Weaving humour into a speech can be a real challenge.

In a previous post I recommended that that speakers  avoid using  jokes in favour of self deprecating stories. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Jan Jack of PerfectVerse who used to be a corporate secretary but is now a professional swriter, speaker and comedian.

Jan  specialises in writing humorous poems for special events and corporate speeches. During our conversation she told be how she had been commissioned by the CEO of a multinational company to help him make his conference speech more entertaining and amusing as he was by nature a serious chap and not known for his sense of humour.

Jan asked him to send her the draft of the speech and then she re-worked it to bring in some humour whilst
maintaining the core messages and intention.  The original was by all accounts pretty dull, as are so many corporate presentations, and so wasn’t very easy on the ear. “I re-wrote it from the listeners point of view” said Jan and proceeded to give me some before and after examples.

With her permission I have reprinted one of her examples here:

With regard to the speech we discussed, I put in analagies; when the gentleman was talking about a company I compared it to a marriage. Not hugely funny but it made the speech more down to earth for those listening.  One example of this:

1.   The original speech said.  “I would now like to give some facts about a stressful incident that has happened in my working life”

I changed it to this  “”Let me now move to my third point, I want to share with you an exceptionally stressful incident that happened at xxxxx.  Can I say here I am a man who is used to stress.  My wife. (pause )  She has a credit card (pause and look away, then look back.)  In my name.”

By all accounts the speech went down well and the perception of the new MD was significantly enhanced.

We don’t all have the budget to hire a professional speech writer when we want to be funny but we can learn from Jans example and write our speeches to be easy on the listeners ear.

And as an extra bonus here is an example of humour from one of Jan’s bespoke business poems.

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Do all your days seem far too busy?
Does your Things to To list reach the floor, and make you feel dizzy?
Do you need an extra pair of hands for all your personal tasks?
Out of Office can help you, and you only have to ask.

I can choose and write your Christmas cards; I’ll act as your PA,
Help with travel, collect dry cleaning, even order that bouquet,
I can source a special venue; I can shop for you online,
I can even sort out personal gifts, if you don’t have the time.

I’m trustworthy, discreet; a real bonus in your life,
You’ll find you can rely on me; your perfect office wife,
But although I’ll give you perfect days; be there to make things right,
Remember – I’m your OFFICE wife; I won’t be there at night!

©Jan Jack’s Perfect Verse 2010

Hows that for a bit of humour!

In September, my local Toastmasters club is running it’s annual humorous speech contest and I am planning to enter. The problem is I find writing humorous speeches a real challenge. I can often weave a bit of humour into a serious speech without too much difficulty but for some reason, writing a deliberately humorous speech seems much harder.

Last year I entered the competition for the first time and wasn’t very successful. I basically researched a load of numerous stories via the web and attempted to string them together into a speech. Whilst I did get a few laughs, the whole thing was disjointed and contrived.

I think the main reasons for this were:

A) The stories I used weren’t mine

B) There wasn’t a strong storyline linking these various anecdotes together in any logical way

C) I was trying too hard to be funny

When I went to the Division H competition (SE England) to see and hear the area winners I was enthralled with their skills.  The  winner, Chris Billington, gave a hilarious speech without a single joke.   All he did was tell a story related to  a student job he had as a life guard.

In his tale, he described, in delightful detail, the unusual and sometimes bizarre behaviours of men and women in a mixed swimming pool. You had to be there honest!

What I learned from him was:

A) Don’t tell jokes, tell stories instead.

B) Tell your own stories rather than pulling them from the Internet. You will be much more convincing and congruent if you do

C) Don’t be afraid to exaggerate. Some of the funniest comedians on the planet don’t tell jokes They have us in stitches simply by exaggerating the things that real people do and say. So become an observer of people and look for things that make you smile.

D) keep a notebook handy and capture these little moments so that you can use them later on in a speech. Don’t rely on your memory.

So this year I have put together a humorous speech based on the above lessons. I have given it once already and it went down well. I did however get some really useful feedback that the beginning was a bit slow and so I am tightening it up so that I get hook the audiences attention and get them laughing from the start.

Wish me luck for our competition night on 21st September and I’ll let you know how I get on. I might even post a video of the speech and let you give me feedback too.

Let your voice be heard!

Gavin Meikle
The Presentation Doctor

Today I was phoned by a guy who I have met on a couple of occasions at local networking events.  he works for a company called the disc directory, a local on-line business directory covering Portsmouth and Southampton.

Now I’m pretty hard on tele-sales people but his approach was so refreshing that I just had to post on it.   He called me up, started by saying something like ” Remember the good looking guy who’s been bumping into  you around the local networking scene regularly> – Well that’s not me!  I’m the ugly one and I promised to call you”  – So far so good, he made me laugh and his tone and delivery were congruent.

Then he said”   I’m going to be really direct, it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve got my targets to hit  so I am prepared to offer you a great deal.  Three categories for half price?  How does that sound?”

I paused and he said ” I know you are just wondering which of my arms you are going to bite off to take this great deal.  Well I can tell you that they are both equally tender so it doesn’t have to be difficult.  What do you say?”

Again he made me laugh and I was hooked and after a bit more discussion I agreed.

Now I am not saying that this irreverent and cheeky approach is the one to use all the time but it has it’s place.  He had ready my right and decided to give it ago and it paid off!

What’s the cheekiest sales pitch you have used or had used on you that has worked?

Often people ask me about humour in presentations and how best to use it.  

Humour can be a powerful tool in public speaking but it is a bit of a double edged sword.  If it doesn’t work, the presenter falls flat on their face and often finds it difficult to recover their credibility.      

