Humor and a Culture of Inclusion

Impact of Humor on Authentic Leadership

Authentic leadership has emerged as a new approach to leadership and is based on a different concept. This approach to leadership differs from conventional leadership styles that focus on profits, productivity, and share prices (White, 2022). Unlike the traditional leadership approaches, authentic leadership focuses on values, people, and ethics. Therefore, it is a relatively new concept that is considered critical for organizational productivity in today’s business environment. While authentic leadership involves focusing on people, modern organizational leaders face the challenge of creating inclusive workplaces. Authentic leaders use different approaches to create inclusivity in their organizations as they focus on people. This paper examines the impact of humor on authentic leadership in an organization in relation to creating a culture of inclusion.

Humor and Authentic Leadership

Grace-Odeleye & Santiago (2019) define humor as a multifaceted systematic process in communication that is used to elicit cognitive, psychologic, and social reactions. As a unique type of communication medium, humor manifests in different forms including funny stories, jokes, laughter, ironic remarks, banter, puns, sarcasm, teasing, ridicule, and satire. When employed in organizational communication, humor provokes smiling or laughter. Existing leadership literature shows that humor is a critical leadership communication skill. Studies have shown that humor is an essential communication skills that leaders should have in order to be effective. Humor is a positive socio-emotional function that promotes tension release and results in better enhanced organizational creativity and productivity.

As a medium of communication associated with positive socio-emotional function, humor can enhance the effectiveness of authentic leaders. White (2022) notes that authentic leaders focus on people and leading with purpose. Humor can be employed as a medium of communication that enhances the capability of authentic leaders to focus on people while leading with purpose. This implies that humor provides a context through which authentic leaders build relationships and have real connections with their employees or subordinates in the workplace. Developing relationships and having real connections are important attributes of authentic leadership (White, 2022). This implies that authentic leaders should have open lines of communication in order to build relationships and connectedness.

Humor impacts authentic leadership by shaping organizational citizenship behavior (Farid et al., 2020). Even though humor is largely associated with positive socio-emotional function, it can also have negative effects on the workplace (Rosenberg et al., 2021). The impact of humor on authentic leadership depends on the type of humor and other leader attributes (Vecchio, Justin & Pearce, 2009). The various types of humor employed in organizational communication include affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, mild aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Therefore, humor can generate integrative or potentially disruptive behavior when used by authentic leaders. In essence, it is a double-edged tool that could help or hurt interactions within an organization depending on how it is used.

Impact of Humor on Creating a Culture of Inclusivity

Since humor affects organizational citizenship behavior, it has an impact on the ability of authentic leaders to create a culture of inclusivity in an organization. As noted by White (2022), authentic leaders focus on ethics, morals, and inclusivity as part of the efforts to lead with purpose. Creating a culture of inclusivity is crucial for authentic leaders to develop a sense of belonging and unity among employees. Authentic leaders’ capability to achieve this depends on the medium of communication used in the organization. Humor plays an important role in social interactions in an organization and can be used in efforts to establish a culture of inclusivity.

Humor can have both positive and negative impacts n authentic leaders’ efforts to create a culture of inclusivity in an organization. Authentic leaders can create a culture of inclusivity in their organizations by using affiliative humor to develop relationships and a real sense of connection. Affiliative humor enhances interpersonal interaction and develops a positive environment in the workplace (Grace-Odeleye & Santiago, 2019). In addition, authentic leaders can create a culture of inclusivity in the workplace when they use self-enhancing humor. This type of humor focuses more on an individual and enhances his/her self-image and experience in relation to others in the organization. When these types of humor are used by authentic leaders, they help nurture healthy relationships and cohesion, which is critical for inclusivity (Marques, 2020). On the other hand, humor can have negative impacts on efforts to promote inclusivity in the workplace. These negative impacts are likely to occur when aggressive and self-defeating humor is used. In this regard, such humor can lead to discrimination that hurts individuals, groups, and the entire organization. Aggressive and self-defeating humor can be sources of prejudice that permeates the organization disguised as humor.

In conclusion, authentic leadership differs from conventional leadership approaches by focusing on people rather than profits and productivity. Authentic leaders focus on people as they strive to lead with purpose and promote inclusivity. However, the effectiveness of authentic leaders in creating a culture of inclusivity in an organization is affected by the type of communication they employ. Humor is deemed an important medium of communication in an organization because of its fundamental role in social interactions. Humor affects authentic leadership in terms of creating a culture of inclusivity by shaping organizational citizenship behavior either positively or negatively.