How to lift workplace communication skills with humour

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, a leadership strategy and business podcast brought to you by CPA Australia. Hello, welcome to INTHEBLACK. I'm Garreth Hanley and today we're getting serious about comedy in the workplace. Our guest today is Alan Cameron-Sweeney. Alan is an accountant who helps finance professionals develop their communication skills so they can have greater influence in their organisations. He's also a stand-up comedian and a keynote speaker. Alan helps his fellow accountants use so-called soft skills to influence decision-making and grow their career. Welcome to INTHEBLACK Alan.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Thank you for having me, Garreth.

Garreth Hanley:
Good to have you here. Alan, this week is April Fool's and I'm just wondering, does laughter have a place in the workplace?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
I had forgotten it's April Fool's, so thank you for reminding me. I can now schedule to get my wife on that one. But does laughter have a place in the workplace? It most definitely does. Even in accounting and financing, humour has a place everywhere. And for me in terms of influence, it's a great rapport building tool. And there's a quote by Maya Angelou, "I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." And humour, it makes people feel good. And then if you are the one creating the humour, they associate you with the positive feelings and are happy to see you again.

Maybe 10 years back or so, I was working on a large transformation project. A consultant who was working with us said to me, she was talking to me and she said, "Alan, do you notice that when you are in a meeting people are more up for a good time because you are there" and I said to her, I said, ""Well, I don't really know what it's like to be in a meeting when I'm not there." I said, "What is it like?" And she says, "Well, to be honest, it's all a little bit dull." So humour can really lift the mood of those around you and create a better and more open atmosphere. And as I said, it's really important for building relationships around the business. So it definitely has a place in finance.

Garreth Hanley:
On your website, Alan, it says that you gained a deep understanding of the challenges faced by accountants as they strive to transition from adding up to adding value. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and the difference between adding up and adding value?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Yep. So if we go back to around 2010, when I first got involved with BI, so business intelligence tools started automating a lot of things. That's where the tide started to turn between the two of adding up and adding value where you had the day-to-day finance and then business partnering got popularised. What I would classify as adding up is where you're spending a lot of your time just producing the numbers. So pulling data together, doing journals, pulling spreadsheets together to build your reports. You might also be doing analysis on the numbers to find insights for your reporting. And generally, these numbers are looking backwards, so they're historical. And these roles might be as part of an FP&A team and some portions of management accountant work. There isn't really much focus on relationships outside of finance or working cross functionally. It's often where accountants have their heads in spreadsheets.

And then when we move on to adding value, with the automation, you've got your system automated so you're not spending as much time pulling your reports together and that frees you up to do value-adding work. And this changed where I saw it happen and got that deep understanding was at Schweppes and Asahi around 2012 when we brought in SAP BI tools and I was then running the in-house professional development programme to help the finance team focus on being through business partners and how to add value. And making the switch to business, partnering, it is a challenge because you need to be more future-focused than historical. So it's not so much about what happened, but more about what are we going to do next. And then it's also a mindset shift because you need to have a strategic mindset in terms of helping your stakeholders achieve their goals. And that's not what we're really trained to do originally as accountants.

I think as well, finance, it attracts a lot of introverts, me included, where you can be more comfortable sitting in the dark room with a spreadsheet as opposed to being out presenting to the business. But I think just because you're an introvert doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. When I got into public speaking, I was scared of it being an introvert, but then I got hooked on getting a laugh from an audience and that was the start of that. So you can be surprised how much you can actually enjoy the relationship end of it and things like that. It's more about managing your energy, dealing with people, and of course there's plenty of tools and things for that.

Garreth Hanley:
Would you classify yourself as an introvert?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Majorly. But I think where people get confused with introverts, they often think introverts are very shy and things like that. But it's not actually the definition. The definition of an introvert is someone who recharges alone from people and where an extrovert is someone who recharges from being around people and then an ambivert is somewhere in between the two. For instance, my wife, she needs to talk to people to recharge, where I need to sit alone in my room and read a book. So I can go out, deliver a workshop all day long and be great fun, but then afterwards my energy needs to be recharged.

Garreth Hanley:
What's the key for people who are maybe working in the books at the moment and looking backwards and might be a bit introverted? What's the key to turning those challenges into opportunities to become the person who's adding more value?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Yeah. So there's three main areas to focus on. And that'd be stakeholders, solutions, and then strategy. So with your stakeholders, you want to be building your relationships. This is where humour can come in and add value to you in building rapport because as we said, you want your stakeholders to be happy to see you or are happy to pick up the phone and ring you, that it's an enjoyable experience. So part of that is going to be you want good communication skills to be able to communicate the numbers to them so that they understand and they have that feeling that they understand the numbers when they do talk to you.

