Humour in Leadership: How Levity Builds Trust, Creativity and Better Teams

Humour in leadership is often misunderstood – dismissed as a “nice to have”, a personality trait, or something best left to the naturally funny people in the room. But when you look closely at the evidence (and real workplace behaviour), humour isn’t a distraction from performance. It’s one of the mechanisms that enables it.

Used well, humour in leadership strengthens trust, improves team effectiveness, unlocks creativity, and makes work more enjoyable without lowering standards or professionalism.

This isn’t about turning leaders into comedians, cracking jokes in meetings, or forcing awkward icebreakers. It’s about understanding how levity shapes human behaviour – and how leaders can use it deliberately to help teams do their best work.

Much of what follows is inspired by Humour, Seriously by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas (or “Humor, Seriously” if you’re in the US), alongside broader research in psychology, neuroscience and organisational behaviour – and plenty of real-world fun(ny) experiences.

Why humour works (and why it’s not about being funny)

One of the most useful reframes from Humour, Seriously is this: humour is a behaviour, not a personality trait. You don’t need to be witty, loud, or quick on your feet. You don’t need punchlines. You don’t even need actual jokes.

Humour in leadership is less about what you say, and more about the signals you send.

At its core, humour:

• Reduces social threat
• Signals psychological safety
• Builds connection through shared recognition
• Helps people think more flexibly

That’s why humour shows up consistently in high-performing teams, innovative cultures, and strong leader–follower relationships. It’s not there because leaders are “fun”. It’s there because humour makes it safer to speak up, easier to collaborate, and simpler to think clearly under pressure.

Albert Einstein famously said that “creativity is intelligence having fun”. This is one of the most overlooked benefits of humour in leadership: it creates mental space. People do better thinking when they’re not bracing themselves.

Humour in leadership doesn’t lower the bar. It lowers unnecessary tension so people can actually reach the bar.

Humour, the brain, and better thinking under pressure

From a physiological perspective, humour has a direct impact on how our brains and bodies operate at work.

Shared laughter and lightness increase oxytocin – the hormone associated with trust, bonding and cooperation. At the same time, humour reduces cortisol, the stress hormone that narrows attention, increases defensiveness, and makes complex thinking harder.

This matters more than we often realise.

When cortisol is high:

• People default to safe, obvious ideas
• They protect themselves rather than collaborate
• They struggle with perspective-taking and nuance

When stress comes down, cognitive flexibility increases. People are more open, more creative, and more willing to contribute half-formed ideas without fear of embarrassment.

This is one reason humour in leadership is so closely linked to performance. Not because laughter magically creates results – but because it creates the conditions where better thinking can happen.

In fast-paced environments, levity can actually speed things up. Teams communicate more efficiently when they’re not tip-toeing around each other. They make fewer assumptions, and recover from mistakes faster.

Humour builds psychological safety (without forced icebreakers)

Psychological safety – the belief that it’s safe to speak up, ask questions, or admit uncertainty – is one of the strongest predictors of team effectiveness. And humour plays a powerful role in establishing it.

Humour in leadership works because it signals humanity.

When a leader names an awkward moment, laughs gently at a shared frustration, or acknowledges a reality everyone can see but no one has said out loud, it sends a message: you don’t have to pretend here.

This kind of humour isn’t about being clever. It’s about recognition. People feel seen, the room relaxes, and social risk drops.

Importantly, humour also sets the emotional tone. Leaders often underestimate how closely teams mirror their energy. If a leader is perpetually tense, guarded or humourless, the team follows suit. If a leader can hold seriousness and lightness, the team learns that both are allowed.

Humour in leadership, when done well, becomes permission-giving. And yes, ice-breakers CAN be effective when done well too.

How humour unlocks creativity and better ideas

Creativity doesn’t thrive under evaluation (actually, that can stifle it). Creativity thrives under play.

One of the reasons humour in leadership supports innovation is that it lowers the perceived cost of being wrong. When people feel safe to be a little silly, they’re also safer to be original.

A simple and practical idea to unlock creativity in your team is with “Bad-idea brainstorming”: ask teams to generate the worst possible ideas. It sounds ridiculous – and that’s the point. Once the pressure to be “right” disappears, better ideas tend to follow. Another strategy you can use a Pitch Jokes activity: frame a business or client challenge as the set-up to a joke, then collect punchlines anonymously or on post-it notes. Kind of like providing an image and asking for caption ideas.

The play of the situation opens the door to insights people wouldn’t normally voice, and a real solution may come of it.

What humour looks like in real leadership

This is where many leaders get nervous. They picture awkward dad jokes, forced banter, or trying too hard to be “fun”. That’s not what effective humour in leadership looks like.

It’s usually much simpler and more human than that. For humour in leadership and our workplaces, the bar is really low, so you don’t need to be Ricky Gervais generating hysterics, thigh-slapping and ROFLs. It doesn’t even need to be a lower-case lol. A moment of levity can be as simple as feeling a bit lighter for a few minutes.

