57岁的史蒂夫•科迪，是Peppercom公司的合伙人和股东，这是一家位于纽约的中等规模的通讯公司。他同时也是一名业余的独角喜剧演员，经常在纽约喜剧俱乐部表演。
科迪回忆，“大约5年前，当我正在一个冗长的商务饭局中痛苦不堪时，坐在旁边的家伙告诉我，他不工作的时候就去表演独角喜剧，”。他立刻产生了好奇，并决定上一次相关的培训课，然后自己也开始表演。很快地，他发现了能使工作变得快乐的方法。他变得更加幽默，与客户沟通时能更加专注地倾听，并且在作报告时能更好地吸引观众的注意力。
科迪想让他的员工也能获得喜剧给工作带来的益处。因此，他给全体员工开了一场90分钟的喜剧讨论会，并且每两个月会举办一次。他说喜剧可以让员工们重获自信，教会他们团结合作以及如何从细节观察台下的观众和环境，让他们在台上的演讲更加有生气。这种振奋人心和有趣的公司文化也帮他赢得了商业机会。“还是有区别的，”他说，“当其他条件都一样时，客户会选择愿意与之合作的公司。”
有趣的人更容易获得商业上的成功吗？守旧的人力资源会很快告诉你，办公室里的幽默是危险的：幽默会让你很容易冒犯他人或变得平庸。然而，研究人员和这类公司渐渐开始欢迎那些恰到好处的幽默感给个人和公司带来的益处了。这些奋不顾身的人可能是想批判性地思考他们的幽默细胞。
“幽默有三个方面的主要影响：认知上，情感上和心理上的，”心理学家Steven Sultanoff博士说道。他也是《幽默应用和治疗协会》（Applied and Therapeutic Humor）的前任主席。他解释说，工作场合的幽默感可以为解决问题提供思路，帮助人们更好地处理问题。Sultanoff回忆道，当一位公司管理者发给我一个备忘录，说他们必须“缩小”一个难题时，一个员工就在公司的电子公告栏上贴上了该备忘录的缩小版。还有，因为我们在一个时间点只能感受到一种情绪，所以，幽默充当了感情的转换器，它用使人心情愉悦的玩笑取代了消极情绪，减少了生理上的压力荷尔蒙。
Sultanoff说有趣的人通常会更开心，也更可能被认为是好员工，因为他们事实上更成功。“有幽默感的人，说明他在与他人建立一种联结，这会为他创造别人可能不会有的机会。”
研究表明，成功的幽默不仅能提高一个人的工作效率，也能提高整个团队的效率。根据Michelle Gielan的理论——Michelle Gielan是积极心理学方面的专家，共同创建了《幽默应用和治疗协会》，当一些外在因素让我们微笑或大笑时，一种感觉良好的化学物质多巴胺会进入我们的身体系统，这种物质会打开脑部的所有学习中心，激发创造力和生产效率。在一项包含225个学术研究的元分析中，心情愉悦的员工，他们的生产力和销售业绩分别高出其他员工的31%和37%。做好积极准备的医生的诊断速度比其他医生快19%，并且诊断的更加准确。同样，工作中做好积极准备的员工解决问题的速度更快，在老板那里会得到更好的评价，而且客户满意度也较高。
Steve Cody, 57, is co-founder and managing partner of Peppercom, a mid-size communications agency based in New York. He’s also an amateur stand-up comedian, performing frequently at the New York Comedy Club.
“About five years ago I was suffering through an endless business dinner, when the guy next to me said he performed stand-up when not doing IT,” recalls Cody. Intrigued, he decided to take a course and start performing himself. Soon he noticed a happy crossover to his professional life, where he was employing humor more often, listening more intently to clients and becoming better at holding audiences’ attention during presentations.
Cody wanted his employees to reap the business benefits of comedy too, so he launched a 90-minute comedy workshop for his new recruits and staffers to attend every two months. He says it infuses them with confidence, bonds them with coworkers, teaches the nuances of reading an audience and environment, and livens up their presentations. The new refreshed and fun culture is also helping him secure business. “It’s a point of differentiation,” he says. “When all things are equal, clients will pick the firm they want to work with.”
Are funny people more successful in business? Old-school HR people are quick to say that humor is dangerous in the office: It too easily offends or falls flat. However, researchers and companies alike are beginning to tout the individual and company-wide benefits of a well-placed punch line. Those looking for an edge may want to think more critically about their funny bones.
“Humor has three primary impacts: cognitive, emotional and physiological,” says psychologist Steven Sultanoff, Ph.D., former president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. He explains that workplace humor may offer some perspective on a situation, which helps people process it. After a company leader sent a memo saying they needed to “shrink” a difficult problem, Sultanoff recalls, one employee posted a tiny copy of the memo on a community bulletin board. Also, because we can only feel one emotion at a time, humor creates an emotional lift by displacing frustration with the joy of the joke and a physiological reduction of stress hormones.
Sultanoff says that people who are funny likely will be perceived as more enjoyable and as better employees because they are in fact more successful. “If someone is using humor then they are connecting with people and building relationships, which creates opportunities that other people may not have.”
Research shows that successful humor boosts both personal productivity and group effectiveness. According to Michelle Gielan, an expert in positive psychology and cofounder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research, when something makes us smile or laugh, the feel-good chemical dopamine is dropped into our systems, which turns on all the learning centers in the brain and heightens creativity, productivity and engagement. In a meta-analysis of 225 academic studies, happy employees were found to have 31% higher productivity and 37% higher sales. Doctors who were primed to be positive came to the correct diagnosis 19% faster and more accurately, while business teams solved problems more quickly, were deemed better by bosses and got higher customer satisfaction ratings.
