LAUGH! The Secret to Adding Humor to your Presentation

?

"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."??Mark Twain

How often do you laugh per day? Haven't a clue, you might respond.

Now, allowing for the fact that 70% statistics are made up and the other 40% (sic) are guesswork – (Or bad math!!! ), there seems to be general consensus that adults laugh - or at least smile - 12-15 times per day.

People don't remember how often they laugh

In my workshops on Adding Humor to your Presentation, a lot of people are surprised at how high this number is, with many unable to recall the last time they laughed. That is not to suggest these people are unhappy. Quite likely, the person who has difficulty in recalling when they last laughed, would have grinned, laughed, smiled a number of times before lunch today. I hope that is the situation with you. The point is that if we don't pay attention to when we laugh or smile, we rarely remember that we did laugh - unless it is a really raucous piece of humor.

You do not have to be funny to be funny

It is a core belief of mine that if you pay attention to what you laughed at, you can build humorous content for your presentation. “But there is no way I’m funny,” I hear you say. Now here’s the funny thing. I do not believe you have to be funny to be funny!

What I do believe is that if you capture the humor that you see around you consistently, you will over a period of time build a bank of humorous anecdotes, quips, comments, quotations that you may be able to use sometime, somewhere in an appropriate manner. The critical thing is to capture the humor. A very simple mnemonic device to help you capture the humor is L.A.U.G.H. which stands for

Listen

Anecdote

Uncomfortable

Google (on the Bing!!)

Hee Hee Hee.

The L.A.U.G.H Process for Adding Humor to your Presentation Explained

The First Element: LISTEN

if you were to consider over the last 24 or 48 hours that you actually have heard a number of things or comments or quips that made you laugh but right now you probably can't remember any of them. However if in future when you hear something that makes you laugh you Listen to it and then you write it down you now have a little humorous element that you might be able to use sometime somewhere someplace in some presentation. Right now you may not know when you will use it but you've got a humorous little quote or comment that may just be useful.

A is for Anecdote

when I asked my audiences “In the past week, did you laugh more at jokes or at some anecdotes or comments quips that people have made. The first response is “jokes.” But when you actually think about, you haven't heard that many jokes over the last couple of days and weeks but you have laughed quite a bit at the anecdote or comment that someone has said. So if you can actually record / capture that humorous piece of material, again, you may not know when or if you will use it, but you have it.

U is for Uncomfortable

The basic idea here is that some of the funniest stories that you tell your friends around the water cooler or in the coffee or pub is an anecdote where something went wrong, but you can now laugh at it. Maybe at the time, you felt uncomfortable, unhappy, annoyed, even angry, but in retrospect, nothing serious happened and you and your friends can laugh at it.

Have you ever had a good laugh with friends when they told you a story where everything went perfect. Perfect isn’t funny.

OK, I get what you are saying, Conor, but how do I use a personal story when presenting to an audience I don’t know well? Good question. The answer is to find a moral or a lesson from the uncomfortable incident that you can use appropriately to reinforce your message.

G is for Google (on the Bing!)

If you want to add some simple humor to your topic, Google on the Bing! (I heard that phrase from my brother-in-law a few years back and thought it funny. What did I do? I captured it and now use if quite often because it does generate smiles. I didn’t create it. I captured it. You can do the same) ?

Let’s assume you are speaking on Leadership. Pop “Leadership” into the Googler (another reference to Google that I know generates smiles) followed by queries like:

Humorous Quotes about

Funny comments about

What Mark Twain / Will Rogers / Groucho Marx etc. said about ……

I am not suggesting plagiarism here. Do give appropriate credit.

Hee Hee Hee to Ho Ho Ho

This very much goes back to the first element in the L.A.U.G.H. acronym. If you make a comment or quip in your presentation that gets the audience smiling / laughing – Listen to what you said, capture it and ask how can I go from Hee Hee Hee to Ho Ho Ho with this comment?

Maybe you add a word, substitute a funnier word, take out a word, introduce the comment differently, but if they smiled once, you can quite likely get the next audience laughing by polishing your material a little.

Remember!

You don't have to be funny to be funny.

Capture the Humor you see / hear around you.

Adopt the L.A.U.G.H. concept to Add Humor to your Presentation

?

Conor Cunneen - IrishmanSpeaks here. I'm happily exiled in Chicago where the Guinness is good (thankfully) and I have been force fed more corned beef and green beer than I ever had in Ireland. As a motivational business speaker, I want to leave my audience with a SMILE on the face, a SPRING in the step and memorable actionable takeaways to create a better workplace. Read more about Adding Humor to your Presentation.