Gary Bunch lay on his deathbed.
Not exactly the way you expect an article on humor in the workplace to start, but bear with us. The story has a happy ending.
Twenty years ago, Bunch lay on a hospital bed. The diagnosis: cancer. The prognosis: six weeks to six months.
“Visiting hours were the pits,” Bunch recalls. “It was just ugly.”
Family and friends stopped by, but the regular pity sessions only left Bunch more depressed.
That’s when his friend Bruce started dropping by. He would sneak in after visiting hours and remind Bunch of all the good times. Bruce asked Bunch to focus on each day, to make it the best day he could and to leave some positive memories for his children.
And then there was the time Bruce asked him if he could have anything he wanted what it would be. Bunch, on a liquid diet, replied “a Big Mac.”
The following day, Bruce returned with the McDonald’s meal. When Bunch protested, explaining the dietary restrictions, Bruce reminded him he was supposed to die anyway.
“What Bruce did for me was to refocus on what was there, not what wasn’t there. He allowed me to reframe my reality,” Bunch says.
Bunch beat the odds and survived. Two decades later, he and partner Ken Kovach have brought the lessons he learned to the workplace as the proprietors of Creative Stages.
Their philosophy is simple: Offices get into ruts. Management attacks the same problems with the same solutions. Kovach and Bunch instead attack problems with humor.
More specifically, they use humor to help workers reframe their realities — to find new and innovative ways to solve their dilemmas.
Reframing reality
In today’s corporate culture there is a “desire, almost a fanaticism to increase productivity,” Kovach says.
The narrow focus can prevent people from seeing the larger picture.
The story goes something like this: After working for several weeks to close a huge contract, the company’s salesman makes a huge mistake and the prospect calls off the million-dollar deal. When the salesman is called into the president’s office the following day, he is already formulating his response to his expected firing.
The boss’ response: “Fire you? I just spent $1 million training you.”
Where in another company the salesman may have been boxing up his desk, this president was able to recognize the value of the experience. As Kovach and Bunch put it, that president was able to reframe the reality.
The tools
What makes a comedian funny? According to these experts, the reason we laugh is that comedians take real world situations and force us to look at them in a new way.
Comedians are gifted spinners; they teach us new ways to perceive our world.
“That’s what we do in the corporate world,” Bunch says. “(We help) take the blinders off.”
It’s not simply a matter of playing games, Kovach says, but a way of getting management and employees to change their approach to those same old problems.
“Patterned thinking is a danger in a changing world,” he says.
Keeping focus
When not used properly, the process can become destructive. Humor can be used to demean or exclude.
But humor can also be energizing, Kovach says. A smile leads to laugher. Simply put, people need to be serious about their work, but they need to take themselves lightly. The problems appear when employees are showered with rules and regulations.
“They put policies and procedures (in place) and lock their people into them,” Bunch says. “The one message that is loud and clear is, ‘I don’t think you have a brain; I don’t trust you.'”
Kovach and Bunch use the analogy of a pressure cooker. Management often wants to use Creative Stages to install a valve to release some steam so that it can turn up the heat. What it really needs to do is turn down the heat and give employees more freedom.
Court jesters
Like many companies in today’s corporate world, the king’s advisers served as little more than yes men to their leader. In medieval times, the court jester played a very important role on the king’s court. He was an alter ego to offer critique of the sovereign’s plan.
“What we do is teach people how to behave like a corporate jester in the king’s court,” says Kovach. “The jester was the one person who could get the king’s ear and get the king to see himself.”
While they use games and props to arrive at their destination, these are simply the means to an end. The key is to get people to go back into their real world with a plan of action, with a way of reframing aspects of their job.
It might be difficult to find a more emotionally draining job than that of a hospice care worker. Kovach and Bunch helped one such group work through difficulty by having them discuss their experiences while dressed in costumes. They took on the persona of their character. It gave them a chance to vent, Bunch says, without feeling guilty about complaining.
Then, they were able to return to their real world with a new perspective and an action plan.
“Let’s go back to the real world, not the way it is,” Bunch says. “How do you want it to be? How do you need it to be? Our job is to help walk them through the process, not give them answers.” How to reach: Creative Stages, (216) 921-0900 or e-mail at [email protected]
Daniel G. Jacobs ([email protected]) is senior editor of SBN.
Putting laughter in your life
The cliché says it best: Laughter is the best medicine.
Why else would the bulk of your e-mail consist of jokes forwarded across the globe? But went the humor gets stale and you need a little pick-me-up, the University of Virginia Health System offers these tips on putting a little laughter in your life
- Remember to laugh at yourself.
- Add captions to baby pictures, newspapers and magazines.
- Spend time in toy stores and play with or buy toys.
- Learn a magic trick and perform it for friends.
- Buy a “Joke-a-Day” calendar.
- Sing in the shower, sing in the car.
- Smile.
- Wear a child’s Band-Aid on your adult boo-boos.
For more strategies visit www.med.virginia.edu/medcntr/depts/patient-ed/consumer/laugh.html.
