12 Ways to Get Serious about Fun
The law of the sad face says the more important leaders are the less they smile.
You can’t milk fun out of self-important, problem-centric leaders.
Fun seems frivolous when issues are important, opportunities vanish quickly, and problems are pressing. You don’t want people laughing when times are challenging, or, do you?
Serious fun:
Get serious about fun or it won’t get done.
If you can’t have fun when deadlines are pressing, results matter deeply, and people are imperfect, you won’t have fun at all.
12 ways to get serious about fun:
- Determine if you value fun. Do you really want laughter in the halls?
- Appoint a Chief Fun Officer (CFO). Assign fun-making to a different person every week. Their job is to surprise everyone with fun at least once a week. If you’re really brave, try having fun once a day, but, be careful, don’t shock the system.
- Enforce a smile rule. You have two minutes, at the beginning of meetings, to create smiles on the team. Tell a corny joke for goodness sake. Fake smiles are nearly as useful as real.
- Greet people in the morning. Walk to every office, smile and say good morning. If the team is remote, call them.
- Learn about people’s lives outside work, encourage philanthropy, ask about grandma.
- Share food together as a team.
- Invite teammates for lunch – for no good reason – just to get to know them. Make people feel they matter.
- Recognize and reward fun-makers.
- Celebrate success. Begin meetings by asking, “What’s working?”
- Establish fake smile hour. From 11:00 a.m. to noon everyone smiles whether you feel like it or not. You might start with fake smile 10 minutes.
- Create a fun budget. How much time, energy, and resources are dedicated to fun in your organization?
- Call out killjoys. Some people refuse to have fun. Have fun without them.
What makes leaders great at so many things and lousy at fun?
How can leaders create fun environments?
The bigger a company the bigger the unwritten rule that we should be more serious. I totally get where it comes from and the tradition long bred in older task centric management styles. Thanks Dan for helping to call out how this old school culture can actually be counter productive and actually increase attrition.
Question: can you share the name of some companies and leaders you think get being “fun”? Zappos jumps to mind for me.
Thanks James. Great question. I’m posting it on Facebook and see what we get.
If anyone knows leaders or organizations who really believe in fun, please identify them on Facebook. Lets create the “fun company” list. That sounds fun, doesn’t it?
WestJet has fun. I was on one flight where they said they were now going to dim the cabin lights because one of the flight attendants was having a bad hair day.
Southwest Airlines knows how to have fun!
As the Joker once said…’Why so serious?’ 🙂
Sometimes we just take ourselves too damn seriously. And that’s not to say that we DON’T have serious things going on. We do. I do. I try to allow myself to cry when I need to cry. But I also give myself permission to LAUGH when I feel like laughing.
In nursing, where people are chronically sick, not feeling well, in pain…it was critical for nursing staff to find the silver lining in it all with a healthy sense of humor. Mind you…it has to be at the right time. In the midst of a crisis is not the time. Yet it was a joy when passing meds or doing treatments when we COULD bring a smile to someone’s face by doing silly things like singing to our patients even if we couldn’t always carry a tune. : )
If we see something that makes us smille…a baby cooing… the antics of the dog or cat…or whatever it might be…we aren’t committing a crime if it provokes a smile.
PS: Highly recommend Brian Regan if anyone needs a little extra help.
Yoga sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKne6gWyJwo
Thanks Samantha. When I wrote this post I thought about healthcare. It takes skill to have fun when people are hurting. It takes wisdom to know when to weep with those who weep. Sometimes smiling is an insult. But, thanks for pointing out that even healthcare has space for fun.
It’s TRUE….if the patient is weeping…we weep with them. And family. One of my nurse ‘partners in crime’ on dayshift at a nursing facility I worked at…we did things as a way to set the tone at the start and during our med pass in the mornings. We’d sing a little song together and do a silly dance (as some of our more mobile patients began to wander the facility and prepare for breakfast). And then we would part ways to take care of each of our halves of the building and then reunite again after the med pass. I can’t think of one time it didn’t put a smile on one of the patients faces who were up and around and some even wanted to join in on the fun.
It set the tone for the day.
Of course, when there was an emergency such as when someone has just fallen down or someone was having difficulty breathing, or another person was dying…. not the time.
Speech*Less..LoVe tHiS..Than*X*…smj/13+14
Thanks trbl13… colorful.
Dear Dan,
One idea pulled in my attention- smile and say good morning. This may not always work. It depends upon the culture and practices. I recall some experiences shared by my close friend few years back about his feeling in the job. He hailed from cultured family where greeting was considered good etiquette. After he joined the job, he started following the same practices of saying good morning. People started looking at him in surprise and did not respond normally. He continued the practice. He used to greet gently with respect. Some people keep smiling, some looked in different manner. This practice continued for years. He also witnessed that people used to greet each other in their local language. In fact there was no culture of greeting each other. Many times, he realized that people perceived him weak. He shared with me that many people started asking questions about some tasks when he used to greet. What he could derive is that people perceived my friend weak. They thought, since the person is weak that is why he is greeting. They perceived respect and humbleness with weakness.
