplace. Lack of care about any type of 'mission' statement; Senior managers don't walk the walk with employees; online reviews don't reflect the everyday realty and more.

What can company owners and employees do to make a more vibrant, fun-seeking company culture? For starters, a company's owner or top leader can make the initial charge to try to have more fun. But it takes honesty and some guts to share that. But employees may respond well to that.

Timing and Context

With all good humor, timing and context are important. Even if you are a funny person, cracking a joke about Obamacare during a serious office meeting about company health insurance costs may not be the right setting. Or suggesting that you use a company photo of everyone throwing money in the air, on  Minted photo holiday cards that you send to customers might not fly. In other words, keep in mind that not everyone has the same sense of humor.

Finding the right balance of timing, context, the moods of your co-workers and managers is all important for humor to flourish in the workplace. Take into consideration, too, that fellow employees are often more comfortable bantering with colleagues than with management. There's an uncertainty that reduces the idea to get funny around bosses. Employees aren't sure how humor will be taken or perceived over time.

If you make it a habit, it can help.  For example, my company's headquarters location has a monthly "recess" in which we all gather together in the kitchen for a party for about an hour.  Each month, a different department hosts it, selects the theme, provides the refreshments (including some adult beverages, and decorates the place.  It has become a very popular event that people look forward to and it's a good place for some socializing with people you don't see much during the normal business day.  

Culture Drives Humor

In many ways, the culture makes the humor in a workplace. If your work culture is stiff and formal, weak attempts at humor and levity will fall flat. In a culture that's looser and full of guffaws on a more regular basis, you can really see some humorous efforts rise. That's according to Michael Kerr, who runs the business consultancy Humor at Work and is author of "The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses are Laughing all the Way to the Bank" (Dec. 2013). Workplaces that are more creative and innately innovative tend to have more humor within. It's all about feeling relaxed in an environment. With more relaxation and chances to bend the rules, a work culture can open itself up to more humor from its employees.

By removing emotional anxiety in the workplace with a more light-hearted tone, employees will get a strong sense of empowerment to create projects and programs. And these initiatives could help with team building, recruiting, office communications, morale and overall productivity in the workplace.

Job Seekers: How to stay organized while on the hunt

Job hunting these days is less like dating and more like having your face stomped on repeatedly by a rubber boot. Forbes reports that a single job listing will get an average of 118 applicants, yet only 27 percent of those applicants will actually receive an interview. If you're serious about your job search, you're very likely applying to dozens of positions every day. This can lead to a lot of complications, such as forgetting which jobs you've already applied to. Finding a new job should be treated like work: you need to be structured, organized and consistent if you are to be successful.

Managing separate résumés for better fits

If you're looking at multiple types of industries and positions, you need to have multiple résumés that resonate with the hiring manager you're targeting. If your last two positions were tech support in a healthcare company and administrative support for a real estate company, you might even have up to four resumes: healthcare-focused, real estate-focused, tech support-focused and administration-focused. There are applications such as Résumé Tracker, which will allow you to track the different versions of your résumé easily, but you can also simply name them in a consistent fashion, and keep them all in the same folder on your hard drive.

Mind the image you present

Take a look at the image you present to the people you're approaching - does your résumé look professional?  Are you using a professional email address?  If you're sending a physical résumé printing it on high quality paper can help - just avoid cheesy patterns or overly busy stationery.

If you plan on presenting references, be sure those references know about it, are willing to help, and are warned that you've just sent out a bunch of résumés.  It can also be helpful if you confirm that they believe you'll be a good fit for the jobs you're applying for and are willing & able to give you a positive reference. 

Organizing your job applications with ease

Applying to a specific job multiple times can be a disaster. Not only does it make you look unorganized, but you could also accidentally represent yourself in multiple ways, and thus make it appear as though you're being shady about your credentials. It's somewhat easy to tell whether you've applied to a position when using job applications online, as you can simply check to see whether you've signed up or not under your email address. Responding to classified ads, on the other hand, can be a little more difficult. You could keep everything in an Excel spreadsheet, or you could also start using an application such as Jibber Jobber.