One of my favourite leadership memories involved receiving a delivery of around a hundred boxes of a client’s promotional material… to an office on the third floor. With no lift. Instead of everyone squeezing past exhausted colleagues as they silently suffered through repeated stair trips, we set up a relay: one person unloaded the van, handed off to the person at the door, who gave it to the person at the bottom of the stairs, and each other person covered one flight, handing off the box, and cheering the next person on. It was faster, lighter, and oddly enjoyable. Afterwards, we bought ice creams.

Nothing about that required jokes. But there was levity. Shared effort. A sense of “we’re in this together”.

Humour in leadership often shows up as tone, not content. It’s about how things are said, not just what’s said.

Here’s some simple “how-to”s for bringing more humour – levity – into your leadership.

Notice it!

Even simpler than doing anything extra yourself is simply being on the lookout for humour, moments of levity and lightness at work. Allow yourself to have a giggle (or even a half-smile) and this gives permission for the team to loosen up as well.

Truth

Underrated philosopher Homer Simpson said, while laughing, “It’s funny because it’s true.” Most humour in leadership starts with noticing what’s true and saying it out loud. We laugh in recognition – not because it’s clever, but because it’s accurate. For example, I consciously reduce my meat-eating for the environment… but will unconsciously demolish paper towels like they’re an unlimited natural resource. It lands because people recognise the contradiction.

Surprise and misdirection

Humour often comes from gently disrupting expectations. You set things up in one obvious direction, then pivot slightly – not to shock, just enough to wake the brain up. That moment of surprise lightens the mood and often unlocks more flexible thinking, which is exactly what teams need when they’re stuck. Example: “The project is finally wrapped up. Well done everyone. We’ve analysed the data, talked to the stakeholders, and emotionally recovered from the spreadsheet.”

Callbacks

Callbacks are one of the easiest ways to build levity over time. When something makes the team laugh – a comment, a moment, a shared mishap – you can refer back to it later as shorthand. It reinforces connection and says, “we’ve been here together before,” without needing to manufacture anything new. (My brother-in-law once accidentally dropped a raw egg on the dog’s head. The dog just stood there, confused, with egg dripping down his ears. We’re in hysterics every time we recount the story. And now, every time one of us call someone or something an “egghead”, it reminds us of the original episode and generates a disproportionate response in giggles.) Connecting through a shared experience is like having an inside joke.

Emails

Written communication is an underrated place for humour in leadership. A lightly human opening, a small callback, or a PS that acknowledges reality (“Yes, this email could have been a meeting – you’re welcome”) can soften tone without undermining the message. Even a thoughtful sign-off (“From sunny Brisbane,”) can create space for the reader to respond with levity themselves.

Rituals

Rituals build cohesion, especially when they don’t take themselves too seriously. Think of The Office’s “Dundies” – people complain, roll their eyes, and mock the silliness… yet still care when they win an award for “Whitest Sneakers”. Light rituals create shared meaning and identity, which is often what teams are missing when work feels flat.

Physical space

The environment leaders curate sends behavioural signals too. Light, colour, plants, open space – these cues subtly invite creativity and ease, rather than rigidity. When the space feels human, people tend to behave more humanly within it, which makes humour and connection more likely to emerge naturally.

Walking the line: power, boundaries and when humour backfires

Humour isn’t neutral. It’s shaped by power, context and timing – and leaders need to be more aware of this as their influence increases.

As a general rule:

• Punching up tends to be safer than punching down
• Humour at someone else’s expense rarely builds trust
• What works peer-to-peer doesn’t always translate leader-to-team

This is why self-deprecating humour can be useful for leaders – when used carefully. It can humanise those in positions of authority and level the playing field. But it only works when competence is already established. Otherwise, it can create doubt rather than connection.

If there’s no one “above” you to poke fun at, using yourself is often the safest option – as long as you’re not undermining your credibility.

A helpful filter from Humour, Seriously is to ask:

• Is this grounded in shared truth?
• Does it reduce tension or increase it?
• Who benefits from this moment of humour? (and who might be harmed from it?)

Humour in leadership isn’t about testing boundaries. It’s about widening them just enough to let people breathe.

Why this matters for leaders (and for teams)

At Leader Growth Lab, we work with leaders who genuinely want the best from their teams – and often don’t realise how their tone, energy and behavioural signals are shaping what they get back.

Humour in leadership is one of those subtle levers. It’s rarely the thing leaders think they need to work on, yet it has a disproportionate impact on trust, creativity and team effectiveness.

Not because humour is magic – but because people are human.

When work feels relentlessly heavy, people contract. When leaders create space for levity, people expand. They think better. They connect more easily. They bring more of themselves to the work.

You don’t need to be funnier. You don’t need to change your personality. You just need to recognise that seriousness and lightness aren’t opposites – they’re partners. When leaders learn how to hold both, teams tend to do their best work.

So, in your daily leadership practices, look for moments of levity, and embrace them. Want more details? Definitely read this book.