Why Humour at Work is More Than Just a Laugh with Caroline Clark
Why Laughter is a Leadership Superpower
Caroline Clark is a leadership coach, performance psychologist, and analogue space astronaut with two decades of experience in construction and technology. She now specialises in coaching women in STEM to thrive as leaders in high-pressure, uncertain environments. Drawing on her recent analogue space mission in Poland, Caroline highlights why humour is vital for resilience, connection, and joy at work. Join her substack Liftoff with Caroline. Follow her on LinkedIn.
Workplaces can often feel heavy—deadlines, pressure, and expectations all piling up. But what if humour wasn’t a distraction from serious work, but a survival tool for thriving in high-pressure environments?
That’s the insight Caroline Clark, a leadership coach, performance psychologist, and analogue space astronaut, brings to the table. After spending five days inside a simulated space mission in Poland, Caroline discovered that laughter wasn’t just a pleasant extra—it was essential for connection, resilience, and leadership.
Humour as a Survival Skill
In isolation with no windows, no phones, and no escape, humour quickly became the glue that held the group together. Caroline explains that laughter communicates safety to our brains, easing tension and reducing stress. In confined, high-pressure situations, it transformed awkward or difficult moments into opportunities for connection.
It’s a reminder that in our everyday workplaces, humour can play the same role—turning heavy atmospheres into lighter, more resilient ones.
The Science Behind Laughter at Work
Laughter isn’t only about feeling good. Research shows it lowers cortisol (our stress hormone), boosts dopamine (the feel-good chemical), and increases oxytocin (the bonding hormone). Together, these shifts help teams connect, trust one another, and stay resilient.
Freud even described jokes as a way of releasing tension about the things we usually suppress. In the workplace, humour helps bring unspoken truths into the open in a safe way, paving the path for honesty and better communication.
Building Trust and Resilience Through Humour
Humour creates psychological safety when leaders model it well. When a leader can laugh at themselves or a situation, it signals vulnerability and openness. That, in turn, encourages others to share more authentically, strengthening trust within the team.
It’s also a powerful resilience tool. Being able to laugh at mistakes or setbacks allows individuals and groups to recover faster and find solutions more creatively.
Appropriate vs. Risky Humour
Of course, not all humour is equal. Caroline emphasises the importance of using humour appropriately. Anecdotes, funny stories, or observations from everyday life can be powerful. But humour at another person’s expense—or even self-deprecating humour—can sometimes backfire.
The key is to focus on lightness, shared experiences, and timing. A quick laugh in the right moment can lift the whole team, but forced jokes in vulnerable situations can cause harm.
Adults Don’t Laugh Enough
One striking fact Caroline shares is that children laugh around 300 times a day, but adults only laugh about four times. That drop-off suggests we’re missing something vital. By consciously bringing more playfulness into our work lives—whether in meetings, conversations, or moments of stress—we can reclaim some of that joy and lightness.
Redesigning Work With Joy
Humour isn’t a luxury—it’s essential to high-performing, human-centred workplaces. It lowers stress, builds trust, strengthens teams, and brings back a sense of joy that’s often lost in the grind of adult working life.
For anyone feeling that work has become too serious or too heavy, Caroline’s reminder is simple: laughter is not the opposite of productivity—it’s the foundation of thriving.
Ready to explore where joy shows up in your own life?
Take the Derailed Life Satisfaction Assessment—a 30-minute guided programme to uncover what’s bringing you joy and what’s bringing you down.
👉 https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed
Connect with Caroline Clark:
Website: carolineclark.coach
Substack: Liftoff with Caroline
LinkedIn:Caroline Clark
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Humour at Work: Why Laughter is a Leadership Superpower with Caroline Clark
[00:00:00] From Space Missions to Boardrooms: The Science of Humour at Work
When I heard that our guest today, Caroline Clark, had recently volunteered to spend five days locked inside a simulated space mission in Poland.
I couldn't wait to see what she'd learned. No windows, no phone, absolutely no escape, and it turns out when you are sealed in space. Or something quite like it with six strangers and your own thoughts, humor becomes more than a nice to have. It becomes survival social glue.
Together we explore how laughter isn't a distraction from the serious stuff, but a deeply human way to connect, cope, learn and lead, especially when work feels a little too heavy. Let's dive in.
Caroline, what has prompted your major interest in humor at work?
[00:01:02] Caroline Clark’s analogue space mission in Poland
So it was a recent experience where I was on an analog space mission in Poland, and I know you're gonna ask me what's one of those.
So analog space missions are simulations for living and working in space, whether that's on the International Space Station, on the moon, or on Mars. And it's used by all of the big space agencies, both to train astronauts, but also to research around engineering, science and psychology.
Obviously, my interest is the psychological aspects of living in space and I was in this habitat, which is about the size of my home actually. So quite small for six, seven people, six other people and myself. And we couldn't leave the habitat for five days. We were locked in, we locked ourselves in, in fact, and we didn't have any ability to phone or message people outside.