Since, then he used to greet selectively. Here it is interesting to know the preference of people in greeting.
Creating fun environment is the matter of creating harmonious environment. People tend to avoid get together when they do not feel comfortable with others. Even if they attend, it just becomes formality and affection remains absent. Openness to share one’s feeling, thought and opinion and willingness to accept one’s weakness is needed. And it is about building environment based on affection.
Thanks Dr. Gupta. I’m thankful for your multicultural perspective. It reminds me that success includes adapting to the situation.
The observation that harmony and fun are connected is important. We know that some conflict is healthy and helpful. But, the foundation of harmony based on respect, shared goals and values is essential.
Traditional un-fun People get jobs. It’s a misapprehension that cheerful people aren’t serious and smart. What a crazy notion!!!
Thanks Anne. For some reason, serious and fun separated ways. Sad but true.
Love the post. When I get stressed, my default is to goof off and make jokes to relieve the pressure. It can be amazing in small amounts but is toxic at higher doses.
Thanks Ed. Good call. Yes, a little fun makes a huge difference.
One of the most motivating leaders I ever worked with lived by the slogan “Have fun and get things done!” He and his team had high productivity and high vitality and I still use this example as a benchmark for what it means to have a high performing team.
Thanks Jeff. Love the slogan and the example.
I just find it interesting that you would use a bull and not a cow in your picture! 🙂
Thanks Frank. I was brought up on a dairy farm. The image cracks me up. 🙂
There’s a difference between being serious about your job and being conscientious about it! Often people think that if leaders are fun and fun-loving that they are not “serious” about their job. And they are RIGHT! Those leaders are NOT serious about their jobs, but they are often extremely conscientious and make fun, levity, humor a way to cope with the challenges of the workplace.
Thanks Beth. Very helpful!
Are you having “fun” using the photo of a bull in this posting? No way will you “milk fun” out of that guy?! But you certainly gave my office colleagues a laugh! I love your blog and share it regularly with my office friends.
Thanks Chris. The bull image cracks me up!! Thanks for noticing. I’m glad it created some laughter in your office.
FUN, Dan? In the workplace, as an employee, in the business environment for a leader as a management tool? What a concept! A brilliant one.
Management guru, Dr. Peter Drucker, said early in his career at Claremont University School of Business, “Show me a staff who are not turning their exuberance for their work into FUN, and I’ll show you an organization without enough vitality for success.”
He went on to speak on the distinction between the words “enjoy” and “fun.” He said we can enjoy alone, but we cannot have fun alone: To have fun there needs to be at least two persons. We can enjoy a drive down the coast of Malibu alone, for example. Yet, for that same drive to be “fun,” Dr. Drucker explained, requires the give and take and sharing of at least two persons.
Thus, in the workplace where there are many, fun is not only an important element but a powerful dimension. Nothing personifies work and the workplace like fun. On the one hand, most workplace environments are endowed with interpersonal skills, character qualities, and professional talents. On the other, without a tidbit of lighthearted fun–a workplace could be loaded with intellectual giants and emotional dwarfs. Fun can be as simple as “a smile with a future in it.”
KaPow!
By the way, if you have a source for your drucker quote, I’d love to use it. Thanks
Dan, the quote I used here was from a lecture I attended at Claremont. However, a very similar quote was used in an article Dr. Drucker authored in Administrative Radiology Journal: The Technology of Human Resource Management; March/April, 1982, page 19.
Because this publication and publishing firm is no longer in operation due to a major fire, I can send you a copy of that article if you wish. Dr. Drucker’s articles and thoughts are timeless: They are as appros today as they were in 1982.
When I am out and about in offices, or retail establishments, if I hear laughter nearby I will say (with a mock serious expression) “NO HAVING FUN AT WORK!”. It always gets another laugh, and I think it underscores that a customer likes to be somewhere where things are not taken too seriously. At least, that’s my preference!
Thanks Betty. I have a sarcastic streak also and have done the same thing. 🙂
Typically I’m the first one on line for Funtime, but I must admit that it is challenging to bring it to the workplace without it being cheesy or forced, which is not fun. It is easier to bring niceties into the culture of the organization. Open communications, smiles, discourse, activities, those are easier for me to bring into a serious workplace than the pool table, indoor bball hoop, and fingerprinting lunch hour. I notice that trying to interject “fun” disturbs some of my colleagues and really throws off their ability to feel like we are making progress. Help! I’m open to suggestions. How do we get the ba humbugs out of the office?
I agree that fun is indeed important, and people that do not believe that fun is a neccessary part of life, work and everything, is at risk of destroying it all. On the other hand, faking it may be just as dangerous. When we are faking smiles and jokes, we are also blocking the real stuff hiding in there. Instead we should look for the jokes, peculiarities and sillyness all the time, and rejoice when we find them. Also we should express our respect for people that does the same every chance we get.
Hi Dan. Nine years later, fun still resonates!
This is just what I was looking for this evening.
Thanks so much.
Your fan,
Mary Kathryn