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The Need for Humor in Project Management
COMMENTARY
By Harold Kerzner, Ph.D. and Al Zeitoun, Ph.D.
California and Maryland, USA
BACKGROUND ________________________________________________________
For several decades, the focus in project management was on the tools and techniques necessary to deliver a successful project outcome. Project managers possessed very little authority, if any, over the assigned team members. During project management training programs, not very much time was allocated to interpersonal skills practices and leadership styles.
As projects increased in size, complexity and risk, the importance of leadership, interpersonal skills training, and team building became increasingly more important. Techniques such as agile, Scrum, and other flexible and hybrid methodologies increased worker stress levels mandating that project managers may have to adopt a different leadership style for each project.
Leadership styles now focus heavily on engaging team members effectively for the duration of the project, including motivation, problem-solving, decision-making, and stress reduction. What is also now appearing in the literature are the benefits of including some humor into project management leadership styles. Occasional light-hearted humor and jokes that create shared laughter have been found to have many benefits in project management success.
THE ROLE OF HUMOR __________________________________________________
Humor had been used traditionally only as an icebreaker when opening a project meeting. It would be used at the beginning of team meetings or brainstorming sessions to reduce pressure, anxiety and stress. The benefits and effective use of humor were either underestimated or misunderstood. When humor is used in the right way, it can diffuse tension and bring people together throughout the life of the project.
Humor has been researched and used by educators because of its relationship to cognitive biases. In addition to giving someone a good laugh, it also has a positive effect on memory retention where people seem to remember longer and better the information being discussed at the time when humor was presented. Psychologists refer to this as the “Humor Effect” and its relationship to different types of memory.
As project management leadership practices grew in importance, companies realized the need for project and corporate cultures that were aligned and committed to creating a better working environment for employees. The importance of the use of humor in project management is now readily appearing in literature. As stated by Valerio Pianella:[1]
Benefits of humor in project management include:
Humor has now become a strategic component of cultural sensitivity. It can diffuse a tense or toxic situation, boost team member engagement, leave people with a happier mindset and a feeling of ownership of their work effort. As an example, expressing your appreciation to workers for the effort they put into an activity that may have failed or did not produce the correct results is a good idea. Adding humor to words of appreciation will keep people motivated and reduce tension.
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How to cite this article: Kerzner, H., Zeitoun, A. (2025). The Need for Humor in Project Management, PM World Journal, Vol. XIV, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/pmwj156-Sep2025-Kerzner-Zeitoun-the-Need-for-Humor-in-PM.pdf
About the Authors
Harold Kerzner, Ph.D., MS, M.B.A
Senior Executive Director for Project Management
International Institute of Learning
New York & California, USA
Dr. Harold Kerzner is Senior Executive Director for Project Management for the International Institute for Learning (IIL). He has an MS and Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Utah State University. He is a prior Air Force Officer and spent several years at Morton-Thiokol in project management. He taught engineering at the University of Illinois and business administration at Utah State University, and for 38 years taught project management at Baldwin-Wallace University. He has published or presented numerous engineering and business papers and has had published more than 60 college textbooks/workbooks on project management, including later editions. Some of his books are (1) Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling; (2) Project Management Metrics, KPIs and Dashboards, (3) Project Management Case Studies, (4) Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence, (5) PM 2.0: The Future of Project Management, (6) Using the Project Management Maturity Model, and (7) Innovation Project Management.
He is a charter member of the Northeast Ohio PMI Chapter.
Dr. Kerzner has traveled around the world conducting project management lectures for PMI Chapters and companies in Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, Singapore, Korea, South Africa, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Croatia, Mexico, Trinidad, Barbados, The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Venezuela, Columbia, United Arab Emirates, France, Italy, England, and Switzerland. He delivered a keynote speech at a PMI Global Congress on the future of project management.
His recognitions include:
Dr. Harold Kerzner can be contacted at hkerzner@hotmail.com
Dr. Al Zeitoun, PgMP, PMI Fellow
Strategy Advisor & Global Future of Work Executive
Maryland USA
Dr. Al Zeitoun is a Future of Work, business optimization, and operational performance excellence thought leader with global experiences in strategy execution. His experiences encompass leading organizations; delivering their Enterprise Digital and Business Transformation; guiding fitting frameworks implementations; and using his empathy, engineering insights, and collaboration strengths to successfully envision new business models and execute complex missions across diverse cultures globally.
In his recent role with Siemens, he was a Senior Director of Strategy responsible for driving the global program management practices, Master Plan governance, and enabling the Strategy Transformation processes and priorities.
In his position, as the Executive Director for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Abu Dhabi, UAE, he was responsible for creating the strategy execution framework, achieving transformation benefits, governance excellence, and creating the data analytics discipline necessary for delivering on the $40B complex country energy mission roadmap.
At the McLean, USA HQ of Booz Allen Hamilton, Dr. Zeitoun strategically envisioned and customized digitally enabled EPMO advisory, mapped playbooks, and capability development for clients’ Billions of Dollars strategic initiatives. Furthermore, he led the firm’s Middle East North Africa Portfolio Management and Agile Governance Solutions.
With the International Institute of Learning, Dr. Zeitoun played a senior leader and global trainer and coach. He was instrumental in driving its global expansions, thought leadership, and operational excellence methodology to sense and shape dynamic ways of working across organizations worldwide. He speaks English, Arabic, and German and enjoys good food, travel, and volunteering. Dr. Al Zeitoun can be contacted at zeitounstrategy@gmail.com
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/humor-project-management-valerio-pianella-zxfhe
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