If you are giving a speech or presentation and you want to inject a little humour, it would be fair to say that you have to learn to how to be humorous on purpose. I am going to do a very dangerous thing and assume that you already have a method for creating humorous material. I am doing that as the discussion of creating material and speeches is beyond the scope of this article.
The best thing to do is to create your speech first, then think about the humour. What can happen is that if you try and be funny first, before getting your message clarified, you can creatively run aground. You’ll spend more time worrying about how to be humorous rather than focusing on your message.
Be specific about your message, what the point of your speech or presentation is and then write your speech “from the heart; meaning you should write as quickly as you can. At this stage don’t think too much about what you’re writing, otherwise you’ll end up second guessing yourself. The idea being you short-circuit your inner critic, that little doubting voice that we all have.
Once you have the raw material for your speech down, now is the time to “edit from the head”. At this point you can unleash your inner critic to help you. Make sure everything you say and every point that you make reflects the overall point of your speech.
Now we can look at some of the mechanics of humour. I’ve met people who are really funny who still don’t know what a punchline is, that’s something that baffles me as these are the tools of their trade and yet they’re using them blindly. So here’s a quick run down of terms (apologies if you know this already, but I want us to be on the same page):
The Secrets of Set-up Lines
A set-up line is the bit before you get a laugh. It’s usually normal and provides information required to make the punchline work. A set-up line is equally important as the punchline is. Without the set-up line the punchline fails.
Consider this joke:
During his annual physical, the elderly man says to his doctor “I may be having a problem with my memory. I keep forgetting to take my medicine. I can’t remember to take out the trash. Sometimes, I can’t even remember my own name.” The doctor says, “When did this start happening?” The man looks at the doctor and says, “When did what start happening?”
Everything up until the word “says” is the set-up. It provides the necessary mini story and helps to orientate us.
Ideally, the shorter this part the better. You want to get to the punchline as fast as you can, but without rushing your delivery. You should still be speaking in your own natural rhythm and pace.
If you consider that the average headline stand-up comedian gets 4-6 laughs per minute, an act containing jokes of this nature probably wouldn’t achieve that. In order to achieve that there would need to be a punchline every three sentences, or one laugh every 10 seconds.
As you can see I am very serious when it comes to learning how to be humorous.
Joke stories, such as the one of just outlined, tend to be a little long-winded and have only one punchline at the end. That’s a lot of time and a lot of faith to have in that one punchline working.
The good thing is we’re not about learning how to become a stand-up comedian. These types of jokes could work in a speech or presentation and you should make sure that you speak them out loud a few times to put them into your own words. This will mean that you find yourself editing the joke naturally.
Obviously, when you are delivering a presentation everything you say is not divided into either set-up lines or punchlines. You’re not a comedian. You’re someone giving a presentation that uses humour to help make your point, so a large proportion of what you say will be focused on your message.
That said, when you get to the humour, you want to get to the laugh as fast as possible, without rushing what you’re saying.
The Secrets of Funny Punchlines
Your punchlines should be short and to the point. This is where you get the punch of punchlines. Consider the punchline of the earlier joke and imagine what it would be like if it was like this:
“I’m a little confused about what it is you’re saying to me Doctor. When did what start happening?”
I personally fell asleep about half-way through that sentence. The set-up line creates the tension of expectation in the audience. This means that the punchline should be terse enough to release that tension. But if the punchline rambles on like in my above example, then that effect is lost.
Everything that needs to be conveyed for this mini story to work, is found in the final sentence.
Here’s another key part for a successful punchline, make sure that the key word is as close to the end of the sentence as possible. This will keep the audience tension right up until the last possible minute.
In the previous example the key word is “what”. It’s a direct swap of the previous word used in the same place which was “this”. It’s also important, in this example, that the line that the elderly man says is exactly the same as what the doctor said, with just one slight difference.
These tips can not only be applied to the editing of street jokes, but also to most other forms of spoken humour that appear in humorous speeches. If you can apply these tips you can learn how to be humorous and improve the funny you already have.
Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.
Category: Communication Skills
Have you ever known someone who could immediately make friends with anyone? You know they type. They can build instant rapport and it doesn’t matter about race, age, or gender. They can walk into a room and befriend everyone from a priest, a mechanic, and the CEO. Afterward you are scratching your head wondering…how did they do it?
In most cases it is because they have mastered several key skills. Sometimes it is something they learn naturally. For most people they have just spent the time improving their skills.
