This week I’m joined by Caroline Clark, a leadership coach, performance psychologist, and analogue space astronaut. Caroline recently spent five days locked inside a simulated space mission in Poland—with no windows, no phones, and no escape. What she discovered is that humour isn’t just “nice to have” in high-pressure environments—it’s a survival tool.

Together, we explore how laughter connects us, regulates stress, and creates resilience at work. Caroline shares why humour builds trust, strengthens teams, and even makes leaders more effective. We also talk about what makes humour appropriate (and what doesn’t), and how to bring more playfulness into our everyday working lives without losing professionalism.

If work has started to feel heavy, this episode is your reminder that joy, play, and humour aren’t distractions—they’re powerful ways to thrive.

👉 Curious where joy is showing up in your own life? Take my Derailed Life Satisfaction Assessment—a 30-minute guided programme that helps you explore what’s bringing you joy and what’s bringing you down: https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

Connect with Caroline Clark:

• Website: carolineclark.coach

• Substack: Liftoff with Caroline

• LinkedIn: Caroline Clark

When I heard that our guest today, Caroline Clark,

had recently volunteered to spend five days locked inside a

simulated space mission in Poland.

I couldn't wait to see what she'd learned.

No windows, no phone, absolutely no escape, and it turns out

when you are sealed in space.

Or something quite like it with six strangers and your own thoughts, humor

becomes more than a nice to have.

It becomes survival social glue.

Together we explore how laughter isn't a distraction from the serious stuff,

but a deeply human way to connect, cope, learn and lead, especially

when work feels a little too heavy.

Let's dive in.

Caroline, what has prompted your major interest in humor at work?

So it was a recent experience where I was on an analog

space mission in Poland, and I know you're gonna ask me what's one of those.

So analog space missions are simulations for living and working in space,

whether that's on the International Space Station, on the moon, or on Mars.

And it's used by all of the big space agencies, both to train

astronauts, but also to research around engineering, science and psychology.

Obviously, my interest is the psychological aspects of living in

space and I was in this habitat, which is about the size of my home actually.

So quite small for six, seven people, six other people and myself.

And we couldn't leave the habitat for five days.

We were locked in, we locked ourselves in, in fact, and we didn't have any ability

to phone or message people outside.

There were no windows.

So it was, we couldn't see if it was day or night.

There was no natural sunlight coming through.

So it creates a bit of psychological and physiological stress, living

in isolation and confinement.

And what I learned is that humor can be a survival tool as well.

Laughter communicates to us that we are safe, we feel relaxed when we are

laughing, and it creates that shared emotional state of relaxation as well.

So I was very aware of emotional contagion and being in such an environment

without access to any sort of external factors, external environmental cues.

Really meant that the experience was really intense.

So being really aware of negative emotions, positive emotions, and

how that would impact not just me, but the group as a whole.

And what I learned is that laughter can unite groups.

And I think I already knew this in as much as when I looked back at

my professional career and thought about the teams that I'd worked in.

The ones that felt like we were strongest were the ones where we

could have a laugh together at work, even under high pressure situations.

So I actually think humor isn't a nice to have.

I think it's essential to creating high performing teams, and I think when it's

absent, it's a sign that there could be something wrong within that team.

I love that.

Let me introduce you though.

Let, let me interrupt you.

I need to know.

Was there a lot of laughter.

There was.

Yeah.

And being in that situation, you are laughing about things that you would

feel really uncomfortable about.

So the human body is a wonderful thing.

There's lots of smells and noises, and when you're in confinement together,

there's no real escaping that.

So you have to make a joke of it because we're all experiencing

the same thing and that.

That lightness can be really helpful for overcoming some of those awkward

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

So I could talk to you all day about that, but I wanna keep it

to our focus, which is at work.

So tell me a little bit about what do.

Is the main purpose of humor at work.

So I think the biggest purpose is around stress regulation,

because when we laugh, it lowers cortisol, which is our stress hormone.

It increases dopamine, which is the feel good hormone and increases oxytocin,

which is our social bonding hormone.

So laughing can lead to more connection, which can then lead to

more trust within teams and groups.

I think that other purposes of humor are around improving communication

because it increases that openness, that honesty amongst groups.

I think it can build resilience because if we laugh about when things go wrong.

yeah,

We can actually move beyond the problem

quicker and into the solution.

You know, it opens up different ways of thinking about things like

using our creativity, using problem solving, using critical thinking.

We've mentioned that it strengthens group cohesion and a big factor in

that is increasing psychological safety, particularly when leaders

model humor, um, because it.

It shows the leader has some vulnerability about, about a particular thing that

they're laughing about, and that can lead to that progressive disclosure

one side, the other side, people being more vulnerable with each other,

again, leading into that openness.

I came across some really interesting research, um, by bitterly et al in 2017,

which also shows that leaders who use laughter and humor are actually viewed

as more confident and more competent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that when I've, when I've worked with or for or alongside people who

have been brilliant at what they do, but can laugh at themselves or laugh

at the situation or it, it's, it's so.

Uh, engaging and it's so, it opens up, I definitely get what you're saying.

It opens up communication and it opens up a bit more powerful vulnerability as

opposed to, uh, unsafe vulnerability.

Love it.

Love it.

So picking up on something you said there, I think

it's important to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate forms

of humor in the workplace because we don't wanna get that wrong.

So appropriate humor would be things like anecdotes or funny stories about things

that have happened to you, and you can use those in a really illustrative way.

Inappropriate humor is really risky because it runs the

risk of offending someone.

So if you are thinking about, um, saying something about somebody else,

or even like some self-deprecating humor, sometimes that can backfire.

So try and steer clear of humor that might be viewed as a bit more

aggressive and keep it more lighthearted and focused on situations and, and

funny things that happen to you.

So another thing to be aware of is the timing and courage.

So if you are a leader within a team, you wanna think about the

emotional state of the team when you are thinking of using humor.

So if you are right in the thick of it, in the pits, if someone is sharing

something that's a bit more emotionally vulnerable, that's not the right time.

You can create the right opportunities for humor.

So going for coffee or having like a celebration when

you've achieved something.

Those moments are where it's absolutely ripe to inject some humor if you're

trying to motivate people as well.

You know, if you have standups at the beginning of the day, inserting funny

stories about what happened to you on your way to work, or the kids at home or pet.

Like that can be, that can be a really neat way of bringing

humor into the day-to-day.

And I think finally modeling playfulness.

So coming back to that stat about children laugh 300 times a day,

but by the time we reach adulthood, we are laughing four times a day.

oh God, four times a day.

It's not enough.

It's not enough, is it?

Enough.

So it's, it's viewing the world with that wonder, with that curiosity, with that

observation to see life is really funny.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my

life satisfaction assessment.

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you die.

I call it derailed.

It's a fabulous place to begin at joy at work.

Redesign.