Humor styles and leadership styles: community college presidents

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between leadership styles (transformational, transactional, laissez-faire) and humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, self-defeating) of community college presidents. Research has shown that humor and leadership styles are related and that humor may enhance interpersonal relationships between leaders and followers. Participants of this study included 166 community college presidents from 600 randomly sampled institutions belonging to the American Association of Community Colleges. The presidents completed an online survey including a relatively new humor questionnaire, the Humor Style Questionnaire, as well as a leadership questionnaire, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. This study proposed that affiliative and self-enhancing humor would be positively related to transformational and transactional leadership styles; while aggressive and self-defeating humor would be negatively related to transformational and transactional leadership styles. Additionally, it was hypothesized that the four humor styles would be negatively related to the laissez-faire leadership style.