The 5 ways to add humor to your communications

How do you get humor into your communications? You have choices.

Transcript:

You're probably thinking, “Sure, I know that adding the flavor of humor to my communications is a powerful tool to help my audience listen to understand and remember my message. But how do I use this humor stuff? Where do I put it?”

You ask really good questions. And you can use humor in a lot of ways. In fact, you can look at humor as having a series of nested levels ranging from the lightest touch to the fullest commitment.

So let's start at the heart of the humor, with tone.

This is how you say what you say. It's the mood you set, and it's the foundation for any humor. So set a human tone by speaking as if you're just talking to one person—somebody you like. That said, speaking or writing naturally doesn't come naturally. Get coaching and take time for plenty of editing. And if it's a video or presentation, practice, practice, practice.

We all know what jokes are.

Short visual or verbal gags, like:

A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, we got a drink named after you!” And the grasshopper says, “Really? You got a drink named Kevin?”

Now that's a joke. Allegedly…

If you tell a joke, don't push on it. Let the joke do the work and if the joke falls flat, just move on. Your audience won't make a big deal out of it, if you don't.

And if you use a joke or quote from somebody else, be sure to attribute the source. Now, I'm not a copyright lawyer and I haven't even played one on TV, so if you've got questions about usage, get professional advice. But attribution is just polite. And it makes you look smart for finding the quote in the first place.

Make sure anything you use is relevant to your topic and positive for your audience.

Stories or anecdotes from your life or somebody else's.

A simple story structure is:

• Describe a problem you had—a dip from grace.

• Then explain what you did to recover.

• And then share with your audience and what you learned, the treasure that you brought back from your experience.

One way to make a story humorous is to describe the emotional reality, not just the reality reality. 

Bits are stories and skits where it's not just you.

Bits are great if you're uncomfortable being the funny one. It's enough if you're just humor adjacent. So find the experienced performers and humorists in your organization. Every organization has them. Or hire pros. (Of course I'm going to say that, but it can really help.)

A concept is an overall theme or frame for an entire presentation or set of content.

For instance, I worked with a leader who wanted his department-wide meeting to be like a late night talk show, complete with house band, opening monologue, and guest interviews. That meeting was hugely successful.

It's important to get a full commitment for a concept. Concepts, take a team. And you need to provide full support for that team. Which means time and money.

And use your audience's time well. Don't let the concept take over. The talk show meeting was no longer than typical department wide meetings, because the team and I worked carefully on the script and the production.

And remember as always the best humor is about you sharing what you love about your topic, using one or more of these levels of humor.

Questions? Answers?

You can reach me at cjamesgower.com. Thanks for your time today.