Not every smart person is funny or witty. Some brilliant people are deadly serious and have subtle dry humor, if they have any at all. But truly funny and witty people share a common quality.
It takes real brainpower to be exceptionally funny. Funny people are smart.Humor and wit are strong indicators of cognitive and emotional intelligence. It takes abstract reasoning, creativity, and social awareness to be exceptionally funny.
As a shortcut to assessing whether someone has the brainpower to tackle a job or position, it is a treasure.But the hard part is how to assess whether someone is truly funny or witty when you don’t know them very well.
It normally takes a great deal of experience in a variety of settings to learn if someone is seriously funny or witty. In interview situations, asking people if they are funny is equivalent to asking them if they are social or friendly.
This question typically elicits a smile and an agreement that may or may not be true. Even serious people like to think of themselves as funny. Another path is to ask those who know them well whether they possess wit or humor.
The problem with that is the standard applied. Some people have a very low bar when assessing who is funny or not.If you want to use humor as a shortcut to intelligence, the better tack is to give people the opportunity to be funny and see how they do.
This does not mean asking them to tell a joke or describe their wit in some witty way. Instead, unusual questions that encourage humor do the trick. Here are a few:
- If you could have any animal as a coworker, which would you choose, and what would they do?
- You wake up and discover you are invisible, but only to co-workers. What do you do with this superpower?
- If animals could talk, which species would be the funniest and why?
- If you had to create a ridiculous new holiday, what would it be, and how would people celebrate it?
- What is the most unnecessary feature you could add to a smartphone?
- If you had to wear a warning label, what would yours say?
If you are even slightly funny, one or more of those questions brought a smile to your face. We’re sure you can think of many others.
