Bosses who think they’re funny create emotional labor for employees, says study

If you’ve ever been personally victimized by one too many bad jokes from a boss around the water cooler, you’re not the only one—and now, there’s research to show that a boss who’s trying too hard to be funny might actually reduce job satisfaction.

The finding comes from a new study published in the Academy of Management Journal and conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over the course of several different sessions, the researchers found that leaders who went overboard on puns and jokes drained their employees’ emotional energy, leading to reduced job satisfaction.

The results are clear: When it comes to keeping up rapport at the office, it’s probably best to drop the Michael Scott act.

Pretending to find your boss funny is draining

In an initial study, researchers took to the field in Southern China. They paired up 88 managers and employees for a week-long period, during which one group of managers was told to improve general leader-follower interactions, while the other group was “instructed to use humor in their interactions with employees,” according to an article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR).

At the end of the week, employees in the latter group reported elevated rates of “surface acting”—basically, pretending to find their boss funny in order to keep up morale. This additional emotional labor caused employees in the “funny manager” group to experience elevated levels of exhaustion, and in turn, dissatisfaction with their jobs.

Authenticity matters

A second study, conducted in the lab, found that there are further variables which can heighten or lessen the negative “funny manager” effect.

This study followed 212 participants at a U.S. business school, who were told they would be part of a series of focus groups at a campus bookstore and then divided into “high humor” and “low humor” manager groups.

This time, the researchers experimented with two different kinds of leaders, one who wore formal attire and took a more authoritative tone, and another who dressed casually and introduced himself with his first name. Once again, participants in all of the high humor groups were more exhausted and less satisfied. However, their negative feelings were magnified when paired with the more authoritative boss.

“The moderator had a lot of puns . . . I pretended to laugh to be nice,” one participant in the authoritative group recalled.

According to the researchers, this difference is attributable to the perceived power difference between the boss and their employees. The wider that gap grows, the more likely it is that excessive jokes will leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Bosses, keep the puns to a minimum, even if they’re good

For managers, these findings demonstrate that humor works best when it’s coming from an authentic place, rather than being used as a pre-calculated tool to encourage camaraderie. And even in the case of spontaneous humor, it might be best to think twice before you fire off the third pun in a row.

“Our findings challenge the assumption that leader humor is always a good thing,” the researchers write for HBR. “When used too frequently—especially when followers hold high power distance values—it can backfire. [. . .] Instead, our results suggest that leaders should focus on fewer, higher-impact humor expressions. Less, in this case, might truly be more.”

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