I remember the first laugh I ever got while holding a hand-held mike and telling a joke. I felt like a stand up comic. It was great! I also remember the longest laugh I ever got. It was from a saver line to a tough question and the laughter went so long I ran out of facial expressions to acknowledge the laugh. I even remember my second biggest laugh. Point being – creating laughter is addictive.
It’s hard to compare bringing an audience to laughter to anything else. Olympic athlete Peter Vidmar compared his humorous presentation at a Toastmasters conference to his Gold Medal experience.
Besides feeling good, there are many reasons to use humor in your presentation:
- It facilitates learning.
- It makes you memorable.
- It gets you good evaluations (translation: future gigs!).
- You’ve made your audience happy!!!
- You feel as if you’ve “arrived” as a speaker.
Here are a few tips to push you a little closer to adding humor to your presentations:
- Do something different just before or just after your punch line – slight pause, slightly different voice or pace, tilt your head, raise an eyebrow, look like the cat that just ate the canary.
- Try different, funny things when giving your Toastmasters speeches! Your Toastmasters club is for practice!!!
- It’s OK for a speaker to be goofy at times.
If you’re not a goofy person, be a temporary goofy person. Pretend to be a goofy person:
- Don’t get too attached to your script so you’ll be ready for the impromptu humor, from you or your audience.
- A failed bit of humor doesn’t mean, “Be cautious next time.” Carry on! Dive into the next one.
- And finally, the best (safest) place to practice impromptu humor: in the grocery checkout line. Do it!!! If you crash and burn, go to a different store! It’s part of the training and gets you to your speaking goal sooner.
- Oh, one more final thing: look confident up there
And 1 more finally, in case you haven’t heard it this week: “Do I need to have humor in my presentation? Only if you want to get paid.” There – I said it.
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