Show notes
On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Andrew Tarvin on the show to discuss humor in the workplace. Andrew Tarvin is the world's first humor engineer, teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. Combining his background as a project manager at Procter & Gamble with his experience as a stand-up comedian, he reverse-engineers the skill of humor in a way that is practical, actionable, and gets results in the workplace. In this episode, we discuss: -How to construct humor and learn the skill of humor -The benefits of humor for the individual and the organization -Types of humor that are appropriate for the workplace -The importance of the "Yes, and" mindset -And so much more! Resources: Andrew Tarvin Website Andrew Tarvin Twitter Andrew Tarvin Facebook Andrew Tarvin LinkedIn The Skill of Humor TedX Video Humor That Works Website For more information on Andrew: Andrew Tarvin is the world's first humor engineer, teaching people how to get better results while having more fun. Combining his background as a project manager at Procter & Gamble with his experience as a stand-up comedian, he reverse-engineers the skill of humor in a way that is practical, actionable, and gets results in the workplace. Through his company, Humor That Works, Drew has worked with more than 35,000 people at over 250 organizations, including Microsoft, the FBI, and the International Association of Canine Professionals. He is a bestselling author; has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company; and his TEDx talk has been viewed more than four million times. He loves the color orange, is obsessed with chocolate, and can solve a Rubiks Cube (but it takes like 7 minutes). For more information, please visit, www.drewtarvin.com and connect with Drew (@drewtarvin) on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube & LinkedIn. Humor That Works is available on Amazon and wherever fine (and funny) books are sold. Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy: 00:01 Hi Andrew, welcome to the podcast. I am happy to have you on. And now today we're going to be talking about humor and why humor is important in the workplace and in life. So the first question I have is you say humor is a skill, so how is it a skill and can that really be learned by anyone? Andrew Tarvin: 00:28 I think a lot of people have this question or this belief, like, you know, humor is just an innate ability, right? You're either funny or you're not. I will say that I've done over a thousand shows as a standup comedian and spoken word artist, storyteller, et cetera. I have spoken or performed in all 50 states and 25 countries and on one planet. This one. But when I went to my high school reunion and people found out that I did comedy, they're like, but you're not funny. And that's because, you know, growing up I was never the life of the party or the class clown. My senior year. I was voted teacher's pet. So much more of an academic, much more quiet. You know, I'm a very much an introvert. And then I started doing Improv and standup in college and admittedly was terrible when I first started out. Andrew Tarvin: 01:22 Like we often are in a new skill that we try, but with practice and repetition I got better. And so I realized that, you know, really there there's an art and science to humor. And so what we do with our organization, with humor that works is we teach people the science. So we teach things like comedic structure, things like a comic triple things like timing and understanding how to like position things in different, you know, strategies that humorous use between say association or incongruity or a story, et cetera. All of this kind of science stuff that's easy to, you know, this conceptually you can learn and then there's an art, there is an art piece to it, right? There is, you know, some of that comes from your own perspective, the thing that you like and that you improve with practice and repetition. And so what we say is, you know, with the skill of humor, we can help to teach anyone to be funnier not necessarily, you know, across the board. Funny. It's not like, you know, you can magically teach someone to be so funny, they're going to magically have a Netflix comedy special, but you can learn certain things that are gonna take whatever your base level, you know, ability to use humor is now and take it up to the next level. Karen Litzy: 02:30 Okay. So let's break this down a little bit because I know the listeners love to get these little nuggets of knowledge that we can start applying today in our life and in our workplace. So you said that with your company that you can teach people what is comic structure and timing. So can you first tell me, cause I don't even know the answer to this question, but what is comic structure? Andrew Tarvin: 02:55 Yeah. So there's certain things that, you know, there's certain ways that you can structure a sentence or a joke that make it more effective. So, one of the big things is, is learning to put the funny part of the punch line of something at the end. So a great example of this is, I think it's a George Burns quote that says, 