How Not To Use Humor At Work

Humor is humanity's best tool for coping with stressful, scary, and incredibly boring situations. So of course it's an important part of any corporate board room discussion. Bad news then for the American women who occupy 13 percent of seats at the table: You might think you're funny, but you're not.

According to an analysis of 600,000 words, spoken at board meetings at seven top U.K. companies over 18 months, 90 percent of zingers said by men received a positive response, while 80 percent of jokes made by women received crickets chirping, and a lone tumbleweed rolling past the Starbucks cups.