If you notice here I do talk a lot about feelings, which might sound a bit odd for finance, but we kind of need to look at our stakeholders as customers and how do they feel after the interactions with finance. So you want to see things from their point of view. With solutions, when we're talking about adding value, we want to be able to see how finance can add value to the business in a sense of the easy thing to say to solve a problem is to cut costs, but what are the other things finance has specialties in that can add value? Maybe it is getting better deals with providers, so reducing costs. It might be finance will have the overall context of how things work in a business which the stakeholder wouldn't. So there might be levers that can be pulled that your stakeholders don't know about.

And it's also just making sure your stakeholders understand the things like margins and the decisions that they're going to make, the effects, the knock on effects should I say, that they're going to have so you can help your stakeholder make the best possible financial decision. And then lastly is the strategy. So we mentioned the strategic mindset. And to kind of explain what we mean by strategy, it's what are the business moves we need to make that will help us get to where we need to go in the shortest possible time. That is understanding the products or services that your business delivers. And that is using some strategic tools to analyse the market. So where is the low hanging fruit or markets you can expand into or what are your cash cow products that you can get more money out of and things like that. And using tools like SWOT analysis and those type of strategic tools to really decide on where it is the business should focus next to meet its strategic goals. They're the three things that are important. That's kind of what I look at when I do workshops with finance teams and stakeholders solutions, and then strategy. The three key things that will help them add value.

Garreth Hanley:
It's interesting, Alan. Those three things all sound pretty serious, but let's maybe move back to how comedy fits into this picture. Obviously, there's lots of research out there that points to laughter improving mood, reducing pain, improving blood pressure, and even increasing serotonin. So obviously, laughter is good for us and probably very good in the workplace maybe when it's very stressful as well. But I think also we've been in a situation where a colleague's attempt at humour has been less than appropriate or has made a cringe. So what are some of the pitfalls of humour in the workplace and how can they be avoided if people are using comedy to connect with others?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Yeah, the first one would be, and it's something that we do in comedy while comedians do, it's called reading the room. You need to watch the comedians before you and see if certain material is not going down well. And maybe it might be because of audience makeup. So in work you need to read the mood of the room. If your boss or if your stakeholders are in a bad mood, perhaps there's bad financial results, it's not perhaps the time to be cracking jokes that aren't appropriate. It might just annoy people. But as you mentioned, it can improve bad situations, but you have to know which situation it is that you are selecting to improve the bad mood and who it is in the bad mood.

Second thing to be careful about is what's called punching down in comedy. So comedy can be truth to power. So generally, you want to make fun of things that have more power than you. The opposite of that is obviously not making fun of things that are below you in a power sense. So that will be not making fun at someone's expense who is more junior to you, because they may feel like they can't really come back on the same level playing field since they're junior. And not that I advocate necessarily, I'm not saying poking fun at people, but just even a slight joke at someone's expense who's junior, it just mightn't go down well.

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Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
The same with people who are too senior, unless you have a relationship already or you know that person kind of enjoys a laugh, because you wouldn't want to obviously disrespect somebody in that case. You need to be kind of careful. But with people above you, you could still do observational humour. And even if you don't have the relationship with them, for example, if there's four executives and they were all wearing blue shirts, you could say, "Sorry, I didn't get the memo on wearing blue shirts today." That observational humour is very inoffensive. And people like when you observe things about them, right? So even I was at a cafe the other day and the lady serving me, her nails, the colour of her nails matched the colour of her jumper. And I said something to her about being all matchy-matchy. And of course she smiled, she was happy that someone had just kind of noticed. And then she even threw in that her drink bottle even matched the same colour as well. So she was extremely matchy-matchy.

Garreth Hanley:
Bonus.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Bonus, and she was happy. So that builds that little bit of rapport because you're also not going for big belly laughs either. That's not kind of the place to start. A little chuckle is all you need for people to enjoy your presence and kind of build rapport. But what people do like and people appreciate, I think especially just an Irish thing and maybe in Australian is self-deprecating humour, and it can be used as a great tool if perhaps something small goes wrong on your behalf. I had a colleague who had a slight stutter and she was nervous when she was presenting and I said to her, "Look, if you do stutter when you're presenting, just say yes, I also give lessons in stuttering." So that's going to de-arm the situation and people go, "She's okay with the stuttering" and they'll all laugh.