Time management isn't only for after you get hired

It's important for you to be consistent when it comes to your job hunt. As Huffington Post notes, you should schedule specific times for your job hunt, and you should approach it like a job. You can create a routine that involves set hours of your day, and during this time, you should focus only on procuring your next position. You should also set small goals for yourself each day, much like projects. These tasks must be actionable steps you can control, such as filling out 10 applications in a day, rather than steps you can't control, such as acquiring an interview within a week.  This can also help you feel the momentum of the process.

Don't stumble at the finish line

Organization doesn't stop once you get an interview. You also need to manage your appointments effectively, and ensure you never miss an interview and you're never late. If you're going to an interview in an unfamiliar area, you may want to head out early, or scope out the location beforehand. Smartphones are absolutely superb for creating appointment notification, as well as getting directions. You should also remember that it's impolite to be late, but it's also impolite to be more than 15 minutes early.  It's OK to show up early to keep unforeseen delays from making you miss the appointment, but when you do, simply hang out at a nearby coffee shop and wait until 10 minutes prior to the interview before going into the building.

If you have any other tips to share, please let me know. 

Related articles: 

• Looking for a job? Preparation can make a difference
• Creating job descriptions with MindManager
• Job Seekers: Are you Defiant?
• The Image of Success

Attitude at Altitude: A Lesson

This past weekend, I traveled out of town with one of my daughters for a soccer tournament.  The tournament was in South Lake Tahoe (on the border between California and Nevada) and we were about 6300 feet above sea level (almost 2km elevation).  My daughter's team is used to practicing and playing in Oregon, at about 50 feet above sea level (about 15 meters ) elevation.  

When you aren't accustomed to it, physical activity at that altitude is very challenging.  For example, I went for a hike up into the mountains after we arrived, and it was much more difficult than I expected due to the thinner atmosphere at that altitude. 

Attitude at Altitude

The reason for the title of this post:  The girls' coach never mentioned anything about the altitude to the girls on the team, and asked the parents not to say anything.  The girls played their hearts out the whole weekend, and never complained.  They played amazingly well, and came in second in the tournament (they lost on penalty kicks in the championship game).

I believe if we'd have told them something about how the altitude  would affect their performance, they wouldn't have done as well.  In other words, we didn't give them the data that would mess with their attitudes, so their attitudes weren't affected. 

After reflecting on it, I think the coach did exactly the right thing.  Having that information wouldn't have changed their circumstances one bit - they'd still have to play at a higher altitude, compete with the same teams, and deal with the same physical effects of their environment. Knowing about the difference in atmosphere wouldn't have made a bit of difference in their situation, but it could have affected their attitudes or confidence dramatically. 

How Are We Affecting Our Teams With Our Data? 

This weekend got me thinking about how the information I choose to communicate might be affecting the teams I "coach" or work with - am I giving them information that could cause them to perform poorly?  Is the information I communicate to them something they can control or affect? Or am I giving them the data to sabotage their own performance.

I now want to be more conscious of how I communicate with my own teams at work, and try to be conscious of how my message may affect their performance in detrimental ways.   If I mess up their attitude by causing them to worry about things beyond their control, I could cause us all to lose the game.

New Help for Old Project Management Problems

Over the years, I've done a lot of jobs.  One thing that's remained constant: Effective project management - especially in a team-oriented project - can mean the difference between success and failure.

Once the project and budget have been approved, the real work of project management begins. Tracking the project tasks and communicating with the team are ongoing efforts that every PM faces. For some time, a PM has had to rely on the same set of tools. With the latest cloud technology, software as a service (SaaS) solutions are available to help the PM stay more organized and connected with the team.

Netsuite

According to PR Newswire, Gartner research states that almost 50 percent of manufacturers will be using some form of SaaS by 2015. Netsuite is a cloud-based resource management system that provides leaner manufacturing and resource planning to stabilize your company. It gives you visibility across the business in real-time. With this level of visibility to the various processes, you have better manufacturing resource planning and management. You can pay close attention to forecasting and inventory management. Netsuite gives you demand planning capabilities to create a more finely tuned forecast. Using sales projections, trends, seasonal fluctuations and historical data, you can come closer to your on demand inventory needs.

