How Funny Was That? Discoveries From Measuring Leader Humor

Abstract

We introduce a multimodal approach to conducting nuanced, unobtrusive measurements of leader humor expressions, and we exploratively test it using a sample of press conferences held by professional soccer coaches in the German Bundesliga. First, we discover that although most of the humor recognized across leaders was affiliative humor, individual leaders still exhibited unique patterns in their use of humor. For instance, some coaches almost exclusively employed others-directed humor, and we found differences in the total amount of humor expressed per press conference and the number of humorous instances per press conference. Second, we uncover general patterns in the timing of both humor overall and individual humor styles. For example, most humor occurred towards the end of press conferences. Third, we propose a novel framework, that enables us to identify differences in the audience’s recognition of leader humor and their perceptions of humor clarity, and find that some leaders communicate their humor more clearly to an audience than others. Our exploratory approach provides a solid foundation for additional empirical research on executive communication, especially leader humor. Ultimately, our findings reconfirm the need for a nuanced perspective on leader humor and contribute to extant research on leader rhetoric and executive communication.