Garreth Hanley:
It sounds like there's a bit of an honesty approach as well with observational humour.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Definitely. Definitely. There's something in comedy as well that if something happens in the room, for example, if a server walked into the room and dropped the glass, you have to label what's happened. You can't just not say anything because then that's more awkward. So if you make fun of the thing that's happened or let's say your PowerPoint stopped working or whatever, it's much easier to make a little quip and mention that it's happened and go, "We all know what's happened, let's just name it," then everyone can move along. The self-deprecating humour as well, it works well. Something I particularly like and it works well in the corporate setting is a nonsensical answer to get a bit of a laugh. Like if somebody asked you, "Oh Alan, how did you get promoted?" I'd answer, "Oh, it's because of my rugged good looks."

Garreth Hanley:
Ha. Of course. Of course.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Of course. That is the correct answer. Of course, it gives them the opportunity to kind of banter back. But in that punching down, you obviously can't say it if you're a good-looking model, because it just doesn't work then. It has to be like that nonsensical thing. Often as well, I throw out, you could say the same thing, "Alan, why did you get promoted?" "It's because I'm Irish." But that only works in Australia. That doesn't work if I say it in Ireland because you have to be somewhere a bit of the minority. And people like Irish jokes. My wife says I've got it like a cheat card for being Irish because people just want to hear your accent and hear you say things and there's a lot of humour associated with the Irish as well." So I don't know if people are expecting me to give them a good time and have a laugh, but they're not expecting me to be dull, I suppose. But that nonsensical answer, it's always a nice surprise for people, so it gets a laugh. And you really only have to remember a few words. You might have some go-to nonsensical things that you'd throw in with different people around the place and I think it's a nice easy way to get a laugh and kind of build that rapport.

Garreth Hanley:
So would you say that a good office humour would be something that was out of the box unusual but also a little bit vulnerable?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Oh, vulnerability is fantastic in terms of a corporate setting. I think people really like that. And if you're making fun about your own slight vulnerabilities, I think people really see it as authentic and that they kind of know you and that you're putting yourself out there. I think people really appreciate and value that, yeah.

Garreth Hanley:
On the pragmatic side of things, what tips do you have for people who aren't sure what to do but want to communicate better and add some laughter to their days?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Yep. I'll give you a communication tool. So how do you communicate to add value and to influence the business? So this one isn't humorous, this is a tool though you can use. There's an exec mental model. It's ‘what, so what, now what’. So what is, ‘what has happened?’ So what, ‘why does it matter, so the what's in it for me?’ Why should your audience and your stakeholder care? And then now what, ‘what are we going to do about it?’ And that's where you speak from their point of view about how you're going to add value to them and help them achieve their goals. I like to tell the example of imagine if you went to the doctor and he says, "Right. This is what's happened. You're very sick." So that's the what. And then so what, he says, "Well if we don't do anything about it, you might die," and then he just cuts off the appointment.

You really need that now what. And that's a big difference between adding up and adding value, that adding up often doesn't have that now what, what are we going to do about it. That kind of example of the doctor actually comes from my mother. She went to the doctor in Ireland, she said, "Doctor, I'm tired." And he says, "Ah, sure, we're all tired." She didn't go there. She's like, "I don't want the smart-aleck answer, I want the solution. "That's what your stakeholders really want as a solution. So don't be like the Irish doctor in my hometown. So that, ‘what, so what, now what’, you can use that for a 60-minute update, or you can use it for a longer presentation to structure things. All right, so a tip on laughter. As I mentioned, you don't need to aim for belly laughs. A chuckle is a good place to start. And if someone asks, "How are you?" You can be overly enthusiastic. I think it works well in virtual meetings as well. Someone says, "Alan, how are you?" "I'm amazing." It's going to catch them off guard that you're over enthusiastic.

It often rolls into a few other ones like, "Fantastic, I've never been better." And it gets a chuckle because people aren't expecting you to be that enthusiastic. And if they ask you why, you can say, "Well, it's the power of positivity. If I keep saying it long enough, I will be that enthusiastic." So that's something simple that anyone can do. It also works well actually if you're working on a tough project or everybody knows that year-end is being a drag and someone says, "Oh, how's year-end going?" "Oh, it's amazing." It's obviously sarcastic, but you're all buying in that it's hard and you're accepting it and it's fine, but you are there going, "Well, at least I'm trying to brighten the mood."