'happiness is having a caring, a close, tight knit family in another city' right? Which I think is a pretty funny, you know, a humorous line. That line doesn't work if you say, 'happiness is having a family in another sitting who is in another city who is carrying and close and tight knit, right? So you put the funny part, the unexpected, the surprise piece at the end, right? So that's just a simple structure thing. It's kind of the structure of set up and punchline another example of that is something called a comic triple. Andrew Tarvin: 03:52 And so a comic triple is anytime when you have a list of three things, the third item is something unexpected. So, for example, when I give my, you know, when I'm talking about some of the clients that we've worked with, we'll say, you know, we've worked with organizations such as Microsoft. The FBI and the International Association of Canine Professionals. And so that last one is just something different, something unexpected where it's like, okay, Microsoft, okay. Corporate FBI, all that's kind of interesting. They seem serious. That's kind of cool. International Association of Canine Professionals. What does that mean? Right? So it, and again, we put that at the end. So simple things like structure or things that you know, kind of anyone can learn. And that's a starting point. The other thing that's kind of important to understand, maybe not necessarily specifically about comedic structure, but about the skill of humor, is that humor is more broad than comedy. Andrew Tarvin: 04:46 So a lot of times when we think of humor, we do think of comedy. We think of funny, we think of laughter, we think of jokes. But humor is defined as a comic absurd or Incongruence, quality causing amusement. So it could be a joke or it could be just something a little bit silly or something a little bit different that you do that doesn't necessarily make someone laugh, but maybe it makes them smile. And that broader definition means that, you know, maybe you're not a great joke teller, but maybe you're good at telling stories or maybe you're not going to storytellings or jokes, but you're really good at drawing interesting visuals that will get people to pay attention. Right? So that's, that's part of what we mean by this skill. Karen Litzy: And what about timing? How do you teach timing? Andrew Tarvin: 05:33 It can be a tough one to do, but that's, that's where the practice and repetition comes from because even as standup Comedians, like, you know, Seinfeld or, Ellen or that kind of thing, when they're doing new special, when they're going to new materials, they have to get it in front of people to see, okay, where do people actually laugh and how long of a pause should it have. Cause sometimes the difference between getting a big laugh and no laugh at all is how long you pause or how long you allow someone to get something. So, one example within timing is a lot of times when people are first starting out with humor, they'll say something that's actually pretty funny. And they'll leave a brief pause and then they'll start talking again right away. And this is something called stepping on your laughter is if someone starts to kind of laugh, but then you start talking again, people will stop laughing, they'll shut down the laughter response because they want to hear what you say next. Andrew Tarvin: 06:25 And so sometimes one of the hardest parts is a brand new comedian to learn. And sometimes you have to be quiet a little bit longer because it takes the audience a second to actually get the joke to then process that it is a joke process that it is funny and then start to laugh. And that, you know, you need to be comfortable kind of in that short silence to allow them to then laugh and then also to not talk while they're laughing so that, they kind of finish that laughter out as opposed to stopping at short. Karen Litzy: 06:50 And I would imagine if you're up on stage and your, you know, telling the story or joke that time from the end of you finishing your sentence to a little, maybe pause to laughter building must feel like it's an hour. Andrew Tarvin: 07:10 Yeah. It can feel like a really, really long time, especially as you've, if you do a certain joke over and over again or one that you know, that works because as you went, you think about it and like, oh, that's funny. I want to share that you've already thought about and processed why it's funny. And so you're like, oh, if they don't get it immediately, they must not think it's funny and it's they've never heard that construction of those ideas together before. So for example, I love puns and wordplay and I recently tweeted out, you know, that I'm a pale person. The only time I get Tan is when I do trigonometry. Andrew Tarvin: 07:47 And that joke, particularly when said verbally is it's talking about get Tan. So Tan being short for Tangent. Exactly. So the only time I get there is, you know, it takes a while. It takes a moment for people to be like, wait, why is that funny? Is that a joke? That doesn't, you know, what is what is, you know, that has to do with trigonometry. Oh wait, 10 to there was like cos sign and tan like, yeah. So it takes time for that to happen and you have to get comfortable kind of in that silence. The other thing to, to recognize though is that that's true specifically of, kind of planned humor. Things like conversational humor. They don't necessarily, one you may not have, it might not be a preplan thing, but even conversational humor, something that can be learned and something that can be practiced through, you know, drawing on some principles from improvisation. Karen Litzy: 08:40 Right. So now I actually took a number of Improv classes to help me with the podcast to help me, like you said, just carry out a better conversation and to yes. And, and all of that. So can you a little bit about improvisation and how that can help with general conversations, especially let's say at work. Andrew Tarvin: 09:05 Yeah. So, you kind of mentioned the fundamental mindset of improvisation. The key that really helps with a lot of that in that is the mentality of yes and, where yes. And is really about kind of taking whatever was offered and building off of it. And so that can be fantastic for conversations. In fact, if you're ever in a conversation and you don't know what to say next, you can just simply yes. And the last thing that was said, so like you can even take, you know, the stereotypical small talk example of, how, how about this weather, right? So I'm in New York. It's sunny, it's 85 degrees. Someone asked me, how about this weather, if I'm say at a networking event, right. Or say one-on-one with a client, how about this weather, I can be like, yes, it is, it's beautiful out. It's, it's sunny out now. You know, if you weren't at this meeting, if we weren't interacting right now, how would you be out enjoying, you know, 90 degree weather? Right. And then so that gives him a chance to be like, oh well, you know, I'd go swimming because it's hot out or I'd stay indoors because it's too hot. Or I'd go out on the bike, you know? And that turns a conversation that was about weather into something more interesting about like in getting to know that person in terms of things like their hobby. Karen Litzy: 10:16 That's great. I love that because that networking and going to those kinds of events is always so daunting. And especially as an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you kind of have to do those things. Andrew Tarvin: 10:30 70% of jobs are found through networking and, and to your point, entrepreneurs, I'd say it's a way that a lot of people drum up business. And I learned that pretty early on as an introvert, you know, going to networking meetings, like you said, is daunting. It's a little bit awkward. And so for me, I developed a three step process for being able to network with people. And that yes, and piece is the third step is how you continue the conversation is just to continue to build off of what was said. Karen Litzy: Nice. What is step one? Andrew Tarvin: Step one is to ask interesting questions. And so, you know, if we think about Dale Carnegie and how to win friends and influence people, you know, great quintessential business book, he said that you will get, you'll make more friends and a month by getting people interested, by being interested in other people than you will in an entire year in trying to get people interested in you. Andrew Tarvin: 11:24 And so what that translates into is basically getting other people to talk and then shutting up and then listening to them. And you know, if we go to a networking event and we have the same kind of boring questions, the same, you know, what do you do type questions and at least the same boring answers. And that's not distinguishable. That doesn't stand out to anyone. And so instead of you, if you ask more interesting questions, so simple questions, you know, what's the coolest thing that you've worked on in the last three months? That a lot of times people, you will end up answering the question of what do you do, right? They'll say, oh, when I was working at blank. But it gets him to think a little bit differently. It gives him a more interesting response and you can actually kind of connect a little bit closer. Andrew Tarvin: 12:11 And that's an example of something that's a little bit in congruent. So maybe it's not laugh out loud funny, but it is something a little bit different that maybe gets people to smile a little bit more or at least thinking a little bit differently. So that's step one is to ask interesting questions. The second step is to tell a compelling stories. So when someone asks you a question, right? Sometimes we hear this advice of like, Oh, you've got to ask people questions. That's how you build rapport. But if all you ever do is ask them questions and never answer anything that they say, it starts to feel like a weird interrogation. Or like why is this person being so closed off? And so when someone asks you a question rather than just giving a yes or no answer, you can give a little bit of a story or a little bit of a background. Andrew Tarvin: 12:54 So if they're asking, you know, why did you get into hea…
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