Leadership and Humor: Making It Work at All Levels

How many leaders does it take to change a light bulb? One: she stands on her chair, holds up the light bulb, and waits for the world to revolve around her. This familiar viewpoint has changed: leaders are now viewed as servants, as cooperative and communicative, even as having a sense of humor. Leadership has been studied from many different angles (including analyzing the leadership traits of Attila the Hun), and noted scholars have defined leadership, its characteristics and types, the skills needed to develop it, and the relationships of leadership to organizations. Peter Jonas, however, takes a novel approach to studying leadership by connecting the research behind it to the research behind humor. In doing so, a funny thing happened on the way to defining leadership.

Peter Jonas is the chair of Leadership Studies at Cardinal Stritch University and has been researching leadership and humor for more than a decade. He will offer his expertise and insights on the theoretical and practical uses of jokes, puns, stories, and video clips to enhance leadership. Participants will share laughs and learn practical ways to connect humor with leadership.