Garreth Hanley:
I think that one works a lot better in person than via a Teams chat or something though. It's hard to read sarcasm over a chat.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Yeah, not in chat. No, no. I mean, yeah, it needs to be a video call, yeah. No chat. I will say chat is difficult to do these things. And because it really does need your facial expression and your tone, chat is hard. I think whenever you make some sort of joke and chat, you always need to add a smiley face just so people know. Yeah, definitely. And with online as well, actually a good place that you can get a laugh from is having a talking point in the background. In my background, we actually have a cut out, a cardboard cut out of my dog wearing a diggy bow. And that is because he couldn't come to our wedding in Ireland, so my wife got the cardboard cutout. But it looks real and people go, "Oh, is that your dog in the background?" I'm like, "Yeah, do you want me to call him?" Or silly things, right? So you could actually, let's say you go, "Alan, I'm not a person" and I go, "Okay, okay, you're not funny," you could get a piece of art that is amusing and put it behind you and face to face you could have a cup that's amusing, a small cartoon, you can leverage something else to break the ice and be funny. The other one is to practice your jokes with different people. So if you have a few stock lines. And you can take stock lines from other people.

Professional speakers even do this a lot and comedians, they kind of have what's called shared lines that a lot of people would use. So if I'm running a workshop and I'm saying, "Okay folks, it is time to talk to the person beside you." If you're not sure who to talk to, look either side of you and pick the best looking one. So people generally like that as it breaks the ice a lot. So you can always pick up lines here and there that you hear around and kind of store them up a bit and practice when they're going to work. So you don't have to be completely original.

Garreth Hanley:
And Alan, for any accountants out there who might want to get into stand up, do you have any tips?

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Yeah, so if you are really confident and you want to go straight in at the deep end, and I didn't go straight at the deep end, my big recommendation to get confidence is to run your jokes by other people. Because what I did learn in doing standup is that we don't really fear public speaking. We fear judgement . And believe me, you feel judgement when you tell a new joke and a room of people don't laugh. It's like, I have no fear of public speaking, it's just fear of not being funny. So it's the same with a presentation. Make sure you run your ideas by someone so you have that confidence before you go on stage with your material. The second, I have a book recommendation for you. There's a new book out and it's by Finding Your Comic Genius: An in-depth Guide to the Art of Standup Comedy. I've got a lot of books on standup comedy, but this book is absolutely fantastic. It only came out earlier in the year. It's got a lot of visual models and it explains a lot of the rules of comedy and how things work. One of the big ones that they talk about yearly, kind of ones to talk about, is if you've got a punchline, make sure that the punch word is at the very end of the sentence, because otherwise you kind of walk over your funny word. And then the last tip to get started is how I got started in comedy. And that was is that I actually joined Toastmasters, which is a public speaking group. It's worldwide.

I think Melbourne has about 70 clubs, so there's ones everywhere. And especially if you aren't that confident with public speaking, they have essentially a course that you do. And the best thing about Toastmasters is you start off giving five or six minute speeches. You get three minutes of feedback every time you speak. The feedback is great for building your confidence and obviously then knowing where to improve because you don't get that detailed feedback and work if you give them presentation. But how it led me into comedy was in my second speech, I got a few laughs and then the people running the group said, "Oh, you should enter the humorous speech competition. So you can actually be the champion of Australia. You go through the different layers or levels, should I say". So I started doing that and I really got addicted to getting the laugh, and that's when eventually then Toastmasters being very corporatey and that's also a good place to try corporate humour, but also obviously being very corporatey I decided, "No, I'd like to do stand up proper." And I went to an Open Mic night and I signed myself up for a gig. I think I took about maybe six weeks to write some material and just got up and did it. But the Toastmaster's confidence to not be worried about public speaking really helped when I could just focus on the comedy part. Because if I personally just went to Open Mic not having done any public speaking, I would've been terrified. I was a really bad public speaker before I started Toastmasters. The one presentation I gave in university was just horrendous. And now I get paid to do keynotes and workshops. So it's come a long way joining Toastmasters.

Garreth Hanley:
So it's a skill to learn.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Massive skill. I would tell people the number one thing that helped my accounting career was comedy, even if I'd stayed 100% in corporate. Comedy is... The opportunities you get from being able to present, I got huge opportunities and then, being able to present to a full finance team of 200 people when it was well above my pay grade. But because they knew I was a good presenter and that I'd put the work in, they gave me the opportunities.

Garreth Hanley:
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insights and a few laughs with us today, Alan. It was really great talking to you.

Alan Cameron-Sweeney:
Appreciate you having me on, Garreth.

Garreth Hanley:
And thank you for listening to INTHEBLACK. Don't forget to check the show notes for resources on the CPA Australia website and links to Alan's website, LinkedIn, and the book we've mentioned in today's show. And until next time, happy accounting. May your debits and credits always balance and don't forget your calculator. If you've enjoyed this episode, help others discover INTHEBLACK by leaving us a review and sharing this episode with colleagues, clients, or anyone else interested in leadership, strategy and business. To find out more about our other podcasts, check out the show notes for this episode. And we hope you can join us again next time for another episode of INTHEBLACK.