Humor is a powerful tool that can enhance your workshop outcomes by engaging your audience, creating a positive atmosphere, and reinforcing your key messages. However, using humor effectively requires some planning, sensitivity, and practice. In this article, you will learn how to use humor in your workshops without offending, confusing, or boring your participants.
Humor can be an effective tool for achieving several workshop objectives. It can help break the ice and build rapport with your audience, reduce tension and anxiety, stimulate interest and curiosity in your topic, make complex or abstract concepts more accessible and memorable, provide feedback and encouragement to participants, and highlight the benefits and relevance of your workshop content.
From a neuroscience perspective, being in a state of play is highly conducive to learning as this is where people feel safe, are willing to take risks and learn from mistakes. Humour puts us into a state of play and brings about a sense of safety, both vitally important ingredients in a successful workshop.
It helps to stay focused and happy. Sense of humor is part of culture, language and society, and it varies. It unites people, and creates a team, a friendship, a family - it's about relating to something and sharing common feelings.
Humor improves participants outcomes by reducing stress, improving engagement, building connections between antagonistic elements which in turn improves creativity. Additionally, improve memorisation by reinforcing key points and concepts. Humor can also help participants to embrace their flaws and enhancing problem solving skills.
When we use humor our brain is opening up as a contrast to when we feel fear and we are more playful and open to learning. Thus we feel safe and we can then innovate and be more creative, which is what we need in the workplace right now. If we use humor that makes people laugh we also release certain endorphins, which is the "feel good" hormone that makes people happy.
In my experience, Humor makes people perk up, and listen - something that almost never happens when some boring lecture is being given, on science or humanities or anything else. Perked up people are also automatically added to a “pack” and when the pack becomes a herd, everyone wants to do the same thing. “Something interesting is happening. I want to be part of this”. My best memories are when my teachers did something unique - mispronounced a place in a hilarious way or introduced a geometrical concept while bending in an awkward position. Therefore I believe the humor creates memories (pleasant ones lasting a lifetime), little memory pegs of topics associated with those pleasant experiences that you never forget.
When deciding whether to incorporate humor into your workshop, you should consider your audience's background, preferences, and expectations, as well as the purpose, goals, and outcomes of your workshop. Additionally, you should think about your own style, personality, and comfort level. You also need to consider the timing, frequency, and duration of your humor, as well as the tone, mood, and context of it.
Humor is not only about the words you use, but also how you say them. To master humor, you must be able to use verbal and non-verbal cues to signal your humor, modulate your voice, pace, and volume to create contrast and emphasis, and use facial expressions, gestures, and body language to enhance your humor. Additionally, you should be able to pause, wait, and react to your audience's response as well as recover gracefully from failed or inappropriate humor.
Be genuine, look for a commonality in the audience - something that binds them together. Stay away from “expletives and explosives”. We are facilitating not influencing. Use wordplay and if face to face, use gestures, facial expressions and body language to exaggerate and enhance the point being made. And finally, timing is key - draw them in and let them finish the lines for you. Of course not every one will participate and not every joke will land. Practice makes perfect!
Humor can be a powerful tool, but it can also backfire if you're not careful. To avoid common missteps, you should avoid offending, stereotyping, or ridiculing your audience or others; confusing, misleading, or distracting your audience from your main points; boring, repeating, or overusing your humor; forcing, faking, or plagiarizing your humor; and ignoring, dismissing, or contradicting your audience's feedback. Keep these tips in mind to ensure that humor works for you instead of against you.
Using humor in a workshop is not a guaranteed success. To ensure that your humor is having a positive impact on the outcomes of the workshop, it is important to monitor and measure its effects. Observing your audience's reactions, behaviors, and engagement, as well as asking them for feedback, suggestions, and testimonials can be helpful. Additionally, reviewing your workshop recordings, notes, and evaluations, reflecting on your own performance, strengths, and areas for improvement, and experimenting with different types of humor and testing their results can all be beneficial.
Humor is a skill that can be developed with practice. To do so, you can read books, articles, and blogs on humor and workshops. Additionally, watching videos, podcasts, and webinars on the topic can help. You may also consider attending courses, workshops, and events related to humor. Furthermore, joining communities, networks, and groups on the subject could be beneficial. Finally, seeking mentors, coaches, and peers on humor and workshops could prove to be helpful.