A Sense of Humor and Being a Legacy Leader

Jay Newman, PhD, Founding Partner, Culture By Choice

When I was a young man, my dad, who was a very serious man and rarely smiled, told me that I took everything too seriously and that I needed to lighten up a bit. Now, more than 40 years later, I look at that brief talk I had with my dad as the most important piece of advice I ever received from him. My wife still tells me that I’m way to serious, but I have always found time for a good belly laugh.

One way to let people know that you really aren’t all that serious is to use your own experiences as an example. As a high school principal, I told this story to my staff during the first day in-service meetings as we were kicking off a new school year. Our family took a summer vacation to the Great Smokey Mountains. I came home from work on Friday afternoon and as we had previously decided, my wife had everything packed and ready to load in the car. All I had to do was load the car, get the kids strapped in, and we could hit the road. We were going to Elizabethtown, Kentucky that first night and we had a room booked at a Days Inn. So, I loaded the car. Every last thing that was sitting there on the floor by the front door was neatly tucked in for the ride south. Barb. my wife, said “did you get everything in.” I said yep, “if you put it by the door, it’s in the car.” She said, “did you get the food bags?” I said, “were they by the door?” She said “yes!” I said, “then they must be in the car because there is nothing left by the door.”

The station wagon was loaded with camping gear, kids, suitcases, and some bags of stuff. We traveled the 350 miles to Elizabethtown and stopped for the night. We checked into our room and got the overnight bags so we could all get our swim suits on and take a dip in the pool. It was August, we were in Kentucky and it was hot. To make matters worse, the AC in our station wagon wasn’t working so good and everyone was a hot mess. 5 hours of riding in a hot car can take a lot out of young kids. So we all change and get off to the pool. After about 15 minutes of splashing and playing, Barb asks me to “go get some of the chips out of one of the food bags, because the kids might like a snack before they go to bed.” I respond with, “I don’t remember seeing any chips in any of the bags I loaded in the car.” Barb replied, “really!” I said, “really!” She said, “how many bags did you put in the car?” I said, “two!” She said, “Really? Didn’t you think that 2 bags of food might not last us for 2 weeks of camping?” I said, “I thought maybe you had some other plan. You said everything was by the door!” She said, “I said by the doors! Didn’t you look by the service door into the garage?” I said, “WHY WOULD I LOOK THERE! WE DON’T EVEN USE THAT GARAGE?”

About this time, I look around the pool and notice that everyone is leaving the pool and our three kids are huddling by the stairs at the far end of the pool. It is now quite obvious that we’ve had a major miscommunication. My wife seems to have also caught on to the the fact that we’ve just scared everyone out of the pool, and says in a voice about 300 decibels lower than her last statement, “I think we should go.” We gather up the kids and head to our room. I grab one of the bags from the car which contains only breakfast cereal. The other bag contains crackers and boxes of macaroni and cheese. I took a deep breath and sighed, “I think I’m going get a little tired of mac and cheese, crackers and cereal. Do you think we better stop to get something else to feed the kids before we set up camp in the Smokies?”

It’s hard to relate how this went over to my staff by writing it down. When I told the story, they were laughing so hard they couldn’t catch their breath. I guess they could related to my story. But it was a great way to introduce the idea of improving communications. In every organization, the one thing that everyone says needs to be improved is communications. And the first assumption is that there’s not enough of it. But experience tells us that it’s not the amount, it’s the quality of the communication that’s important. Going back to my wife and I, our failure resulted from assumptions. I assumed I knew what she meant when she asked me questions and she assumed I knew what she meant when I answered those questions. As comical as the situation turned out to be, we did learn a lesson, to make a check list for our vacations. Our checklists did not keep us from having more fun and exciting experiences, but we never left the food behind again. And, just for the record, when we got home, there were the 6 other bags of can goods, pancake mix, various chips, cookies, and boxes of assorted snacks, sitting right there by the service door from the dining room into the garage.