Humor Strategies in Health Care Management Education

A Case Study

by Roz Trieber, MS, CHES

 

Educators and managers have a critical role in creating a learning environment that initiates emotion that attracts attention creating meaning and subsequently memory in order that immediate application of the learning in a real situation is possible.  Research demonstrates there is a significant correlation between humor and leadership effectiveness (Priest and Swain, 2002).  Organizational culture supports the use of humor by leaders in appropriate ways.  In addition, humor employed by managers and leaders achieve three specific ends: 1) stress reduction in the workplace, 2) helping employees understand management concerns by enhancing communication patterns, and 3) motivating followers (Davis and Kleiner, 1989).  A majority of good leaders are shown to have quick wit, see the point of jokes, maintain group morale through extraverted humor vs. mean spirited humor, have infectious laughs, and tell humorous satires in dialect (Priest and Swain, 2002).

The greatest challenge in the college classroom is to prevent death by lecture with material that is thought to be boring, difficult, and stress producing.  According to Mehrabian’s Communication Model what determines a speaker’s impact on an audience is based on the following: (a) what you say accounts for 7%; (b) how you say it accounts for 38%; and (c) how you look accounts for 55% of impact.  The rate of retention of material presented, adapted from various instruction modes, reports the following: (a) lecture and reading - 15%; (b) audio visual – 20%; (c) demonstration – 30%; (d) discussion group- 50%; (e) practice by doing- 75%; and (f) teaching others- 90% (NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science).

Humor and collaborative strategies have a significant role in teaching. The goal of collaborative learning is to develop autonomous, articulate thinking people (Sawyer, 2004).

The use of humor in the classroom has the ability to grab student’s attention, increase interest in the topic, make topic learning fun, and facilitate understanding of the topic (Berk, 2003).

How can educators use effective humor strategies to help students learn to develop the capacity to relate effectively to others, cooperating to achieve agreed outcomes, as well as, developing an understanding of themselves and of the groups (teams) to which they belong?  People learn in direct proportion to how much fun they are having (Pike, B. 1989). A case study of an occupational health management team is presented demonstrating the use of exaggeration in a dramatization combined with exaggerated non-verbal behavior, spontaneous responses and class participation.

Case: To Discharge or Not to Discharge: Adapted from Koppet (2001).

Overview: Everyone other than the interpreter speak in a nonsense language, as if they are from a foreign country or cannot speak the same language.  Gibberish can be anything such as blah, blah, unah, hoah, etc.  Everyone practices a minute of gibberish to get the idea.

The topic is identified. In this case the patient did not want to be discharged from the hospital. The daughter was not sure about the options her mother had in terms of recovery. The surgeon and occupational health therapist felt the patient was ready to go home having the occupational therapist make home visits.

The task: to provide explanations to both the patient and her daughter why the patient would have a successful recovery having the occupational therapist make home visits.

Players:

      5 Volunteers and the remaining students in the class:

• A 65 year old hospitalized female recovering from hip replacement surgery who does not speak English
• A 30 year old female daughter of the patient who had a hip replacement and does not speak English
• An occupational health therapist assigned to the case who does not speak the same language as the patient or her daughter
• The surgeon who only speaks English
• An interpreter who speaks the foreign language of the patient and her daughter and English
• Remaining students in the class

Procedure:

• The patient in very animated body language and with multiple inflections using gibberish explains her concerns
• The interpreter explains the patient’s concerns in English to everyone
• The daughter responds with her concerns with animated body language and gibberish
• The interpreter explains the daughter’s concerns in English to everyone
• The occupational therapist explains how she can be helpful to both the patient and the daughter in gibberish
• The surgeon explains to everyone his prognosis and how accessible he would be if necessary. This would be conveyed in gibberish.
• The only person who speaks English is the interpreter.
• The class also has the opportunity to ask questions that can be interpreted into gibberish by the interpreter
• This process can go from 5-10 minutes

Tips:

• Whatever is said in gibberish or English is correct
• The idea is to accept the information (that which is being said), acknowledge it, add more information, and come to new discoveries
• The interpretations should be based on the content information taught in class
• Questions that facilitate the learning: These questions are asked of the volunteers and the class:

• What communication cues do we have other than words?
• Did the translation match the interpretations you made in your heads?
• What did you learn about the group in general?
• How did people contribute to the success?
• How did you feel about what you communicated to the group?
• How or what helped you learn?
• What did you learn?

• These questions are asked specifically of the volunteers who played the specific roles:
• How did it feel to communicate without words?
• How do you feel about what you created as a group?

Outcomes:

• Everyone is involved
• Team building occurs because everyone is helping each other be successful
• Everyone is actively listening to one another
• There is a conscious review of the material needed taught by the instructor
• Participants learn to think spontaneously and recover from mistakes
• Everyone has fun and rarely forgets the substantive learning points

References

Berk, R.A. (2003). Professors are from Mars® and Students are from Snickers®. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Davis, A. & Kleiner, B. H. (1989).The Value of Humor in Effective Leadership. Leadership andOrganizational Development Journal, 10(1), 1-3.

Koppet, K. (2001). Training to Imagine. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, 300 N. Lee Street, Suite 300, Alexandria, VA

Priest, R. & Swain, J. E. (2002), Humor and Leadership Effectiveness. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research. 15(2), 169-189.

Pike, B. (1989). Creative Training Techniques: Tips, Tactics, and How-to’s for Delivering Effective Training. Minneapolis: Lakewood.

Sawyer, R.K. (2004). Creative teaching: collaborative discussion as disciplined improvisation. Educational Researcher, 33(2), 12-20.

 

Roz Trieber works with organizations to reduce stress and increase productivity using humor and improvisation. For more information on Roz ’s speaking programs, books, cd's and learning programs contact HUMORFUSION at 410.998.9585 or Roz@humorfusion.com. (www.humorfusion.com)

© 2004 Copyright by Roz Trieber and Trieber Associates, Inc.

To return to list of articles

To return to home page