Hello and welcome to This Is Not What I Signed Up For, the podcast for first time managers preventing you from sinking in the ocean of management by teaching you how to swim. Today, I am very excited to have Michael Kerr with me. Michael is a Canadian Hall of Fame speaker who writes and speaks about inspiring workplace cultures, leadership and businesses that leverage their humor resources to drive outrageous results. Now, I've known Michael for a good seven or so years now. And the outrageous is definitely there, but I find him an exceptional thought leader in the space. And he has to be one of the funniest and funnest people I know. And he brings that into so many things. I had the opportunity to work with him across the oceans when we were both serving as presidents of our respective speakers associations that were part of. And it was really great to see you in action, Mike. You've authored several books on humor, on workplaces and culture, and I'm just super excited to have you on board for everyone. So welcome, welcome. Thank you Ross and thank you for that awesome introduction. That's just, that's fabulous. No, no, no pressure on me now. And by the way, Ross, as we're doing this January 31st, it just happens to be, it's rather timely. It is official Fun at Work Day today. wonderful. You are such a dictionary of every day of the year as to what the day is. Yes, I have those on my website. Every day there's all these wacky things. That's simple way to bring a little humor into the workplace, right? There's talk like a pirate day and answer your cat's question day and all these goofy days. love it. Talk like a pirate day is one of my favorites. I remember you could set Facebook to be in pirate English and then everything changed over it. Cool. So Michael, the first thing I do in this podcast, every time I have someone on board, I've got a question for you. What is the worst? management advice you've ever received or seen out there. Well, sadly, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of bad management advice. The one that stands out in my mind the most though, because it actually influenced my whole career in many ways, it was not only advice, it was wrapped into a yearly performance review where my boss at the time cautioned me on my use of humor at work and cautioned me that sometimes my humor could be a little... inappropriate. And so I remember pressing him for examples and he couldn't come up with a single example. And I was I knew I was I was very well known for my sense of humor. I was a manager at the time. I sizable crew of people reporting to me. I used a lot of humor in all sorts of different contexts. So what was very funny about this was I told my employees about this conversation and this review. So they made up a sash for me, like a pageant sash with a label calling me Mr. Inappropriate Use of Humor. They made a little crown for me and so it became this running joke that I was Mr. Inappropriate Use of... But that did get me thinking more because I already used a lot of humor in my role as a supervisor, as a manager, and people seem to really appreciate the humor. Now, I totally get that there are times when humor can be inappropriate in a workplace setting. But the reason I now speak about what I speak on is because that culture that I worked in became this soul-sucking, fun-sucking workplace. And I decided to... Leave, actually, I actually, I'll hold up my survivor torch here. I actually voted myself off the island, Ross, because I just couldn't survive anymore. So I started my speaking career and made it my mission to talk about how work shouldn't be sucking the life out of you. Wonderful. Well, I'm so glad and we're better. We're all better for that. So that was the perfect segue into kind of our topic today. So we're talking about leading with laughter and being intentional with your leadership and your culture that comes from it. So, you know, this is going to be such a blanket question for you, but just how important is a good culture? in a team. is everything in my books. It is, I don't care what business you're in, how small or big your business is, culture is your number one competitive advantage. It's your number one driver of success because it affects absolutely every aspect of how you do your business. I've interviewed hundreds of leaders around the world and I always ask them the same standard question. And we've all. heard this probably many, times, but I always ask them, hey, what's been more important to your success, your strategy or your culture? 99 % easily have said, oh, it's our culture. Culture is everything. If you don't have the right culture in place, even with the best strategy, and I'm not knocking strategy, of course we need a good business strategy, but without the right culture in place, these leaders tell me time and time again, the strategy isn't going to be as successful as it might otherwise be. We know culture just drives. so much success. affects employees' stress levels and happiness and their resilience, how well they work together, how well they collaborate together, how creative and innovative they are, how you deliver your client's service. It affects everything. And by culture, I just mean how you do the things you do, your DNA, the mojo, the feel of the place, the unique set of rituals, traditions, values, behaviors that make your workplace your workplace and different than your nearest competitor. Yeah, wow, that's a perfect definition, I think. I've seen it so many times too. Strategy is there, but that execution comes from so many components that's outside of the strategy and culture is such a big one of that. And even setting strategy, like culture comes into that too. