For a while, my favourite part of our tribe standups was saying no to perfectly reasonable requests.
We were working on the website project, and someone would ask me for something sensible. A small change, a quick check, nothing out of the ordinary. I'd reply with a flat, instant, bone-dry "No."
Then I'd let it sit.
The reaction was always worth it. Confusion, mild worry, a quick glance round the call. One colleague, who was Spanish, had a particularly good version. You could practically watch him running the sentence back in his head, wondering whether he'd phrased it wrong.
Meanwhile, while the rest of the standup carried on, I'd quietly do the thing he'd asked for. Before the meeting wrapped up, I'd casually mention that it was done.
Why bother
On the surface it's just me being a bit of a wind-up, which, to be fair, is very much in my nature. But it did something useful.
It made standups less of a reporting ritual and more of a place people actually wanted to show up to. It made asking for things feel easy rather than formal. And it said, without having to say it, that I'd always help, quickly, even when I was pretending otherwise.
The joke only worked because the payoff was reliable. If I'd said no and then not done it, it wouldn't be banter. It'd just be a PM being difficult.
The slightly controversial bit
If your team never takes the mick out of each other, that isn't professionalism. It's usually a sign people don't feel safe enough to.
Wind-ups only land where there's trust. You don't tease people you think might take it badly, report you, or quietly hold it against you. You tease people you're fond of, who know you're fond of them. Gentle mockery is a surprisingly decent health check. When it disappears from a team, something's usually gone wrong.
A company with plenty of values posters and no banter has usually got its priorities the wrong way round.
The rules, such as they are
This isn't licence to be a nuisance. There are a few lines I try not to cross.
Only wind up people you genuinely like, and who you're fairly sure like you back. Keep the payoff quick, so nobody's left worrying for long. Never make the joke about someone's work, their ability, or anything they're actually anxious about. And watch who's on the receiving end. With colleagues working in a second language, the joke has to resolve fast and land kindly, or it stops being funny and starts being unsettling.
If you're not sure whether it's affectionate, it probably isn't. Skip it.
What it's really about
The wind-up was never the point. The point was that people knew they could ask me for anything and it would get done, usually before they'd finished worrying about it. The dry "no" was just a slightly theatrical way of proving it.
Good PMs are approachable. Great PMs make asking for help feel like the easiest thing in the room.