There are four basic personality styles that vary based on the type and amount of information needed to make a decision. Pragmatics and analyticals base decisions on facts and data while amiables and extroverts make decisions based on emotion and feelings. Pragmatics and Extroverts need just enough information to make a decision (and no more!) while analyticals and amiables just can’t get enough.
You can learn more about personality styles in my article Mastering the four personality styles.
Brandt Smith is a sales, marketing, public speaking, and professional development expert. Learn about achieving wealth and life balance through entrepreneurship at Wealth and Wisdom, where he is cofounder and senior editor. Their advice on wealth building, personal development, and life balance can help take you to the next level. You can also read more of his thoughts on his blog.
Before we start to do something new, we check our capabilities and up to that start. Even we wouldn’t be succesfull after that checking process, would be happy and satisfied with what we do or did. However if we do what we love, it generally results successfull.
For entrepreneurs, there are loads of skills that should be checked. One of the most important one –for me its the first- is communication skills.
Communication skills are important cause of patnerships, cooperations and to keep on networking. Those processes make startup more worthy. The point is in Internet age, communication ways changed and while they have some advantages, they have also disadvantages. You can reach e-mails easier than phone numbers. But the problem starts here, e-mails do not give the right sense like your phonecalls. It’s harder to realise if they replied positively or negatively. So even it’s more easier to reach who you want via web, it’s harder to call them in your network.
1. Start with formal e-mail
It’s clear that we generally communicate with our friends on msn or facebook and it goes on daily. So while typing an e-mail, dont think its a usual friend chat, so type more proper –sure not “to whom it may concern”- but it should be formal
2. Show that you respect and follow him
To get attention and get the reply, its better to show you respect, but not like you spoil them, use their articles or experience that you liked. It would also show that you really follow him.
3. Introduce yourself
you are not just a fun of him, you also do something worthy. So introduce yourself with the way he would pay attention, show what you can add value to him. Make him to say “sounds, he knows what he wants”
4. Balance and kindness
While you show that u follow, dont spoil him like you admire, you get him as a goddess. if you spoil so much, he wouldn’t pay attention to your e-mail because he is a usual human too, so exagration would seen not so nice. On the other hand while you introduce yourself, don’t exaggrate yourself and don’t act like you compare yourself with him. This time-by doing this he would think that you are so arrogant. So keep your kindness and keep the balance.
5. Be patient
the ones you want to reach dont have so much time, so they may delay to reply you, they may skip, and also they may forget. Keep your patience, wait for 15 days at least. It doesnt mean he/she doesnt care you, even you can use his gratefulness cause of late reply. =)
If he doesnt reply after 20 days, send another e-mail and start something like this; “i can imagine you might be so busy there” and keep in with your mail the previous mail content to make him more pressed.
6. Don’t miss chances
When he replies and tells you that he is really busy and he can arrange an appointment a month later, dont miss this chance and welcome this offer. But while you welcome this offer, ask something more to keep in touch till you get the appointment date.
by the way if he doesnt reply you at all, dont worry, its his own fault for not being able to manage his time =)
Pulling together a virtual team is vital to the success of any solo professional, but even more important is maintaining regular communication with your team. If you were all sitting together in a office environment, communication wouldn’t be such a big issue – you could just walk over and chat to your assistant. But working virtually you have to set aside that time on a regular basis to talk and update one another.
This is true for all of your team members, not just your virtual assistant, but your web designer, your graphic designer, your bookkeeper, or any other team member you have on board.
My clients are long-term regular clients, who are looking to develop a partnership with their virtual assistant. I maintain that communication by recommending that we have a weekly telephone call. I schedule it in as one of the first jobs I do when we start working together. We have our phone call on the same day/time each week, so it becomes second nature.
Some weeks we may only have a quick two-minute check-in call; other weeks it may last for an hour. The purpose of our call is:
– to get to know one another
– to keep each other up-to-date on work
– to discuss any issues that have arose during the week that need our attention
– to plan future projects
How we conduct our phone calls is just as important as the phone call itself, and to make the best possible use of our time on the call I draw up an agenda. We work through it just as if we were holding an in-person meeting. I type up the notes afterwards and send them to my client. The notes then form the basis for our workload during the week, and are updated to produce the Agenda for next weeks’ call.
Communication is so important in a virtual relationship that you do need a regular communication system in place.
Having used this method of communicating with my clients for several years I’ve found it to be one of the best ways of staying in touch.
As well as being able to discuss issues relating to their business we can get to know one another too – essential for any virtual team!
By following this simple system not only do my clients get the best possible value of my time, but they are able to grow their businesses too!
Categories
Humour in the Workplace
There seems to be a lot of information out there at the moment about the benefits of using humor in the workplace. In fact on Google there are about 363,000 results (at the time of writing), so clearly it’s quite a popular subject area. But it’s a topic that concerns me. Gravely concerns me.
Firstly, let me just say that as a humorist I’m into humour (or humor, however you choose to spell it) in a big way. And I mean a BIG way. Apart from being a practitioner (sounds a bit of a heady term for someone who has the ability to make a room full of strangers laugh), I’m big into the history of it both in the theatre and in cinema.
I’m also all for the benefits of humour being able to reduce stress and also help re-frame the serious, sometimes even tragic, moments that life can throw at us. Being able to laugh with a colleague about a angry person you’ve just dealt with on the phone is important I think.
As Steven M. Sultanoff, PhD, licensed psychologist and therapeutic humorist, wrote in an article over at Humor Matters that a “Haft International 1985 survey only 15% of workers are fired because of lack of competence. The remaining 85% are let go because of their inability to get along with fellow employees. When asked about the qualities of an effective employee, senior administrators and human relations personnel check humor as one of the choice attributes of a desired employee”.
I’m not sure what the figures would be like in 2009, but based on that old research alone I think it’s important for work colleagues to be able to get on and communicate effectively. Humour is definitely an important part of that. That’s fine with me.
What I’m against is when people go overboard with the humor in order to make the workplace a really fun place to be. The “you-don’t-have-to-be-crazy-to-work-here-but-it-helps” type of people or the “wacky, cartoon tie” brigade. These people are actually irritating. I see the spirit of trying to make work a much more interesting and fun place to be, but, personally, I don’t want to deal with, or work with, a company like that.
People at work shouldn’t take themselves too seriously, that much I can accept, but not to the extent of playing practical jokes at other people’s expence. For instance, I was working in this one job a few years ago and I was chatting to one of my colleagues and I happened to mentioned that I’d performed stand-up. She instantly said “I’m funny” – immediately a warning sign that she isn’t.
Not “Oh, I do stand-up too”, but “I’m funny”. In my experience this person usually isn’t. Not wanting to criticise what she was telling me I let her explain. I do try to be supportive where I can and just get on with people even on a temporary basis. This is what she told me, without any exaggeration from me:
“Sometimes when I’m at my mother’s I’ll hide from her. Then I’ll leap out and squirt her with a water pistol.” (She laughed, after clearly cracking herself up).
I wanted to stab her in the eye with a Biro…
People who describe themselves as being wacky, usually aren’t. They are deluded and need a “jolly good talking to”, as only the English can muster. Granted the scenario she was describing took place out of the office at home, but the seeds of (what I can only describe by neologizing) Shunny (a portmanteau of the words sh*t and funny) were clearly there.
On another day I happened to catch her crouching behind some cabinets. “Er, hi. What are you doing?” “Oh. I was going to leap out on you and scare you.” She was lucky that piece of shunny failed. If she had I can only imagine that we would’ve reenacted that scene from The Deer Hunterwith her playing the Christopher Walken role, but with a full chamber.
So should we avoid humour in the workplace at all costs then? No, I don’t believe so. Over at Science Daily there’s research on humor in the workplace by professor Chris Robert, at the University of Missouri-Columbia said: “…particularly joking around about things associated with the job – actually has a positive impact in the workplace. Occasional humor among colleagues, he said, enhances creativity, department cohesiveness and overall performance”.
See he says “occasional humor works”. Here are three ideas off the top of my head:
1) Witty Banter– a bit of banter with work colleagues about the workload that you both have, or laughing about a difficult customer. Being naturally funny helps in this situation. Alternatively, re-telling a favourite joke might be useful as along as you’re not offensive.
2) Favourite Comedy Shows– recounting favourite or classic sitcoms or sketch shows. Or discussing the previous evenings TV where you both might have seen the saem show. Quoting from shows or comedians that you both find funny works because you both remember how you laughed originally at the source material. So by repeating it you can often get a laugh of recollection.
3) Cartoon strips – One job I had I had a copy of one of my favourite panels taped to the bottom of my computer screen. Whilst it wasn’t fall of my chair funny, it served to make me smile every now and then when I wasn’t feeling my best. I have seen these photocopied and pinned up on a noticeboard.
Jason Peck is a Humorist, Speaker and Consultant based in London, England. For public speaking tips and to learn how to add humor to your speeches and presentations to win over your listeners visit: Pro Humorist.