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About Humor and Successful Leadership

"A Whole New Mind - Why Right -Brainers Will Rule the Future

Guest Author: Daniel H. Pink
Posted May 25, 2008

Daniel H. Pink’s best selling books raise as well as answer questions about how the way we think shapes the future.

Continuing the mental dialogue that began when reading his books, here is how Dan responded to questions 8Sages raised.

Q & A's

 8Sages.com: Why are “the most effective leaders funny (that is “funny ha ha” not “funny strange”?

Daniel H. Pink: Because humor can play a very potent role in management.  It can foster social bonds and build a certain sprits in corps.  It allows the manager to show that she's not taking herself too seriously -- usually a good trait in a leader.   It can artfully defuse difficult situations.  And it can jolt people into new ways of looking at things. 

 8Sages.com: The joke in your book that begins with a nun, a rabbi and priest go into a bar is the kind of good old joke that gets told again and again with variations. Why do jokes, humor, like poetry and music, bear repeating while prose functions as a single use, almost disposable information carrier?  

Daniel H. Pink: Interesting question.  I'm not entirely sure.  But it seems to me that one function of humor is to create social bonds and group cohesion.  That's difficult to do in a single shot.  So "running jokes" can become a social glue of sorts. 

8Sages.com: How did Henry Ford, who is presented as truly unfunny, succeed in founding and leading a long lived company? What attribute other than being funny made Ford effective as a leader?

Daniel H. Pink:You have to remember that it was a different era.  The key back then was to get people doing the same thing, over and over again, in the exact same way as efficiently as possible.  Ford, building on the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, was a master of that management form.  Alas, joking around undermines that approach.  In fact, it's almost its antithesis.   

8Sages.com:In terms of right versus left brain thinking described in your book, is there any significance in the use of the word “left” to describe “liberals” and the word “right” to describe “conservatives”?

Daniel H. Pink:I doubt it.  There are plenty of left-brain right-wingers, plenty of right-brain left-wingers, plenty of left-brain left-wingers, plenty of right-brain left--wingers -- and even more folks in between!

 
To learn more about guest author Daniel H. Pink, visit his webiste www.danpink.com