NO BAD JOKES
Humor at work can be a bummer if you don’t understand the difference between healthy humor and what Mark Henry Sebell, president and CEO of Creative Realities, a Boston consulting group, calls “the humorous bazooka.” His advice? Avoid jokes at the expense of individuals or small groups. Ethnic, racial, and gender humor always hurts. Remember to occasionally make fun of yourself. And, finally, work to prevent inappropriate humor rather than punish perpetrators, warns Sebell, author of Ban the Humorous Bazooka (Dearborn, 2001). The byproduct of punishing humor is The Revenge Syndrome — exactly what it sounds like!