There were no windows. So it was, we couldn't see if it was day or night. There was no natural sunlight coming through. So it creates a bit of psychological and physiological stress, living in isolation and confinement.
[00:02:24] Why humour is a survival tool in extreme environments
And what I learned is that humor can be a survival tool as well.
Laughter communicates to us that we are safe, we feel relaxed when we are laughing, and it creates that shared emotional state of relaxation as well.
So I was very aware of emotional contagion and being in such an environment without access to any sort of external factors, external environmental cues. Really meant that the experience was really intense. So being really aware of negative emotions, positive emotions, and how that would impact not just me, but the group as a whole.
[00:03:11] The psychology of laughter and emotional contagion
And what I learned is that laughter can unite groups.
And I think I already knew this in as much as when I looked back at my professional career and thought about the teams that I'd worked in. The ones that felt like we were strongest were the ones where we could have a laugh together at work, even under high pressure situations.
So I actually think humor isn't a nice to have. I think it's essential to creating high performing teams, and I think when it's absent, it's a sign that there could be something wrong within that team.
I love that. Let me introduce you though. Let, let me interrupt you. I need to know. Was there a lot of laughter.
There was. Yeah. And being in that situation, you are laughing about things that you would feel really uncomfortable about. So the human body is a wonderful thing. There's lots of smells and noises, and when you're in confinement together, there's no real escaping that. So you have to make a joke of it because we're all experiencing the same thing and that.
That lightness can be really helpful for overcoming some of those awkward
Oh, I love that. I love that. So I could talk to you all day about that, but I wanna keep it to our focus, which is at work. So tell me a little bit about what do. Is the main purpose of humor at work.
[00:04:44] How humour lowers stress and builds team trust
So I think the biggest purpose is around stress regulation, because when we laugh, it lowers cortisol, which is our stress hormone. It increases dopamine, which is the feel good hormone and increases oxytocin, which is our social bonding hormone. So laughing can lead to more connection, which can then lead to more trust within teams and groups.
I think that other purposes of humor are around improving communication because it increases that openness, that honesty amongst groups. I think it can build resilience because if we laugh about when things go wrong.
yeah,
[00:05:27] Humour, resilience, and problem-solving at work
We can actually move beyond the problem quicker and into the solution. You know, it opens up different ways of thinking about things like using our creativity, using problem solving, using critical thinking.
We've mentioned that it strengthens group cohesion and a big factor in that is increasing psychological safety, particularly when leaders model humor, um, because it. It shows the leader has some vulnerability about, about a particular thing that they're laughing about, and that can lead to that progressive disclosure one side, the other side, people being more vulnerable with each other, again, leading into that openness.
I came across some really interesting research, um, by bitterly et al in 2017, which also shows that leaders who use laughter and humor are actually viewed as more confident and more competent.
Yeah. Yeah. So that when I've, when I've worked with or for or alongside people who have been brilliant at what they do, but can laugh at themselves or laugh at the situation or it, it's, it's so. Uh, engaging and it's so, it opens up, I definitely get what you're saying. It opens up communication and it opens up a bit more powerful vulnerability as opposed to, uh, unsafe vulnerability.
Love it. Love it.
[00:06:58] The difference between appropriate and inappropriate humour
So picking up on something you said there, I think it's important to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate forms of humor in the workplace because we don't wanna get that wrong. So appropriate humor would be things like anecdotes or funny stories about things that have happened to you, and you can use those in a really illustrative way.
Inappropriate humor is really risky because it runs the risk of offending someone. So if you are thinking about, um, saying something about somebody else, or even like some self-deprecating humor, sometimes that can backfire. So try and steer clear of humor that might be viewed as a bit more aggressive and keep it more lighthearted and focused on situations and, and funny things that happen to you.
[00:07:50] Practical ways leaders can model humour
So another thing to be aware of is the timing and courage. So if you are a leader within a team, you wanna think about the emotional state of the team when you are thinking of using humor. So if you are right in the thick of it, in the pits, if someone is sharing something that's a bit more emotionally vulnerable, that's not the right time.
You can create the right opportunities for humor. So going for coffee or having like a celebration when you've achieved something. Those moments are where it's absolutely ripe to inject some humor if you're trying to motivate people as well. You know, if you have standups at the beginning of the day, inserting funny stories about what happened to you on your way to work, or the kids at home or pet.
Like that can be, that can be a really neat way of bringing humor into the day-to-day.
[00:08:46] Why adults need more laughter in daily work life
And I think finally modeling playfulness. So coming back to that stat about children laugh 300 times a day, but by the time we reach adulthood, we are laughing four times a day.
oh God, four times a day. It's not enough. It's not enough, is it?
Enough. So it's, it's viewing the world with that wonder, with that curiosity, with that observation to see life is really funny.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my life satisfaction assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you die. I call it derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin at joy at work redesign.
