What to do When Good Humor Goes Bad

As long time readers will know by now, I consider humor to be one of the most effective tools that a public speaker can use. It allows you to seize your audience’s attention and connect with them emotionally.  

As you may remember, emotion in itself is a very important tool. Using emotion allows audiences to focus more on a speaker and remember more of the message later on. Humor is one of the best emotions to work with because it is a positive experience. When we use humor, not only are we using the tool of emotion, but we are also making it enjoyable for the audience. 

But what do we do when the humor backfires?

I’ve had instances were I think that something I’m sharing with the audience is funny – Based on their response, however, it is only mildly amusing. 

It’s a speaker’s worst nightmare (other than the fear of speaking itself for some), to tell a joke and not have the audience respond. Now this isn’t really a problem to be solved once it has happened – rather we want to change the way we present humor in order to avoid it in the first place. 

First: When delivering humor, make sure that you give the audience time to respond to it. 

When I started speaking, one thing that frightened me was leaving a pause for humor and having it filled with awkward silence. Whenever such a situation occurred I would race on to the next point in my speech. 

Unfortunately the possibility of such a situation occurred whenever I delivered a humorous line – as a result, I never gave my audience time to respond. I left them with a choice to consider the humor or to keep up with me and not miss the next point. This meant that the humor was not fully appreciated and the point was partially missed. Instead of outright laughter I would get pleasant smiles as feedback.

I learned to correct this by going beyond my comfort zone and leaving some pauses in my humor. I soon discovered that given the time, my audience would make the right choice and laugh… (the … is there to give you a pause so you can see the humor in that line :-)  )

Remember, you know the humor that you’ve put into your speech, but your audience doesn’t. They need time in order to comprehend it. Make sure that you give them that time.

Second: Don’t tell your audience that you have a joke for them.  

If you tell them that you have a joke then it had better be funny – otherwise they are going to be disappointed. Alternatively, you could tell them that you have a story that illustrates the point. Perhaps even better, just start telling the story, or say something like, “I’m reminded of the time when…”

If you don’t tell the audience that you are going to deliver humor then there’s no expectation on their part for you to do so. When you do and it’s successful it ends up being a pleasant surprise for them. On the other hand if the audience does not see the humor in your story you still have not failed. From their point of view you have simply told a story that reinforces your point. That can still be very effective. 

Remember that humor can be one of your most effective tools – but set yourself up so that you can effectively handle problems. Give your audience time to respond to the humor without necessarily letting them know that it is coming. 

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Copyright © 2007 David Mudie All Rights Reserved

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