- In today’s CEO Daily: An onstage incident turns into a leadership lesson.
- The big leadership story: Supermicro finally gets a new CFO.
- The markets: Stocks recover from a shaky week.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. A few minutes into talking with Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi on stage this week at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, I felt blood in my mouth. I knew what was coming as an injury to my lip had bled a few days earlier, unleashing a flood that reminded me of an old Saturday Night Live episode in which Julia Child (played by Dan Aykroyd) cuts herself while preparing a chicken. I tried to act nonchalant as a fistful of tissues turned red, and Advaithi paused a few times to ask if I was okay. My colleague Ellie Austin and members of the audience sprang into action, handing me fresh tissues and lip balm. Advaithi’s eyes conveyed concern as she answered my questions about data centers and geopolitics. I cracked a few jokes, called it our Halloween special, and gave Fidelity a shout-out for having the foresight to give away branded lip balm to participants. If you can’t hide it, ride it!
The incident was unfortunate, and a bit embarrassing, but it also gave Advaithi and me an opportunity to talk about being vulnerable and her decision to speak publicly about battling breast cancer as a CEO. The mood in the room was warm and supportive, and our interview had more moments of levity than I’d anticipated when we first sat down.
I thought about that when watching Mark Zuckerberg wince on John Collison’s Cheeky Pint podcast while awkwardly sipping a pint of Guinness. It’s genuinely funny, and I’ve had a similar reaction when trying the beer in Ireland. (“That’s just my face,” Zuckerberg replied on X after the clip went viral.)
I think one of the underappreciated traits of leadership these days is a sense of humor. Richard Branson has long had it, as has Warren Buffett. Apple Executive Chairman Tim Cook often pokes fun at himself, replacing his last name with an Apple logo after President Trump called him “Tim Apple” during a White House meeting and mocking himself for posting a blurry iPhone photo a decade ago.
Humor is a useful tool in any public role. ADP CEO Maria Black and I laughed onstage during the summit about what our Gen Z kids said during the recent Fortune CEO Initiative “generations” dinner. Lumen’s Kate Johnson and EY’s Janet Truncale joked about their first meeting at the Business Roundtable. And Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo CEO who just launched Dazzle AI, has a wry take on some of the men now spouting doomsday rhetoric in Silicon Valley. (Check out Amanda Gerut’s Fortune coverage of my conversations with Black and Mayer.)
As a student at the University of Nairobi, I had an opportunity to write speeches for Mostafa Tolba, the then-executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). His only instruction when writing my first speech about desertification at a conference for the homeless was to “make it funny.” I worked through the night, trying to come up with jokes about climate change and the homeless. Really. Dr. Tolba laughed because they were so bad and I’d clearly misconstrued his instructions. “No, Diane. Don’t joke about serious subjects,” he told me. “Joke about me.” Before we can connect to solve tough problems, he explained, we have to connect as human beings. Good advice that’s stuck with me ever since.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com