Public Speaking. Top tips for Humour

Humour is dangerous.  Humour is powerful.  Humour can lift or destroy a presentation.
Used well, it can engage and charm: used poorly, it can turn off and offend. 
I like to remind trainers and presenters that more people end up in an industrial tribunal following an attempt at humour that went wrong than for any other reason. 
Humour is dynamite. 
Most jokes have a victim, and at their core, they are often racist, sexist and on some level prejudiced. 
Therefore, it is important to remember that the only safe humour is when it is directed at oneself.
Used well, humour can blast away barriers and awkwardness and forge a connection between the speaker and the audience, but used poorly, it can bring the roof down on everyone.
I remember a speaker pronouncing that it is always good to start with a joke.
'Only if you are funny,' I thought.
The purpose of humour, particularly at the start of a presentation, is to lighten the mood, to bring the audience closer to you and make an immediate positive connection.  
If the joke is unfunny, off-colour or badly delivered, it not only won't have done that, but it will probably have achieved the exact opposite.
I have heard a few presentations that attempted to start with a joke, and the general feeling in the room was:
‘That was awkward!’
If the opening of a presentation aims to engage and make an immediate positive connection with the audience, humour may be one way of achieving that; nevertheless, I would always recommend regarding humour as an item to be marked as ‘handle with care’
Just because you think you are funny, or the joke is funny, does not always mean that the audience will thinks it’s funny!
 Our focus should always be on the message we want to deliver, and we should always regard humour only as no more than a means to an end, rather than the end in itself.

Therefore – 7 tips on humour

1. Have a sense of humour

There is a difference between having a sense of humour and being funny.  We might all aspire to be funny (or maybe not!), but we all have a sense of humour and often when we claim someone ‘has no sense of humour’, what we actually mean is that they did not find our type of humour funny.
I made this deep realisation at home.  I can make the occasional witty observation, and my wife can laugh.  She can watch a half-hour TV show on bloopers or holiday accidents on ‘You’ve been framed’ and spend the whole show dissolved in laughter, while I sit there unmoved.
Who has the better sense of humour?  Probably she has.
As a speaker, it is probably more important to show that you have a sense of humour than that you are funny, and that can often be achieved simply with a smile or a passing acknowledgement that something is funny, rather than trying too hard to be funny.  Knowing someone is funny may make us laugh, knowing someone has a sense of humour warms our hearts.

2. Be appropriate for the audience (1)

There are three types of being appropriate:
(1) appropriate to the tone of the audience,
(2) appropriate to the tone of the speech and
(3) appropriate for your position or character
Clearly, it is important to tailor your humour to suit the audience.
And there are possible moral or ethical questions here.
There are jokes that may resonate at an all-male sports club that would not be appropriate for a more diverse audience.  Just because a joke raises a laugh does not necessarily mean it is appropriate for you to tell.  That is for you to decide.
However, assuming that you are OK with how a particular joke might reflect on your personality (after all, some comedians make a career out of being off-colour and offensive), ask yourself how the joke is going to go down with your audience?
I remember a man boldly declaring to me that he always started his speeches with a joke.
He said it with such uncompromising conviction that I was already concerned.
‘Any particular joke?’  I asked
‘Yes’, he said
and went on to repeat a dubious observation he had once heard comparing the ideal length of a speech to women’s clothing.
‘How well does that go down with the women in the audience?’ I asked.
In his use of humour, rather than lighten the mood, reduce tension and make an immediate positive connection with the audience, he had probably succeeded in alienating a large proportion of the people in the room before he had even started on his subject.
A speaker can be out of tune with a particular audience, and they can also become out of tune with the times!
There can also be generational issues with appropriateness.  What granddad finds funny may no longer be acceptable to general society.  On TV, there are repeats of 1970s comedy programmes whose whole premise makes many people cringe today.  I also remember starting to read the original Dr Doolittle stories to my children and realised fairly quickly there were some wholly inappropriate attitudes on display, unsuitable for children growing up in the twenty-first century.  One could only excuse them by saying that they were attitudes of their time!

