Humour creates a bond between you and your audience. It demonstrates flexibility, while helping you break barriers and create emotional depth with your message. It eases the tension that may have emanated from divulging complex information. It captures your audience’s attention, reduces their anxiety, and makes their experience memorable. However, inappropriate use of humour can trivialise your speech. This article is focused on helping you maximise the power of humour in building credibility, rapport, and creating a memorable experience as a speaker.
Be interested in establishing a connection. If you can make your audience laugh or smile, you are two steps forward in making them comfortable with your message. Humour helps to create an immediate connection between the speaker and the audience as it serves as an effective way of establishing a shared experience. Laughter facilitates open communication and promotes engagement; this is because laughter is a hierarchy and boundary breaker that serves as a form of inclusion and collaboration with your audience, and humour helps to make this a reality. When incorporating humour in any public speaking opportunity, it is important to keep in mind what your audience would immediately relate to when mentioned; this would be very effective in bridging the gap between and the audience and fostering a sense of familiarity and camaraderie.
Also, strive to capture attention. Humour acts as a powerful attention-grabbing tool in public speaking. A good humour well deployed may be all that is needed to successfully hold your audience interest. Nevertheless, you should consider the following: supposedly good humour may not sound that way if uttered at the wrong time. A well-timed humorous remark or anecdote can instantly capture and maintain the audience’s focus because it demonstrates good thought process, your comfortability with your message, and a good consideration of your audience’s feelings before usage. A humour expression can also be spontaneous. You can captivate your audience and foster a good connection with them by being observant of your surroundings and by using a common ground to open your speech with a humorous hook that entices the audience and sets a positive tone.
Deploying humour in enhancing engagement and retention is yet another way to connect with your audience. Humour can increase audience engagement and overall enjoyment of the presentation. Your audience will feel a sense of familiarity with you, which would be instrumental in creating an emotional connection, making the information more memorable or long lasting. It is important to infuse humour throughout your speech to maintain audience interest and improve information retention. Very likely, if your humour made an impact on your audience, so will the information that follows it.
Humour can help ease tension and alleviate nervousness, both for the speaker and the audience. It serves as a way of distilling preconceived notions or opinions by the audience. It also makes you as simplistic as possible. This is because humour lightens the atmosphere and creates a more relaxed environment. To actualise this, avoid the use of deprecating humour as this can make you lose your audience immediately or pass the wrong message. Focus instead on showing authenticity and vulnerability that respects people of all gender or race, thereby encouraging audience connection.
Additionally, reinforce key messages. Effectively use humour in reinforcing important messages and making them more impactful. Maximise techniques such as using humorous anecdotes, analogies, or metaphors to illustrate complex ideas or subjects. Strategically incorporate humour to help the audience better understand and remember key points in your message.
Again, tailor humour to your audience. It is of significance to understand the audience’s preferences, culture, and sensitivities when using humour. One of the easiest ways to dissatisfy your audience is through your speech. Humorous expressions or remarks that can be deemed insensitive or offensive to specific audiences or culture should be avoided. Instead, thoughtfully research and adapt jokes or humorous references to resonate with your specific audience by being mindful of potential cultural or social sensitivities that may cause an offence.
Of great importance is the need to practise and time humour. Although some may not be aware, humour requires practice and timing to be effective. A good way of achieving this is rehearsing humorous elements in your speech to ensure they flow naturally. To ascertain this, seek feedback from trusted individuals capable of giving honest responses. Their feedback should be significant to refining the delivery and timing of your humour with the body of your message.
What’s more, balance humour with purpose. There is a need to strike a balance between humour and the overall purpose of your speech. Too little and you may sound stiff, too much and you may trivialise your speech. Do not rely solely on humour but use it as a tool to support the message. While doing so, stay focused on the speech’s goals, ensuring that humour enhances rather than detracts from the key points.
All in all, humour creates a bond between you and your audience by demonstrating flexibility, emotional depth, and breaking barriers. It is a tool that eases tension and anxiety, and it creates a memorable experience for your audience. The impact of humour in public speaking includes its ability to connect, engage, and captivate the audience by enhancing engagement and retention, establishing connection, relieving tension or nervousness, and reinforcing key messages. Unmistakably, it is of importance to tailor humour to the specific audience, preference, and culture, and avoid humorous expressions that can be deemed insensitive or offensive. You can maintain a balance by practising and timing humour for effective delivery, and making sure it aligns with your overall speaking purpose. Embrace humour as a valuable tool to your public speaking repertoire, fostering an enjoyable and memorable experience for both you and your audience.
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•Dr. Oji is a Senior Lecturer of English at the Institute of Humanities, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos