Terrillific Humor Tips for Training

Know Your Audience: You must give them what they like. You must absolutely, positively know your audience.

Test humor:  Humor that is placed in your written introduction. It is to be read by your introducer, not by you. Pick a couple of these lines and stick with them. The real value of test humor comes when you have heard the same line being delivered in your introduction over and over. The laughter of the audience will tell you if they are ready to laugh.

Male vs. Female: All female audiences tend to laugh more easily and louder than all male audiences. All-male audiences are the toughest because the male ego gets in the way of laughter. They look around to see if anyone else is laughing before they laugh, and they won’t laugh as loud because they think they will look less powerful.

Time of Day: The first speaker of the day for an early morning (7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.) program should not expect hearty laughter. People are not conditioned to laugh a great deal in the early morning.

Use Cartoons & Images: Regardless of one’s nationality and culture, cartoons and comic strips are the most universally accepted format for humor.

Seating Arrangement: By far the best seating arrangement for laughter is semicircular.When audience members are seated close together on a curve, they can look to their left or right and see the faces of each person in the row. This togetherness allows laughter to pass immediately from one person to the other.

Humor to Avoid: The overriding principle is that you should not tease the audience about beliefs that are important to them or about any topic that is currently upsetting them. In addition, never use the following types of humor: Racist, sexist, religious, puns, any type of off-color humor, or humor about physical or mental disability.

 

Callbacks: If you refer to a word or phrase you mentioned earlier in your presentation, that’s a callback. It works well if the previous piece of material got a good laugh or if it was a groaner. If the previous material was good, mentioning it again will get more laughter and will make you look polished for being able to tie the previous material to the present material. If the previous material was poor, the callback will show your willingness to tease yourself, which is an admirable quality the audience appreciates.

 

 

 

 

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