If you can get your target audience to laugh, they’ll actuallyWANT to listen to what what you want to say.
A funny thing happened to me today!
Humor is one of the most important communication strengths that needs to be mastered. Nothing builds rapport faster than humor. It’s a bonding mechanism that transcends (and reveals) all prejudice and prejudgments. It brings out the truth. If you listen carefully to someone’s jokes, it will often reveal philosophy, prejudice, and intelligence (or lack of it). How can you use this powerful tool? Here are a few guidelines: Use humor in the warm-up of the presentation to set a happy tone for the meeting. The earlier you get them to laugh, the better. Laughter is a form of approval. Don’t make jokes at someone else’s expense. If the person you’re talking to knows the person (you never know who knows who), or is related to the person at the brunt end of the joke, you’re dead meat. If it is repeated, I guarantee it will be mistold or altered, and will surely come back to haunt you. Use yourself as the example or victim of the joke. It shows you’re human and can take it. It’s also a safe form of humor. Some people won’t get the joke. Silence at the end of a joke is pretty horrifying. Make sure it’s funny to someone else before you tell it where it counts. But no matter how tested the material, some people’s elevator stops before the top floor, and they will never get it. Don’t’ use ethnic humor or make ethnic jokes unless you’re the ethnicity. That’s not a guideline, that’s a rule. Some say that telling someone an ethnic joke is implied approval for others to tell one. I have mixed feelings about that I go back to truth in humor, and I’d rather have them reveal himself or herself. But I do respect some people’s opinions. Listen before you tell a joke. Try to determine the type and demeanor of the person or people you’re addressing. The wrong humor will kill you as fast as the right humor will let you live eternally. Try using personal experience rather than story-type jokes. Something funny happened on the way to the hospital, with your dad, or when you were a kid, rather than “two guys were walking down the street…” If you tell a joke that they’ve heard before, it is actually a negative to make them hear it again. That’s one great reason for using personal humor—they are sure to be hearing it for the first time. Timing. Timing. Timing. Humor properly inserted will turn them in your favor. But be forewarened—there is never a right time for a political or religious joke told to someone you don’t know. Don’t use humor where it’s not appropriate.
Keep a joke file. Write down funny things or events so that you can remember them in speaking situations. There are humor tendencies. Men and women tend to make jokes about the other gender. Religious groups are apt to take each other on. People in bordering states tend to be on the wrong end of the joke. In North Carolina it seems to be about farmers in West Virginia, but if you lived in Indiana, it’s those farmers from Kentucky. And of course if you’re from New York—everyone else in the world is a farmer. Risqué jokes can be risky. They will get you in trouble if you say them to the wrong person. Know the limits of your audience before engaging your mouth. Turn questions into opportunities with humor. Don’t dread first confrontations; laugh them off. There is a fear and dislike many people have when talking to people for the first time. Someone told me a story that he had a big fear of being thrown out of a school when confronting them for the first time. I suggested to him that his strategy should be to only go to one-story buildings.
Adapt real world humor to real world situations.