In the past I have discouraged people from telling jokes as part of their presentation for this very reason.  Instead I advise gentle, self deprecating humour to make a point. 

Recently I read a fabulous book called “Be Heard Now” by American presentation coach Lee Glickstein.   Lee dedicates a whole chapter to humour and sums the topic up nicely by explaining that there are basically three types of humour.   Laughter of the Head, Laughter of the Spleen and Laughter of the Heart.

Laughter of the Head is exemplified by those clever or witty “bon mot’s” beloved of some speakers. Whilst it can be amusing, it has a tendency to put down audiences as the speaker demonstrates just how “clever” they are.  Most “jokes” invoke laughter of the head and as such should be avoided when trying to connect and build relationships with your audience.

Laughter of the Spleen is evoked by humour at the expense of another person or group.   As a Scot, I have heard lots of jokes about mean scotsmen and, whilst some may make me smile, I cannot help but cringe a little inside.   Again this type of laughter does little to build rapport and empathy with your audience and is therefore best avoided. 

 Laughter of the Heart is evoked by humorous stories  which recognise, in a light hearted way, that we are all human and therefore prone to gaffs, blunders and embarrassing occurrences.  This is the humour of Billy Connolly, a master at observing our human foibles and turning them into hilarious anecdotes.   This type of humour is relaxing and reminds us all of our similarities rather than our differences.   Sharing such embarrassments about ourselves demonstrates our humanity and vulnerability and therefore demonstrates empathy with our audiences.

Of course, despite all this, you need to consider 1) Is humour appropriate for this topic and this audience?  and 2) Have I got the timing and delivery to pull it off?   If you stick to humour of the heart, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about the latter point.

Today I came across a post on a blog called “Eight to Late” by  Kailash Awati, an IT development manager in Australia which I loved and so I thought I’d share it with you.

“Some weeks ago I sat through yet another presentation that had me drifting into dreamland within minutes.  To stay awake,  I started to put together a list of stereotypical soporific speakers,  much in the spirit  of a couple of my earlier posts on project mismanagers and meeting time wasters.  It was, I confess, the best time I’ve had at a bad presentation in a long time. Without further ado, here’s my list:

Pete PowerPoint: Peter’s presentations are a vehicle to showcase his undeniable virtuosity at PowerPoint.  The content? Who cares. The slides are absolutely brilliant.

Freda Funny-font: Freda loves visual aids. Her problem is that she uses unreadable fonts.

Marty Mumbler: Martin has something useful to say, I’m sure. The only problem is
I can’t figure out what it is. His presentations invariably consist of an inaudible
issuance of intonations that even those in the front row cannot interpret.

Greta Garbled: Greta has mastered the art of the unfocused presentation.  She manages to cram a lot of diverse  – but not necessarily relevant – material into her talks. It’s quite a challenge to figure out what she’s going on about.

Barry Backside: Barry’s presentations can actually be quite good – if only I could get to see them. His problem is that he refuses to face his audience while speaking, often unwittingly covering his slides, or the whiteboard or whatever visual aid he’s using.

Umberto Unprepared: Umberto likes to wing it, but unfortunately ends up crashing every time. He never prepares for his presentations, and it invariably shows right from his starting stutter to his final fumble.

Oscar Overtime (Thomas Too-much): Oscar is in some ways the extreme opposite of Umberto – he prepares way more material than he has time to deliver. Consequently he ends up going over his allotted time. He’s mastered the art of ignoring frantic signals from meeting moderators and cues from annoyed audiences. He’s prepared all that wonderful material and he’s going to deliver it (all), come what may.

Mike Microphone-Muddler: You’ll hear about half of Mike’s presentation. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to predict which parts of his talk you’ll hear because he keeps drifting in and out of microphone range at random.”

I’m sure we can all recognise the stereotypes outlined here.   If you want to do something about eliminating them, why not sign up to my free booklet at www.reluctantpresenter.com

You can checkout Kailash’s other posts at http://eight2late.wordpress.com

It happens to the best of us. We know what we mean to say but somehow the words that come out of our mouth aren’t what we really wanted to say. Here’s one of mine which I thought might raise a smile.

I was giving a workshop on renewal rituals, tips and tricks for coping with stress and pressure. one section was about getting a good nights sleep and I suggested that delegates should keep a pad an pen handy, and, just before they went to sleep, should jot down all the issues that were worrying them or that they needed to remember. I called this a brain dump before bed.

So far so good, but in my summary I said, before I could stop myself. “so remember that it’s a great idea to do a dump before going to bed.”

The group exploded with laughter and I went a little red. Oh well, it they certainly remembered that tip when it came to the final review and thankfully nobody was offended.

Quote – “If you can laugh at yourself, you well never be short of something to smile about.”

Is there life after Death By PowerPoint?

The title of my blog is Laughter, Learning and Light bulb moments. Well it occurred to me whilst reviewing my recent postings that, whilst there has been lots of learning and light bulb moments, there hasn’t been much laughter. By the time you have finished watching the linked video clip, I’m sure you’ll agree that my omission has been well and truly rectified!

I thought that you might enjoy this short but pithy video clip by American Don McMillan.
I only wish I had made it because Don manages to communicate some of the most common PowerPoint errors in a funny and entertaining way. I hope it brings a smile to you face but, perhaps more importantly, it causes you to think a bit harder about whether you need PowerPoint or not and, if you do, how you will use it without falling into all the traps shown in this excellent little video.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1529637984

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Gavin