What if I told you that laughing at yourself might be the most underrated leadership skill nobody teaches in business school or the campus career centre?

Let me paint you a picture. You’re in a team meeting. Someone makes a gentle joke at your expense — maybe about how your “big picture thinking” still needs details, or your very strong opinions about the correct way to load a dishwasher. And you have a choice: you can become a stone wall of professional dignity, or you can laugh.

Laugh. Every single time.

This week I’m heading out on a cycling trip with six of my best friends. There will be a lot of laughing – at ourselves and with each other – and this behaviour strengthens our group’s connections by enabling humility and social equanimity. Laughing will also help our physical health, too.

Here’s the thing: not taking yourself too seriously isn’t just good for your blood pressure. It is, according to a growing body of research and a lot of lived experience, one of the most genuinely useful things a leader, colleague, or human being can do.

Here are three reasons why you should laugh at yourself.

Humility Has a Sense of Humour

When you’re willing to laugh at yourself, you’re signalling something important: you know you’re not perfect, and you’re okay with that. And the moment you accept imperfection in yourself, you get genuinely curious about better ideas — because you’re no longer defending the ones you already have.

Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas — two Stanford professors who teach a course called Humor: Serious Business at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business — make the case in their book Humor, Seriously that laughter is among the most powerful tools available for reducing stress, building resilience, and strengthening relationships. Their research-backed argument is that humor doesn’t undermine credibility — it builds it, while also helping people manage the very real pressures of work and life.

Leaders who take themselves too seriously tend to project an aura of “I’ve already figured this out.” The problem is, nobody around them believes it — they just stop sharing the evidence to the contrary. The leader who laughs at their own missteps creates a completely different signal: this is a place where not having all the answers is normal.

That kind of openness is the soil that curiosity grows in. You can’t be curious and defensive at the same time. Pick one.

Build Psychological Safety

There is something quietly revolutionary about a team that can make fun of the boss — in public, to their face — and have everyone laugh together. It sounds small. It is not small.

As I’ve written on this site, one of the most reliable markers of a psychologically safe team is that people feel comfortable disagreeing with and even gently poking fun at those with more power. When subordinates can roast the boss without consequence, it tells every person in the room that this is a place where they won’t be punished for being human.

Laughter, in this context, is inclusion made audible. It says: you belong here, your perspective matters, and I am not so fragile that a good joke about my leadership style is going to ruin my afternoon. That’s psychological safety with a punchline.

Laughter Is Basically a Free Prescription

Here is where the science shows up, and it’s pretty convincing.

The physiology backs this up too. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in PLOS ONE found that spontaneous laughter produced roughly a 32% reduction in cortisol — the body’s primary stress hormone. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a meaningful, measurable shift, achieved by watching something funny or laughing with people you trust.

And a 2019 theoretical review in the Tohoku Journal of Experimental Medicine found that laughter decreases stress-producing hormones in the blood — including cortisol and epinephrine — while also positively influencing dopamine and serotonin, the brain chemicals most associated with mood regulation and wellbeing.

The upshot: laughing at yourself — or at the absurdity of a hard week — isn’t goofing off. It’s genuinely good medicine.

Go Laugh at Something

None of this means you need to be a stand-up comedian or turn every team meeting into open mic night. It means loosening your grip on the idea that serious work requires a serious face at all times. It means letting a well-placed moment of self-deprecation do the work that a lengthy values statement never quite manages.

You are not the sum of your job title and your most recent strategic plan. You are a person who sometimes gets things wrong, sometimes needs a haircut, and occasionally sends an email with a typo in the subject line. The faster you make peace with that, the more useful — and more human — you become.

Now go laugh at something. Preferably yourself.