How do you follow up on your humorous icebreakers to build rapport and engagement?

1 Know your purpose

Before you use humor, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with it. Do you want to warm up the atmosphere, highlight a point, or challenge a perspective? Do you want to make people laugh, think, or feel? Depending on your purpose, you can choose the type, tone, and timing of your humor. For example, if you want to warm up the atmosphere, you can use a self-deprecating joke or a funny anecdote. If you want to highlight a point, you can use a metaphor, a pun, or a contrast. If you want to challenge a perspective, you can use irony, sarcasm, or exaggeration.

3 Know your limits

Humor can be a double-edged sword. It can enhance your message, but it can also distract from it. It can show your confidence, but it can also show your insecurity. It can create rapport, but it can also create resentment. Therefore, you should know your limits and use humor sparingly and strategically. You should not overdo it, force it, or rely on it. You should also not use humor to cover up your mistakes, avoid your responsibilities, or attack your opponents. You should use humor to support your message, not to sabotage it.

6 Follow up with compliments

A final tip to follow up on your humorous icebreakers is to give compliments that acknowledge, appreciate, or praise. Compliments can help you build rapport, trust, and goodwill with your audience or interlocutor. They can also help you show your respect, gratitude, and admiration. For example, after making a humorous comparison or a funny analogy, you can give a compliment that relates to your comparison or analogy. You can give a compliment that highlights a strength, a quality, or a contribution of your listener. Compliments can help you turn your humor into a gesture, not a gimmick.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?