Infusing Humor Into Your Speeches

Today is April Fool’s Day, but this post is not a joke. In honor of April being National Humor Month, I’ve created this guide to infusing humor into your speeches.

There are many reasons humor should be a natural part of most presentations. I’ve covered them before, so I won’t go into them in detail here. The two main reasons you want to infuse humor into a speech is to engage the audience and make you more relatable.

Before I go into the hows of infusing humor into your speech, I want to share what not to do.

The Don’ts of Infusing Humor in Speeches

Don’t Start with a Joke

The first words out of your mouth set the tone of your speech. Since a presentation is not a stand-up routine, beginning with a joke sets the wrong expectations and could hurt your credibility as a speaker.

In fact, under most circumstances, unless you are a natural comedian, leave jokes out of your speeches altogether. For one, it is really hard to integrate a joke into a speech without stopping the flow of what you’re saying. For another, a joke could undermine your message.

It is O.K. to be humorous – the quality of being funny. It can be a bad idea to tell jokes, the intent being solely to get a laugh.

Don’t Use Offensive Humor

The best way to get your audience to tune you out is to offend them, especially with unrelated offensive humor. Off-color remarks don’t belong in professional presentations.

That said, do your audience research. It is quite possible that something humorous to one audience will be offensive to another. Make sure you err on the side of not being distasteful.

Don’t Add Humor to Your Speech … Find What Is Already There!

The laughter you inspire with your speech should flow naturally from your message, your examples, and your stories. Shoehorning humor where it doesn’t fit will derail your presentation just as much as jokes and off-color humor.

Don’t Rush Through Your Delivery

This is called “stepping on the laughter.” Use strategic pauses to not only elicit the laugh but allow it to run its natural course. If you get to the punch line too quickly, your audience might miss it. And, if you start sharing your next point before the laughter dies down, your audience won’t hear what you have to say.

Don’t Overdo the Humor

Unless the purpose of your speech is to be funny, use humor sparingly to help break up or lighten more serious information, to wake up the audience and to help drive home a point.

The Do’s of Infusing Humor in Speeches

Now that we have the basic don’ts out of the way, let’s move on to what you do want to do to make your next presentation engaging, and – at least at moments – funny.

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