3. Be appropriate for the subject (2)

Is your humour sending a message that is incongruent with your topic?
Clearly, there should be no jokes at a funeral!  Really?
Remember the dynamite analogy from earlier.
A light, generous, humorous observation might, in fact, be perfect to blast away barriers and awkwardness and forge a connection between the speaker and the audience at the beginning of the service while everyone sits self-consciously, not knowing how to behave.  The right humorous observation might release the tension.
We just need to fully consider all possible risks and dangers of what we are saying.
As long as the humour has been considered for its purpose, rather than just to be funny, we should be OK.
I remember attending a business seminar, where there was a strong emphasis on character, hard work and integrity as a route to success.
One speaker started his presentation with:
‘I would like to thank our hosts for their wonderful hospitality.  They put us in a luxurious hotel.  The towels were so thick I could barely close my suitcase!’ (Boom, boom)
It got a laugh, but I remember thinking that for the sake of a quick joke (and I think at least everyone understood he was joking) he was willing to risk giving the impression that he was the sort of person who steals from hotels, in total contradiction to the message of his talk.

4. Be appropriate for you! (3)

If you are a religious leader, humorous examples of when you lied and cheated may not be suitable for the honesty and integrity you need to portray. (Unless – and there is always an ‘unless’ - you want to teach us how much you have changed from your bad self and therefore how much we can change.  However, before risking any strong references to the old ‘flawed you’, you need to be very sure that we already believe in the ‘new you’. )
Similarly, if your business presentation is stressing professionalism, trustworthiness and consistency, any humorous stories about how you left important documents on a train or about when you turned up late to meetings, may not help your case!

And as a warning example to everyone of how it can go wrong if the humour is not appropriate to the circumstances, may I draw your attention to the 2011 Liberal Democrat conference:
https://labourlist.org/2011/09/sarah-teathers-conference-stand-up-routine/
On the face of it, there was not too much wrong with Sarah Tether’s words; however, it was the wrong audience, the attempted humour was not relevant to the speech, and it was sending the wrong message about the speaker.
(i)            The audience was wrong
At a comedy club, the audience comes to laugh.  Sometimes the comedian merely needs to come out and say ‘Hi’ and everyone is in hysterics.  At a Liberal Democrat conference, the audience is not expecting a comic routine.  Therefore, the humour, if not inappropriate in taste, was inappropriate in context.
(ii)           It was not relevant
The ‘joke’ about Strictly Come Dancing had no relevance to the purpose of the speech.
(iii)          It sent the wrong message about the speaker
Even though it was meant in a light-hearted way, the mere suggestion that the speaker, who was a politician hoping to represent the public on the important issues of the day, was more interested in getting back to watch TV than discuss the issues, undermined her political credibility.

5. Be original

That may sound like a lot to ask, but in this context, being original merely means making the humour true and relevant to you and your circumstances, rather than simply stealing someone else’s funny line for its own sake.  Even for the dreaded best man speech, I believe the speaker will be more successful if they look for genuine stories that might have a humorous element and, more importantly, a purpose to them.  Otherwise, they are relying totally on being ‘funny’ – and most of us are not that funny.
I have heard many speakers repeating a line from another speaker or even a comedian, simply because they thought it sounded funny, rather than because the line had some genuine relevance or significance.

6. Be relevant

This ties up with most of the previous observations.  If the ‘joke’ is not relevant to the content of the speech, at best, it is leading the audience away from the true theme and message of the speech and therefore might cause some confusion in their understanding; at worst, it is just not that funny anyway!
If you tell a funny story with a purpose that is aligned to the theme of the speech, and no one laughs, you can simply move on by telling them ‘the point of that story’.  If you tell a funny story without a purpose and no one laughs, you have just died a horrible, poor comedian’s death.  If there is a purpose to your stories, there is less pressure on you to be funny, less pressure on the audience to laugh, which probably means you will tell the story better and the audience will be more inclined to smile or laugh because they did not feel compelled to.

7. Laugh at yourself

This last point should take most of the pressure away.
The safest place to direct your humour is at yourself:
not your wife, your husband or people from somewhere else.
Someone who can laugh at themselves is seen as more humble and less arrogant, and if you tend to come across a little ‘preachy’, a little bit of self-mockery can soften your edges.
It has the added benefit of allowing the audience to look at their own failings because you are willing to acknowledge yours.

In the end, if you can laugh at yourself, it will help the audience laugh at themselves.
Your message will be more acceptable and have a deeper, more lasting impact.