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think one thing a lot of businesses, lot of organizations need to do a better job at is merging their thinking about their culture with their strategic planning. Those two should be embedded together. You can't ignore your culture when you're doing your strategic plan. And your strategic plan should reflect your culture and have that built into every aspect of your strategic plan. yeah, think that's something that we do in one of the companies I'm involved in is it is so intertwined when we do our strategy meetings on an annual basis. We are more discussing the culture and what we're growing and how we're nurturing that. The strategy kind of comes from it, but it works so well as to this is like you say, the DNA, it's how we work and it feeds into it. So if someone is a new manager, Yeah. Where or a new leader, a new manager, a new supervisor, a team lead, where do they fit in on influencing the culture? Be it team, company, anything like that. They have a huge role, supervisors, and it doesn't matter. You can be a frontline supervisor with a small team, lower down on the organizational tree there. You still have a huge impact on your culture, on your piece of the pie in your company. You have a disproportional impact and your employees are looking for you to signal the cues that are important in terms of your culture. So one of the things I stress, no matter what level you're at as a supervisor, as a manager, as the boss, is to think of yourself not just as a supervisor, not just as a leader, but as a culture leader. And so by that, mean being intentional about your culture and considering your culture in everything you do. So when you make decisions, get in the habit of asking yourself, how does this impact our culture? And does it build the kind of culture that I wanna create in my team? It means being intentional about how you hire and train and communicate with your employees and recognizing that everything you do, everything you do and say as a leader, as a supervisor, either adds to your workplace culture or detracts from your workplace culture in some way. So I challenge everyone out there to just think of themselves first and foremost as a culture leader. Yeah, I like to relate that. it's something I was writing about recently, shameless plug in my book that's coming out soon, that I kind of liken it to music cultures as well in an organization. you know, an organization might be rock and roll, but your teams have subcultures within that as well. So you might have a team that's into more of their rockabilly kind of thing, but it all fits into rock and roll and it all goes in the same direction. that team subculture is a thing too. and how you work together. And I've gone into organizations as a speaker or as a trainer. And it's astounding to me sometimes when I speak to one department and they have this incredible culture. And then I speak to the next department, same company, but their culture, not so much. And I'm always thinking, wow, you work for the same company? So that's a reminder that, yeah, there are these little micro cultures. so remember, you do still have a... a huge amount of influence. And I love your music analogy, Ross, because I often talk about a leader as an orchestra conductor, right? As the boss, as the supervisor, you set the tone, you set the music in your team. And so what's nice about that, or what's positive about that is if you are out there and you're working in an organization that is maybe struggling with their culture, you're a little frustrated with the bigger culture. Remind yourself, you have a lot more power than perhaps you appreciate you do, and you can build the culture that you want within your team. You were in some ways, in some instances, you were sometimes as well the shield between some of the negative stuff that might be going on in the bigger organization. It's still up to you though to create a positive, collaborative, innovative. fun culture with your team and you have the power to do that. Hmm. Saying that you're the shield is such a good thing. think there can be a whole podcast episode on that as well. And the amount of times when I was still in corporate where that kind of are that shield from clients, sometimes other managers and things like that. there's a lot you have to do and a lot of responsibility for falls on you. Yep, absolutely. Back to my story of that bad management advice, I viewed my job very much as that because it was becoming a soul-sucking, fun-sucking culture. And I wanted to protect my employees from some of the negative stuff that was happening in the larger organization and make sure that we were doubling down on our culture. Yeah, yeah. And I want to get into that sort of flip side of the coin as well. So you've got these cultures, you're a champion in your team. But now I think a lot of times, and I saw it in my early career as well, I worked for companies that had a lot of pump and circumstance around culture and this is what we are and who we are and big grand gestures and things like that. As a new manager, when I was first getting into it, was kind of drilled into me that this is set at the company level. Don't touch it. Don't get involved. But I think on the flip side of that, where you are involved, maybe that was my bad advice that I received. But what happens when you don't get actively engaged in your team's culture