Why CEOs Who Laugh at Themselves Are Winning the Room

By Grace Kim

A split lip turned into a leadership lesson. Fortune's Diane Brady was interviewing Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi onstage this week at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit when blood filled her mouth minutes into the conversation — an old lip injury had reopened. Advaithi paused several times to ask if Brady was okay, while colleague Ellie Austin and audience members handed over tissues and Fidelity-branded lip balm. Brady cracked jokes, calling it a "Halloween special." If you can't hide it, ride it.

The moment, embarrassing as it was, opened a door. Advaithi used it to talk about vulnerability and her decision to speak publicly about battling breast cancer as a CEO. The mood in the room, Brady writes, was warm and supportive, with more levity than either participant expected when they sat down.

What does humor do for leaders?

Brady's argument: a sense of humor is one of the most underappreciated traits in leadership today. Richard Branson has long had it, she notes. So has Warren Buffett. Apple Executive Chairman Tim Cook replaced his own last name with an Apple logo after President Trump called him "Tim Apple" at a White House meeting — and once mocked himself for posting a blurry iPhone photo a decade ago.

Then there's Mark Zuckerberg, who winced on John Collison's Cheeky Pint podcast while awkwardly sipping a pint of Guinness. The clip went viral. "That's just my face," Zuckerberg replied on X.

At the same summit, ADP CEO Maria Black and Brady laughed onstage about what their Gen Z kids said at 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 the men now spouting doomsday rhetoric in Silicon Valley. Anyone who says they know how AI will play out, Mayer said, is "either lying or arrogant or both."

Where did the lesson come from?

Brady traces it back to the University of Nairobi, where as a student she wrote speeches for Mostafa Tolba, then-executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. His only instruction for her first speech — about desertification, at a conference for the homeless — was to "make it funny." She worked through the night crafting climate jokes. Tolba laughed, because they were so bad and she'd clearly misconstrued the brief.

"No, Diane. Don't joke about serious subjects," he told her. "Joke about me."

Before people can connect to solve tough problems, Tolba explained, they have to connect as human beings. That advice, Brady writes, has stuck with her ever since — and it's the quiet premise behind every CEO laugh line that lands.