Humour is the sugar in Presentations. I recently made an apple, parsnip soup. I decided the recipe called for too much sugar so I added none. My rational was that the parsnips and apples were sweet enough. That soup ended up in the garbage. One taste and the reaction was the soup was awful.
If speakers use no humour in their presentations it becomes like my soup, bitter, boring and tasteless. As speakers, your job is to add flavour and lots of it to even the most serious talk. Humour can be added in many different ways.
Use puns, one-liners, jokes, vignettes, life observations, quotations and cartoons to connect with the audience and make your presentation more memorable.
Try to surprise your audience with a funny joke where the punchline is totally and completely unexpected. If the laugh is building, keep quiet and let the audience enjoy it. Use humour to make a point to move you from one topic to another, or from one emotion to another.
Remember to practice. Very few speakers can tell a joke or a story really well the first time they do it. Just like cooking you need to use a recipe that you have had success with many times before serving it to guests. Make sure your humour is appropriate for the audience, the speaker and for the event. If you are ever in doubt about the use of a line, don’t use it.
Use humour in your presentations with the right amount of sugar, making it sweet, entertaining and palatable for the audience.
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