How to promote relationship-building leadership at work? A comparative exploration of leader humor behavior between North America and China

There is a growing consensus that humor could be one of the most important competencies of a leader. This impression seems to be especially so under the clan controls where relationship-building between a leader and employees become crucial in managing human resources (HR). However, we caution against making this a global assumption by exploring the association between humor and leadership in different cultural contexts, in particular comparing China with North America. We argue that there is weaker association between use of humor and perceived leadership in China than North America. While the main message is not about denying the effectiveness of humor per se, this conceptual paper is wary about the blind adaptation or convergence of leader behaviors (e.g. humor) and HR management oriented toward American practices. At the same time, we highlight the need to consider the informal context of an organization in explaining possible paradoxical attitudes toward humor in China.