Leading With a Laugh: Lessons from the Comedy Stage

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On screen text, Wayne Rivers, Performance Construction Advisors

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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors where We Build Better Contractors.

This week I want to talk about Leading with a Laugh, Lessons from the Comedy Stage. So it's an article from the CEO Daily Briefing from July of last year by a business person named Kelly Valencia. And let me just break into this here. "Most marketing execs spend their off hours analyzing campaigns, reviewing trend reports, or scrolling through competitor ads. I spend mine on stage at comedy clubs telling jokes about being dim witted." Well, I might be able to join him on that stage. "My standup journey began with improv. I was an empty nester looking for something fun. I'd spent so long performing in rooms that didn't look like comedy clubs, executive meetings, keynotes, stages, and something called QBRs." If you can tell me what a QBR is, email me. "All strategy polishing control, I wanted the opposite of that, something unfiltered, something human. Improv reminded me how fun it is to play like we did as kids. Kids don't analyze or plan. They just react to what's in front of them."

Now, am I really suggesting that me and you and all of us decide to go on the comedy stage? Absolutely not. I do think though that having a fun, lighthearted business environment increases productivity and connection in the workplace. One of our values, I think we have 10 culture words that describe our culture, and one of them is lighthearted. Nobody's allowed to take himself or herself too seriously at our place. You start swaggering around with a big swollen head and no, somebody's going to puncture that balloon really quick. So how does comedy, in Kelly's estimation, translate to the workplace?

Number one, he says, "Get to the point and fast." In comedy, you only have seconds to hook your audience. Cut the fluff and say what really matters. Man, I love that. How many meetings have you been in when on analysis you look back at it and you said, "Man, that hour meeting could have been 10 minutes. Cut the fluff and get to the point quickly. Second thing, read the room. Sense the energy and engagement in the room. I've done presentations before where you look at the audience and you can just see everybody's looking at their phones, that's in the last 10 years. Before that, it would be they're looking at their notepad or their laptops or something like that. You can sense when people are engaged with you and when they're not. And when they're not engaged, you got to shift gears. You got to do something different.

So he talked about in business meetings, if you see that your audience, maybe you're having a meeting with trade partners or whatever and you see they're not engaged, dump your prepared remarks, dump the PowerPoint and go to Q&A. Q&A causes other people to engage with you. It might start slowly, but then it starts to build momentum. And then they're asking you about things about which they're interested, not the things that you thought were interesting, the things that they're interested in. Well, wait, the duration on this project is what? I don't understand that. And now you're getting into the meat of what's on their minds is not what's in your mind.

Number three. Make the joke about you. Don't take yourself too seriously. He says that you build trust by being vulnerable, and I think that's true. And own your screw-ups. We did a vlog on that a while back, and that's one way for executives to become more vulnerable. Make the joke about you. As my wife says, "Wayne, it's easy for you to be humble because you have a lot to be humble about. Make the joke about you.

Be human first. That's number four. Be authentic, which is another one of our value statements is to be an authentic example to our members. And then the last thing, laughter builds culture too. Teams that can laugh together build psychological safety. You've heard Dennis and me talk about that all the time. It allows your people to take creative risks and don't underestimate the power of laughter. One of the things that I really like is I can be sitting in my office listening, working on my laptop, and I hear laughter coming from other parts of the office. I think that's great. I just think, and I don't know, maybe we hire a bunch of cutups. I'm not sure what it is. But the fact that everybody is so loose with each other that they can laugh spontaneously at things. I think it just adds to our workplace culture quite a bit.

All right, let me finish up. Marketing is performance and so is leadership. Both require timing, audience awareness, and the courage to say something real. Standup taught me that failure isn't fatal. It's feedback. I don't think every executive needs to take up comedy, of course not, but we could all benefit from lightning up, from loosening our grip on being perfect, polished, and always on because the world does not need another perfectly worded email. It could use a good laugh though.

All right, let me know what you think. [email protected], this is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.

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On screen text, Wayne Rivers, Performance Construction Advisors

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