What is humor? If you are truly a “funny guy” or invest much time into studying comedians, speakers, and humorists, you can get an audience to laugh loud and long. But for many of us, humor can be incorporated by using the other definition. Humor can be anything that lightens a serious subject.
So how do you do that?
I came across some great ideas from Brad Montgomery, Motivational Speaker & Corporate Entertainer.
Brad has a lot of ideas on inserting “air” into your presentations; be they business presentations, informational briefings, or PowerPoint presentations. Every presentation can use a little “air” to lighten up the content. The more fact-filled the presentation, the more “air” your audience will appreciate. Lightening up, giving breaks in the midst of serious facts and figures, gives your audience time to breathe. It’s time they can use to soak up and absorb the information. These techniques are even useful to professional speakers.
Next time you see a stand-up comedian watch how they pause. The comedian will always allow the audience time to appreciate and laugh directly after a punch line. If they immediately move on to another joke, it’s called “stepping on the laugh”. Comedians and speakers are taught never to step on the laugh. In the same way, lightening up your presentation will allow your audience to understand and absorb the information, before moving on to the next set of facts.
As a professional speaker, I am always trying to learn more about speaking. Always trying to improve my presentations. I purchased Brad’s audio product “Got Mirth? Milking Your Humor Program for All of the Humor It’s Worth.” I listened to it four times on the first day I received it. He offered ideas and techniques that I could immediately put into my current presentations. There was advice on dealing with volunteers on stage and speaking with audience members. Most importantly, Brad advises you how to look at your results, after incorporating humor in your presentations. Most speakers will look at all the things that went wrong, while the audience is looking at all that went well. Our biggest hurdle to using humor is ourselves.
Copyright 2007 Michael Cortes
