Did You Hear the One About the Wiseguy Consultant . . .?

If laughter can fend off disease, it should be able to help revive an ailing business.

That’s the premise pushed by Malcolm Kushner, author and “humor consultant.” He claims that people who elicit laughs at work get more done and go further than their sourpuss colleagues.

“I teach people to communicate the fact that they have a sense of humor,” said Kushner, 37, whose “The Light Touch: How to Use Humor for Business Success” (Simon & Schuster) recently hit stores.

He can’t teach the delivery of Jay Leno or the wit of Robin Williams. But Kushner tries to point out where humor fits in the workplace, as well as what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Racial and sexual slurs are always inappropriate, but Kushner says a competitor can be used effectively as the butt of a joke. His example: “How can you tell when a (competitor’s) executive has been using a word processor?”

Answer: “There’s white-out on the screen.”

Humor acts as a magnet that draws people in, and it can help make a point, Kushner asserts. It also softens stress, motivates people, helps resolve conflicts and shields hostile remarks, he says.

“Managing, selling, negotiating, planning, decision-making--all the fundamental tasks associated with business life become a little bit simpler when people are prejudiced in your favor,” he writes.

Lee Iacocca, Ronald Reagan and Mario Cuomo have shown that successful people don’t have to be afraid to joke, Kushner says. Indeed, having fun at your own expense can be a powerful tool, he says.

“For eight years, Ronald Reagan poked fun at how old he was, and we loved it,” Kushner says. “When the Iran-Contra (scandal) hit, everyone wanted to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Imagine the same scandal hitting Nixon or Carter. We would have said, ‘Nail the guy.’ The first day.”

Kushner quit his job as a lawyer with a San Francisco firm eight years ago and took up humor consulting. He’s had some tough clients, including the Internal Revenue Service and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department.

He’s also worked with many Fortune 500 companies, focusing on Silicon Valley, which is near his Santa Cruz home.

Bob Brownson, a senior marketing executive for Digital Equipment Corp. in Maynard, Mass, said he has hired Kushner twice, at a rate of about $1,500 for a one-day seminar and $3,000 for a dinner presentation.

“He did an excellent job of improving the quality of our meetings so that we could get on with the more important business. He got us to lighten up and look at ourselves in a little more realistic way,” he said. “You work so hard in our business, you begin to believe that selling a computer is the most important thing in the world. And it’s not.”

Kushner cites a 1983 Stanford University study that found laughter can have the same health-improving effects as regular exercise. Although he has no statistics to prove it, Kushner says the same medicine might improve the financial health of a company.

His book outlines dozens of techniques for introducing humor into conversation and presentations. Humorous personal anecdotes are great icebreakers, and old jokes are useful as analogies, he says.

Self-effacing humor can make a person more likable, he says. His book cites Fred Hoar, an executive with Miller Communications in Mountain View, Calif., as an example in a chapter called “Building Yourself Up by Putting Yourself Down.”

“A veteran Silicon Valley advertising and public relations executive, Hoar knows that his name has an unfortunate connotation, particularly when linked with his profession,” Kushner writes.

The executive starts his presentations by saying, “My name is Fred Hoar.

“That’s F-R-E-D.”