Managing to Have Fun!

Jennifer Brinkley — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

The Power of Humor in Business

Tip of the Month!

AALA introduces Podcasting! If you missed this month's half day speaker series, you can now listen to it in the comfort of your home or office!

Many of us had the opportunity today to see the lighter side of doing business and how bringing fun into the workplace can enhance our personal and professional lives. For those of us who attended, I think we walked away with some great ideas to implement in our offices and, more importantly, new and renewed friendships with the others in attendance today.

If you weren’t able to attend, have no fear, Mr. Weinstein allowed us to record his presentation and we are working to upload this to the site for a future teleseminar! In the meantime, we’re going to bring a little fun to you. Here’s an idea courtesy of Playfair, Inc.:

Design Stress Support Kits

A sales manager at Dun and Bradstreet Software noticed that the phone consultants who reported to her were under a great deal of stress. "They're on the firing line with our customers every day," she said. "The people calling in for help are almost always under pressure. So it's crucial for our consultants stay calm, if we're going to develop a positive, long-term relationship with our customers." To help the consultants keep their cool, she created a "Stress Support Kit" which included chewing gum, aspirin, a comedy cassette, wind-up toys for the desktop, and a rubber head for squeezing during tense moments on the phone.

Playfair's Ritch Davidson was so taken with the idea that he created a similar collection for his own clients and co-workers. This "Playfair Stress Support Kit" contained three "vegetable pens" (a pen in the shape of a carrot, a corncob pen, and a pickle pen); a set of wind-up chattering teeth with little moving feet; a red foam clown nose; and an audiocassette by the Playfair staff called "Laugh Your Stress Away."

Click here for more ideas to FUN up your office!

The label that Ritch designed for the kit read: "If you're taking yourself too seriously, it's time to lighten up already!”

INDICATIONS: For the temporary relief of clenched teeth, tight necks and muscles, hair about to be pulled out by the roots, and general cranky behavior-all associated with the common stressors at work, at home, in traffic, on the golf course, in long lines...

DOSAGE: Use as often as needed at the first signs of discomfort.

The Vegetable Pens are to ease the pain the next time you have to write a check with more than two zeroes in it. The Chattering Teeth are for the next time you're stuck on a call with an unbelievably boring client. . . let the teeth walk across your desk. . . . The Clown Nose is for you to put on the next time you are stuck in a traffic jam: it won't do you much good, but the drivers of the other cars around you will go wild! And finally, the audiocassette, Laugh Your Stress Away will help you see that in any "stressful" situation there is always another way to look at the situation that can help to put it into perspective. Why choose stress?!!"

Is there anyone in your office who will be pressed to meet a demanding project deadline in the next few weeks? Take a trip to the toy store and design your own customized "Contents Under Pressure" stress support kit for him or her. It doesn't matter if your style is to present the stress support kit with great ceremony, or else to leave it hidden somewhere, to be discovered as an anonymous gift. What's important is that during a time of tension and stress, they know that someone is thinking about them. As psychotherapist Annette Goodheart, the author of Laughter Therapy has so eloquently stated, "Just because we're miserable doesn't mean we can't laugh about it!"

Matt Weinstein is the nation's foremost authority on the use of fun and humor in team building. Drawing on his own experience as a company president and twenty-five years of research by the Playfair organization, Matt Weinstein's presentations are rich in content and alive with humor. All of Matt's keynote presentations include hilarious audience interactions as an integral part of the lecture program. And Matt Weinstein’s dynamic keynote presentations come with an astounding money-back guarantee: if Matt does not get a standing ovation at the end of his program, you do not have to pay his fee! Matt was elected to the Professional Speaker’s Hall of Fame by the National Speaker’s Association, and was honored by Successful Meetings Magazine as one of the “21 Top Speakers for the 21st Century.”

16-Jun-10 8:00 PM

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Managing to Have Fun!