SIDEBAR
Assembly Instructions
Sorry, Charlie – Play amounts to
hard work, so take these tips from humor trainer June Cline, the
president of The Court Jesters Club in Atlanta to lay a better
playground:
1. Release your childish creativity.
Look at your medical practice through a
child’s eyes. How great is it? What can’t it do?
How could you make this fun—or correct its boring
qualities? Now translate this new vision into an amusing
internal slogan and perhaps a contest among your staff to boost
morale.
2. Take a risk.
At times we all make stupid
mistakes—why not wring their humorous side effects? Cline
once plopped down to eat dinner with a man she mistook for a
new client prospect she’d met at a conference earlier in
the day. When she did walk into the real target’s office
several months later, she wagged her finger in her best Shirley
Temple imitation and said, “You landed me in so much
trouble. Do you remember that lunch we shared?”
Naturally, he didn’t. “That’s because it
wasn’t you,” she scolded. The man became so
tickled, they connected in that moment—a relationship
that translated into business for Cline.
3. Go A-P-E.
To loosen inhibitions ask everyone in your
office to imitate an ape: Say ooh, ooh; scratch your
armpits; eat grass. “I can get a roomful of people acting
as if they’ve lost their minds simply because I
asked,” Cline says. Awareness of that power (A) helps you
appreciate the little things. P stands for permission to not be
perfect, to exaggerate the small mistakes until they become
funny. E equals fun.
4. Acknowledge your fear.
Of course, one person typically refuses to
participate in the ape exercise because it equals foolishness
and humiliation. “People tell me they were slapped as
children at the dinner table for laughing. Too often humor is
considered a frivolous waste of time,” Cline says.
Exploring these histories, notions, barriers, and hang-ups
privately decreases their power. g