Have you ever tried to be funny in a presentation, only to find that the audience didn’t laugh? Well, if you have, you’re in good company. Using humor well in your presentations takes practice, and most speakers who do use humor have experienced one or more of those moments when the audience was supposed to laugh, but didn’t! Let’s look at some of the things we can do to ensure that those funny moments turn out well!

First of all, though, do you have to use humor at all? Of course not, but the benefits of using it are considerable. Humor gets attention, creates rapport with your audience, and really builds goodwill. Research shows that the audience will focus more exactly on what you are saying if they think that you are likely to say something funny. Laughter relaxes your listeners and makes them more receptive to your message. Your audience is more likely to identify with you and listen carefully if you are able to get them laughing.

However, all of us have heard humor used poorly, and I think that this is one of the reasons why many speakers, especially in Europe, shy away from it. Not only that, but many speakers are scared of adding humor to their presentations because they are not good at telling jokes. Well, I’ve got news for you. I won the continental European humorous speech contest in the framework of Toastmasters in 2005, and there wasn’t a single ‘joke’ in my entire speech. The audience laughed for most of the seven and a half minutes I was speaking, but there were no jokes! What I had were three genuinely funny, true stories of different lengths, and some humorous theories. The speech was about revenge.

We have all had experiences – both private and professional – which were potentially humorous. They may not have seemed funny at the time, but with hindsight they are. These stories or edited versions of them can be used to illustrate the message of a motivational speech, or a point in an informational presentation. Stories are more personal than jokes, and are much, much safer. Just remember: the joke you picked up from the internet may have been circulating for months before it got to you. How many of your audience will already know it? Your own personal experience or story, on the other hand, will always be fresh and original.

And what to do when you tell that great story, and no-one laughs? Well, the American speaker, John Kinde, has this to say on the subject: ‘When peope don’t laugh, it does not mean they didn’t enjoy your talk. It doesn’t even mean that they didn’t think it was funny… Everyone is different in their reactions to humor. Some people laugh heartily at everything. Some smile. Some just enjoy it internally.’

The best advice I was ever given for working with humor was simply this: if the audience fails to laugh in a place in your presentation where you expected laughter, just keep going as if you hadn’t expected laughter at all. Don’t stop, or advertise with your face that something went wrong! That way they won’t know it was supposed to be funny, and there will be no embarrassment for either you or them!