Asana

This tool provides a lot of organizational flexibility. The PM has various ways of slicing-and-dicing multiple projects and teams to allow better collaboration and communication. The PM has control over how workspaces, projects and tasks are organized for visibility and easier tracking, according to lifehack.org. Workspaces are work areas that can contain one or more projects and tasks. They can be shared with multiple people. Multiple workspaces may be created to reflect different areas of focus. One workspace could be created for a new-product development effort and another for marketing campaigns for an existing product.

Projects are created within workspaces and can be either public or private. A public project may be accessed by everyone who has access to the workspace, like when you need the entire team to access smaller projects for only a subset access.

Tasks are the work units of a project and they also can be created as public or private. The comment system within tasks allow a greater collaboration between the team members without relying on email. A project history of task communication can be stored this way.

Once a project manager understands how to set up workspaces and projects in Asana, it can become a tool to make collaboration, communication and tracking easier for the PM.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is structured like a spreadsheet with rows and columns and is flexible and customizable that integrates with Google Docs. This is a good choice for specific project management needs that other solutions don't offer. Spreadsheets can be organized in folders or workspaces. Each sheet can be shared with multiple people. The reporting capability is more than just formatted output. Reports can be made to be drilled-down into or used interactively, such as in what-if scenarios. Smartsheet is supported by a number of articles, videos and tutorials. There are webinars available to learn more about how to customize the product to meet your needs, according to reviews.com.

Google Docs

If you are on a limited budget, or if you need a minimal project and resource management system, Google Docs may have enough capabilities for you and your team. This is a hybrid office automation system with word processor, spreadsheet, graphics capabilities and the ability to collaborate on documents. While not organized specifically for the PM, the pieces manage a small project. Just don't expect automatic Gantt chart creation or resource leveling across tasks, according to lifehack.org.

Project managers have dealt with tools that came out 20 years ago or more. Even updated, they don't take advantage of the features that the cloud offers. These tools give the PM more flexibility and choices on how to set up and manage their projects.

​Those are a few options, in a nutshell.  If you're using something different that you absolutely love, or you have real-world feedback on any of these options, please leave a note in the comments..

The Easiest Way To Improve Your Presentation Skills

​In my line of work, I end up doing a lot of presentations.  I've also studied a lot of information on how to become a better presenter.  A long time ago, I took a class from Distinction Communication, a company that helps people develop more effective presentations (and presentation skills).  Since then, I've taken "refresher" courses from the same folks.  You can find a lot of free, helpful presentation tips and videos on the Distinction site, by the way.

Seeing what you don't see

One of the most effective techniques I learned was to videotape yourself presenting so you can see how you appear in front of an audience.

​I must say, the feeling is both discomforting and extremely powerful.  Not only do you get to hear how clearly (or unclearly) you communicate, you also get to see the nervous habits you don't notice from inside your own body.

For example, you may notice you use a lot of filler words, like "Um" or "Uh."  You may find that you rock back & forth a lot, or don't make eye contact with your audience.  You may also find that you make strange gestures that distract from your content.​

All of these sorts of things are normal but very hard to notice when you're actively presenting.

DIY presentation skills improvement

For a long time, the only time I ever had my presentations recorded was during these training / coaching sessions.  Last year, I realized I could do this kind of "presentation audit" myself pretty easily using tools that were readily available to me.​

If you want to record your presentation, you can easily do it using your smartphone, tablet (iPad, Nexus 7, etc.), or the webcam on your computer.  Lately, I've been practicing my presentations the night before in my hotel room and using my recorded session to identify problems with my presentation.  I find it very helpful.​

​The key is to be in full "show mode" -- from a personal perspective, not just a PowerPoint perspective.  In other words, pretend you have a full audience and present as though it were the real deal, as this will provide the most useful data from which to improve your skills.

It's also kind of fun to keep some of these presentation audits so you can look back and see how your skills are evolving.​