Humor in Business
With the advancement of computer simulators, anybody can repeat all the business routines before he goes to the field, and have the opportunity of relaxing from the tedious work with numbers. The businessman can concentrate more on the human factors: The Customer Service, the relationships among fellow workers, and self care.
The occupation with Human factors is obligation to deal with emotions. Emotions volumes are not measurable accurately, contrary to cognitive or physical volumes. We can measure I.Q., or weight lifting, but not the intensity of love or hate. Questionnaires about satisfaction from a product or a boss give very limited answers.
The reason we cannot measure emotions is that they expand all the time. This is their main attribute. It gives them their most unique quality: The ability to identify with the other and be empathic. We can memorize cognitive or physical practices, but with emotions we are left bare like children in a barren field. This leaves the businessman exposed to mistakes of emotional intelligence, and the computers cannot help him.
There is nothing better then the sense of humor, the best therapy for the soul, for illuminating the human factor. The definition of humor is: Emotions made precise. It derives directly from an overloaded mind, which seeks to facilitate the feelings he faces with others. Every accurate expression of emotion is followed by it, as part of a relief.
Every business deal is a transaction of emotions. These are accurate emotions, purified through the long bargaining process. Between the negotiating sides, after a deal closing, comes immediately a mutual sense of emotional relief. While it fade away down, It create a by product, in the form of lightness of the spirit, a humor.
The precision of humor observations makes them suitable for the businessmen training. There is a use for humor in all the aspects of human relations at work, but it is limited, in scale and methods. There are humor workshops for businessmen, but they are relatively rare, in contrast to the amount of time dedicated for self improvement.
Starting at the morning meetings, through the motivation papers, and finally with the private learning, the average businessman provide himself constantly with emotional intelligence advice. Compare the percentage of humor in it to humor in ordinary life, and you will find that while daily life is a continuous effort for laugher, business life is a cooperated effort for making life more serious and heavier.
The businessman needs a steady supply of concrete, healthy humor. Otherwise he may turn into acidly cynic person.
One medium of humor, the Cartoon, is more suitable then others for the Businessman. The Visual aspect of the cartoon makes it easy to grasp the content. It affords a visual relaxation in the visually intensive world of business.
Humor in business is not as simple as it looks like. It demands professionalism both in humor and business. It has to be precise. Otherwise there is a danger of getting out of focus. Laser precision is part of any humor. If the target is missed, the damage is big.
Two major daily cartoon series deals directly with the business world. One is Dilbert, by Scott Adams. You can find it at the link:
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/index.htmlAnother one is the Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen. You can find it at the link:
http://pub49.bravenet.com/cartoon/show.php?usernum=4194105148Let us compare between the two cartoon series.
Dilbert has not a very inspiring affect. The characters are clumsy. They create clumsier situations. It is the result of incriminating surface behavior. It is very hard to understand them. We laugh at them, without very much intellectual gratification.
The Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen is much more sophisticated. A delicate situation, the result of internal acting forces, is in the center, and not a character. The situation is always a very sharp event of people behavior, mostly regarding money. The elusive world of money making motives finds here its accurate, funny representation. The characters serve just as a mean for clarification. The subject is not a certain character with unique attributes, but a situation with a strong common background, that anyone can encounter.
This makes the Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen a favorable choice for the business world. Imagine if we could apply it on a daily practical basis. We would laugh all the way to the bank.
To do so, we need a closer focus on business themes. Anybody can identify and act properly, when facing a situation that was represented in a cartoon with dynamic replacing of characters.
The need is for sophisticated cartoons is huge. It is a human problems solving technique. Whenever I open the
http://pub49.bravenet.com/cartoon/show.php?usernum=4194105148 website, I find new concrete inspirations regarding business activities, and, as a bonus, guides for other aspects of life like health, family and self improvement.
The Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen combines intensity with sophistication. A new cartoon is published once a day, and it is backed up by a huge archive.
I suggest The Daily Cartoon as the best way for introducing emotional intelligence to the business world. The subjects of the cartoons deals directly with the modern business arena of: computers and Internet work, management and workers, Decision making, work morality, and so on. It covers in exactingness almost any field, with a very positive affect.
The next step is to take The Daily Cartoons to a higher level: increase the circulation, add more sub topics from the business world, and find a way of implementing them to the infrastructure of the daily business work, for a better world.
About The Author
Avinoam Amizan is the owner and the webmaster of:
http://pub49.bravenet.com/cartoon/show.php?usernum=4194105148. He has diplomas in teaching and marketing from various institutes in Israel.
[email protected]