and you kind of ride on the coattails of the broader company? What are some of the things that can happen there? Well, I think again, have to remind yourself of your role, that you are on the front lines essentially as a front line supervisor, as a lower level manager, you are where the action happens. You are in most organizations, in my books, you're the most important part of the organization, because that's where stuff gets done, that's where things happen. So again, I would just go back to this idea that you need to be a champion of... your culture and if you don't, if you just ride on the coattails of the larger culture that maybe is not moving in the best possible direction, you run the risk of creating a culture that is just not working as effectively as it should be, of having demoralized employees, of having employees confused because they're not seeing that their team maybe or the behaviors are congruent with the larger values of the organization. So can have a lot of negative impacts if you just kind of coast passively on the larger culture, I think. You need to step up as a leader, I think. And as I keep using that phrase, because I think it's an important one, champion your culture. So you need to understand what it means to you. And you need to be aware of how you're modeling your values that you want employees to lead by. You want to translate. those values that are important to your company and important to you personally as a leader. You want to translate those values into specific behaviors and actions that everybody can understand and see and in most cases measure and then model them relentlessly. The test that I like to give leaders is this. Could an employee after working with you for a couple of months tell you what is important to you as a leader? In other words, what are your values? What are your primary values? without you ever saying them out loud because they observe them in you day in and day out in your behaviors. love that. Yeah, you're reminding me back just on some of the things you said there and then into my sucky workspace that I was in at one point. It was pre me being in management. was still very early in my career. And it was one of those examples of this is something I'm never going to be. I'm going to take this as a note. And we were in the IT department, part of the head office team. I remember one day we were, someone had said something and it was pretty hysterical and we were all having a good laugh. It was a great relief and bonding with the team and the CEO burst in the door and we all got so badly reprimanded because work is where you come to be serious. Get back to work. You shouldn't be laughing. And I just thought that was crazy. And I will say that was a working at that company was a sentence and I served 209 days and then I left. actually counted the days. How sad is that though, right? That we view some of these jobs as sentences. We can't wait to be paroled. Yeah. absolutely. So, you know, coming into all these and you are that champion of your culture and all of that, let's bring a bit more into the humor side of things. How does humor fit into that leadership and culture? Humor is hugely important in my books. I think it's one of the most underappreciated, underutilized resources we have, especially as a leader, especially as a leader, to create a more effective workplace, a more effective, productive team. And I view it as a chicken and egg relationship, or maybe, since we're talking humor, a rubber chicken and egg relationship. Humor helps build a stronger team, a stronger culture, but it also reflects a stronger culture and team. In other words, if you're... doing all those things you should be doing as a leader, creating a kind of environment where people feel valued and appreciated and respected and there's open and honest communication and people feel psychologically safe and all these positive things that we know go into building a great culture, then of course it's gonna be that much easier for your employees to come into work with a better attitude and bring their sense of humor along for the ride. And there are so many studies Ross that show that Leaders who embrace a healthy, positive sense of humor that laughs with people, not at people. So I'm not talking about sarcastic humor or offensive or cruel or bullying humor, but positive, supportive humor. Leaders who share humor tend to be trusted more because I think they come across more authentic, more real, more genuine. They tend to be respected more. They're more approachable. We know that humor can help us manage our stress, be more creative. Everything moves in the right direction and builds a stronger, more collaborative team. There are studies that show that teams or workplaces that have high levels of humor and fun in the workplace have lower levels of absenteeism rates and employee turnover rates. So it really is a secret weapon, I think, that we have at our disposal to help us do so much good as a leader. And just to be clear, I am not, when I'm talking about humor, Talking about telling jokes or being the office clown or a stand-up comedian. I'm not even always talking about being funny. I'm talking about just being more human, more authentic, about being able, especially as a leader, to laugh at yourself more. That is so important as a leader. Is it not a truism after all that the more seriously a person takes themselves, the less seriously we all start taking that person? Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, I feel like I felt this way as well when I first became or came into that management role. I kind of had this sense of duty. I've been made this manager. is this is serious now. Now it's time to be down to business and things like that. And over the years, I mean, I have to have humor in my workplace. And I think just what you were saying there, around belonging, even for things like making mistakes. We like to foster that it's okay to make a mistake and let's carry on. yes. So perfect segue, perfect setup there, Ross. We used to have, because I love, you're absolutely bang on. We have to use our sense of humor and be able to laugh at ourselves when we screw up, right? We used to, in one place I worked, we had the official Bonehead Play of the Month award. So if you, we would do this on a Friday afternoon, last Friday of the month, it took like five, 10 minutes tops. You had to nominate yourself, because it doesn't build the team spirit if you start nominating each other. Hahaha have to nominate yourself. God, I did something so embarrassing, so stupid, so bonehead. And so we would have this great laugh about it. But it also, here's what it did, right? It created this environment where people were more willing to admit their mistakes so we could all learn from them. Yeah, absolutely. For those that are listening to this and haven't and are not watching the video on YouTube, I encourage you to go over to YouTube and take a look at the literal bonehead that was happening there. Yes, I have my little bonehead hat that I'm wearing. It comes in handy in so many situations. And it's a get out of jail free card too, Ross. Like I remember even as a boss, I used to have this and if I knew I messed up with somebody, I'd go to their office and I'd say, did you want to talk to me? Like it's a get out of jail free card. If you show up wearing this, how can they still be mad at you? Yeah, no. you know, again, I mean, just hearing us speak like that goes back to authenticity as well. Like I've had many things where I've had to go and apologize for, well, I messed this up pretty badly. And that goes to your authenticity. You can apologize and everything. It's great. And I think, you know, you mentioned a word there, belonging when we were discussing this earlier, like I think that is so big belonging communications and it just rounds everything up, I think. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. One of the primary roles of any supervisor, any leader is to create a sense of belonging and safety for your team. Safety, not just physical safety, obviously really important, but also psychological safety where your employees know that they can come and talk to you. And it's not enough to just say, I have an open door, right? You've got to build that environment of trust, of approachableness, of open and honest communication. They need to know they can come and... tell you their problems, their challenges, ask you the tough questions, suggest outrageous ideas, point out when there's serious concerns. And we know there's this thing called organizational silence. And the studies show upwards of 80 % of people have admitted across a whole range of different industries to not speaking up in the face of a serious safety issue or performance issue because there wasn't that safety in place to be able to. to speak up freely. And that ties into belonging too. We have to give our people a sense of belonging. And that's different than just making them feel included or like true belonging when you think about that, right? It means that they feel they can bring their authentic selves to work. They can be themselves in your meetings and just feel comfortable in their own skin. That is such a huge driver of success, we know. Wonderful. Michael, think we could carry on chatting about this for ages, but I'm going to have to put us on pause there. What are some of the things that you're working on now? What's exciting you out there? Give our listeners something about what you're busy with. Yeah, well, I'm busy speaking about workplace culture all over the place. I'm excited because I'm still promoting my latest book, Small Moments, Big Outcomes, How Leaders Create Cultures That Feel Extraordinary Result. And I'm just about to turn this puppy into an audiobook shortly. So I'm excited about that. And I'm excited about working on some more online courses about all of this stuff that we're talking about here, Ross, because it's so important. I I love sharing these ideas about how to make work better, because I want to remind everyone out there listening or watching, work has a huge impact on our lives, right? It affects our marriages and family lives, our mental and physical health, our personal growth, our identity, where you live. It's a wee bit of a time sucker. It's the single biggest use of our waking hours in this short thing called life. So I urge you to step up and think about what you want your legacy as a supervisor, as a leader to be, because you have a huge impact. on the people around you. Wonderful folks if anyone wants to find out more about what Michael's busy with all that in the show notes will be links to his sites and his bio and you can please Hop on over check out what he's doing and give him some love there as well Michael thank you so much for joining me for this Thank you, Ross. It's been an honor. It's been a blast. Remember to have fun out there. Fun at work day today is fun at work day, but hey, it should be every day. Do that every day. that humor to work. Folks, thank you very much for joining us. I will see you next time. Till then, keep swimming. Cheerio.