The Light Touch: How to Use Humor for Business Success

Humor can be a tool for effective workplace communication if used properly. Kushner bills himself as "humor consultant" and in this book describes how to make his advice work for you. Among the contexts he lists are: conflict management, motivation, handling awkward situations, improving productivity, influencing coporate culture, and improving interoffice correspondence. He advocates keeping a humor file and readers can detect that he follows that advice because his book is full of anecdotes and quotes from diverse sources. Other than humor, his insight on communication in general is also quite helpful. Going back to the issue of changing corporate culture through humor he makes the point that a threatening environment is not conducive to a free flow of ideas, so "contrary to popular opinion, humor doesn't waste time. It can actually speed things up" (p. 126). He adds weight to his argument by including the fact that "a workplace stimulated by laughter tends to score higher marks in job satisfaction and productivity" (p. 174). Kushner remains readers a company is only as good as its people. In a marketplace where stress is a challenge, this is a book worth considering as required reading.

This is a tremendous book for upper level managers on the use (and misuse) of humor in the workplace. Kushner is informative and helpful without being silly. He treats his reader as an adult and although there are smiles and laughs aplenty throughout, he never forgets that his goal is to provide some workable techniques for using humor as a management tool to enhance both quality of life and quality of productivity. I bought it years ago and return to read it often.