Adding Humor to your Presentation is no Laughing Matter.

The guy in the pic had it right.

Mark Twain said: Against the "Assault of Laughter, Nothing can stand." This maxim particularly applies when you are making a presentation.

You know it. Using humor in a presentation is a powerful tool for engaging and connecting with an audience. When done well, humor can help to lighten the mood, break the ice (yes, even in warm weather) and make your presentation more memorable.

Let's go back to our good friend Mark again who said "Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."

What if you could create that type of reaction when making a speech or a presentation?

You can, you know.

"Oh, no, I can't."

"Yes, you can!"

"Can't"

"Can so!" (Editor here, can we move on. I know it's high brow dialogue, but let's have a little more content, Conor.)

Ahem. OK. So, you might think you are not funny. It doesn't matter.

"Oh, yes, it does."

"Doesn't." (Move on, Conor)

CAPTURE the Humor Around You

Here's my logic. To add humor to your presentation, you don't need to create humor, you just need to capture the humor that is all around you every day. The key word is "CAPTURE" (on your phone, notepad, whatever your preference is.)

It is very likely that you put a smile on someone's face or made someone laugh in the past 24 hours, but you don't recall what you said or did.

It is very likely that you laughed at something someone said or did in the past 24 hours and you now can't recall what the comment or action was.

It is extremely likely that in your most recent presentation, your audience laughed or smiled at something you or an audience member said and - guess what? - you don't recall the comment.

If you can get into the habit of capturing what made you or others smile, you will build a bank of useful, humorous quips, quotes, comments etc.

Now, as you are capturing that humor, you might not know when or if you will use it, but you are now developing a really useful bank of content that sometime, some where, you will be able to use.

One Piece of Humor Each Day!

Let's do some basic math here. Let's assume you capture one piece of humor every day for a month. How many potential audience smiles have you captured at end of the month. (Ed. here again. Which month are you talking about. Is it February - in a Leap Year?)

I'm just going to ignore that question, but you do get the idea. To add humor to your presentations, you don't need to create humor, but you do need to decide to CAPTURE humor. If your audience laughed at something you said in your most recent presentation, it is quite likely that you can use that same quip, comment, anecdote in your next program to add humor to your presentation.

Deciding to CAPTURE the humor around you is the first and very important step to adding humor to your presentations and speeches.

You can do it.

Conor Cunneen - IrishmanSpeaks is happily exiled in Chicago where he says the Guinness is good and he has been force fed more corned beef and green beer than he ever had in Ireland. His mission is to Improve People, Performance & Productivity - with a Smile! Read more about about Adding Humor to your Presentation.