CEOs know that troubled times require a sense of humor

In my Editor's Note this week, I wrote about how CA has managed to banish the ghost of Charles Wang by maintaining an honest, open approach to discussing the company's troubled past, and by keeping a sense of humor about it all.

As I noted in the column, that approach is championed by CEO John Swainson, one of a number of CEOs I've met over the years who have a terrific sense of humor and who are able to poke fun at themselves. It's an admirable quality, and one I highly respect.

Another person in that category is Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox. Her company, too, has gone through some very tough times, and yet her good humor remains fully intact.

Both Swainson and Mulcahy proved the point when they readily agreed to take part in my "Ask Aunt Donna" video series, in which I played a somewhat sarcastic agony aunt. A resource reallocation meant we had to pull the plug on that series before the segments with Swainson and Mulcahy made it online, but it would be a shame not to show you this very funny side of these two CEOs.

Swainson poked fun at himself by asking Aunt Donna if CA is the winner over rival IBM (Swainson's former company), since Googling "CA" yields so many more hits than Googling "IBM" (never mind the California and Canada factors). Mulcahy, in turn, pretended to get on her high horse in her capacity as No. 2 on Fortune's 2007 list of the 50 most powerful women in business.

Aunt Donna never got a chance to respond, but here's a clip of Swainson and Mulcahy asking their questions: