Randall S. Peterson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour and the Academic Director of the Leadership Institute at London Business School. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Peterson’s research focuses on the interpersonal dynamics of senior management teams, including the effects of CEO personality on team dynamics and performance, conflict resolution, and leadership in diverse teams.
Dr. Peterson has been with London Business School since 2001, where he was promoted to full professor in 2005. His extensive research has been published in leading academic journals and popular outlets such as Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and Forbes. He is known for his work on board effectiveness, leadership assessment, and high-performing teams.
As a prominent figure in his field, Dr. Peterson also teaches and consults on team and organizational leadership topics, providing actionable insights for enhancing team dynamics and organizational performance. His contributions have earned him several accolades, including a mentorship award from the Organizational Behavior division of the Academy of Management.
1) Your recent study on leadership and humor challenges the notion that it is always beneficial. Can you elaborate on how excessive humor from leaders can lead to emotional exhaustion and decreased job satisfaction among followers (and employees)?
We find that when the boss tells jokes, we feel obligated to respond, typically with a laugh or even a groan. If the joke is not very good, or even offensive, we mostly still feel obliged to put on an act or fake laugh. Fake laughing takes energy. It is called emotional labour, much like when you have to smile all day at the cash register or be nice to people at a call centre even when you have had a bad week. All of this takes energy to absorb the negative and reflect the positive.
2) How does the concept of surface acting tie into emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction, and why is it particularly relevant in the context of leader humor?
Surface acting is the ‘faking’ you do in response to a poor or offensive joke. On the surface, you laugh, even though underneath it, you are disappointed, offended, and/or indifferent to the joke. Whenever we have to show a different emotion from the one(s) we feel, this is surface acting, and it takes energy (i.e., emotional labour).
3) Can you explain what power distance is and how it influences the extent to which followers engage in surface acting in response to leader humor? What practical implications does this have for leaders (broadly, but especially in culturally diverse organizations)?
Power distance is a cultural value that suggests that wisdom comes from those who have experience. High power distance means we believe those who have experience, and that those who are higher in the structure have superior knowledge to those below—so we defer to those who are of higher status. Places like China are high in this value, whereas the UK is actually one of the very lowest—most people in the UK believe in the wisdom of the crowd, rather than the wisdom of leaders and experience. This means that the demand to fake laugh in response to your boss’ jokes is stronger in countries like China compared to the UK. But this is not just an East-West thing, France is relatively high power distance as well. So that means when you are leading a multinational audience, the laughs you get from non-native English speakers (French, Arab, East Asian, etc.) are highly likely to be fake. And because they respect hierarchy and experience they will almost never tell you your jokes are anything other than wonderful, so be cautious and avoid managing through telling jokes.
4) Your research differentiates between the quantity and quality of humor. What advice would you give leaders to strike the right balance and avoid the pitfalls associated with excessive humor?
Because we fake laugh at the boss’ jokes, that encourages them to tell more and more jokes. But leaders are, on the whole, not as funny as they believe they are (i.e., evidenced by the number of people at work who laugh at your jokes). But because we see people laughing, we tell more and more jokes, which demands more and more faking from the subordinates, hence why more jokes are associated with more surface acting (i.e., emotional labour).
So, tell a few really great jokes, and stop there when you are the boss! The workers will value your intent even if the joke is not that funny. Do not be seduced by all the laughing into telling even more jokes to your people!
5) Many studies suggest that employees enjoy their work more when leaders provide greater autonomy and step back from needing constant affirmation. Assuming you agree that a feeling of connectedness is inherent in all of us (yet this trait can sometimes hinder leadership effectiveness), what can leaders do to successfully balance their desire for positive relationships while still fostering an environment of autonomy and empowerment?
Yes, we all want to feel connected to others, but that can also be knowing your place in the hierarchy, in addition to even-level connectedness. Most of the studies have been done in the English-speaking West (i.e., relatively low power distance cultures), and so they over-emphasize the idea of equal status connection, as opposed to only connection and knowing how one connects to others. So, instead, one of the things I always recommend is to highlight to the whole team how one person’s work broadly supports the entire team’s success. That old story about the janitor at NASA answering questions about what he does for work by saying he helps put people on the moon is the perfect example of this. Bosses need to help the individuals in their team see that what each individual does facilitates the success of the others on the team—reminding them of their shared interconnectedness.