I Spoke At 9 HR Conferences In 2 Months. What I Learned Wasn’t What I Expected
After years of my speaking applications for my “Think Like A Comedian” sessions getting rejected by state HR conferences, something about my pitch hit differently this year:
“In a fast-moving marketplace demanding innovation, many organizations are unintentionally stifling innovative behavior, creating preventable stress and turnover.”
First, no dick jokes this time around — learned that lesson the hard way.
Second, I learned to meet my audience where they were instead of insisting they get into my “FREE CANDY” van of wild “humor in the workplace” ideas.
It also helps when you cite Deloitte:
In their 2023 Human Capital Trends Survey, 80% of organizations said worker agency is important to business success, but only 20% feel ready to address it.
A PricewaterhouseCoopers (is that really all one word??) CEO survey doesn’t hurt either:
77% of CEOs find it difficult to get the creativity and innovation skills they need in a marketplace that demands it.
So rather than barreling into these conferences to talk at their audiences, I decided to run a little poll of my own and build my presentations around my findings, and boy did my findings reframe my approach by the 5th conference.
The question: What is the biggest challenge HR faces in building a creative, collaborative, and psychologically safe culture?
Though the David Horning Poll Of HR Professionals doesn’t ring the same as the Gallup State Of The American Workplace, what I found could be why their annual report of only 1 in 3 employees being engaged by their work has basically been copied and pasted since 2000.
Of the 1150+ session participants, 32% listed lack of employee buy-in, 18% listed lack of leadership buy-in, 12% stated that the “we’ve never done it that way” mentality was holding them back.
I was CERTAIN fear and lack of leadership buy-in would be the top two answers, but since it wasn’t, I knew I had to pivot the “how” of teaching leaders to “think like comedians” to something different: storytelling.
After doing comedy in one form or another for over 12 years to varying results, I’ve discovered that the skills comedians practice to become great are the same skills shared by great leaders who inspire innovation, and it all starts with storytelling.
Comedians are genuinely curious about what we observe, and we frame that curiosity into a setup-punchline structure (AKA a joke). But if that joke doesn’t get the laugh we anticipate, it’s our job to aim that curiosity at our initial POV of that observation, or the story we tell ourselves, and ask “What else could be true?” in order to better connect our warped perspective with an unwitting audience. Even if the joke works, it’s still helpful to ask “How can I make it work better?”
This continued practice strengthens our natural curiosity, resilience, self-awareness and accountability, and problem-solving skills.
Curiosity because it shifts our initial thought about something away from the fixed mindset trap of judgment-based thinking, opening us up to new discoveries that may even challenge that initial thought.
Resilience because those new discoveries might lead to unexpected adversity and challenges, but approaching them from a place of curiosity makes them feel more manageable and creates a growth mindset.
Accountability and self-awareness because this narrows our focus onto what we can control (how we connect with the audience) and away from what we can’t control (the audience itself).
Problem-solving because with this new information, we can take action and try again, viewing the results, again, from a place of curiosity.
What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing in building a more creative, collaborative, and psychologically safe workplace?
Whether it’s a lack of employee or leadership buy-in, “we’ve never done it that way,” fear, or anything else, that’s just your initial story. Sticking to that initial story creates a fixed mindset that cements that story as fact.
If you thought like a comedian, here’s how that process would play out:
1. Question the story. “What else could be true?” “What if the opposite were true?” “How can I change this story?” (Curiosity)
2. Your answers will undoubtedly reframe your initial perspective and introduce multiple new perspectives, some that even disprove your biases. (Resilience)
3. Based on these new POVs what new actions can you take? (Self-awareness & accountability)
4. What results did you get? What did you learn? What’s your new story? (Problem-solving)
5. Repeat
When it comes to whatever challenge you’re facing, the outcome starts with the story you tell yourself. Once you start questioning your initial story, not only will your narrative shift, but so will the narratives of those around you.
So if it’s lack of employee buy-in that’s the biggest obstacle to innovation, that’s not even close to the full story. That’s just the starting point.
If more business leaders adopted this practice, stories would shift from “We’re finding it difficult to get the creativity and innovation skills we need,” simply by starting with the question “What else could be true?” Thus, the creativity and innovation gap would narrow, workplaces would become more psychologically safe for the sharing of ideas, and collaboration would improve.
What’s stopping you from building a creative, collaborative, psychologically safe workplace culture? Listen to your own answer, and approach it with curiosity. A few questions to ask yourself about said answer (many are the questions comedians ask themselves about an observation in order to create material that connects with their audiences):
- Is this story true 100% of the time all of the time?
- What else could be true?
- What if the opposite were true?
- If I were responsible for this, what would I do differently?
- Where else could that lead?
- What else?
These self-reflective questions are broad, sure, but the more you keep answering your questions with further questions from a place of true curiosity, the more specific the questions will get. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge.
