This is a concept that any leader needs to take to heart. If you want your words to be taken seriously, you can't simultaneously expect people to always intuit

This is a concept that any leader needs to take to heart. If you want your words to be taken seriously, you can't simultaneously expect people to always intuit when you do not mean your words seriously. Since humor often carries some grain of truth, you have to be careful that your people don't interpret the wrong grain of truth. I've seen this several times where a CEO cracks a joke and the employees take it the wrong way, then culture changes weirdly and nobody realizes that it was a miscommunication over a joke.