Mon 23 / 01 / 17
Harness the power of humour…and do better business
Presentation coach and stand-up comedian Gerry Thompson recently ran one of our Bite-sized Learning sessions for Chamber members. Here he offers his 10 top tips.
Humour is an essential part of effective communication – and a hugely powerful and valuable tool which leading business professionals use to great effect. Humour can:
- break the ice and put people at ease
- add impact to your message
- engage with people and build rapport
- diffuse anxiety or tension
- overcome barriers
- be persuasive and win people over
- express your individuality and build confidence
- shake things up and get people to look at things differently
You can use humour in all kinds of business settings, including:
- speaking to an audience
- speaking one to one
- speaking within a group or meeting
Here then are 10 top suggestions for getting humour to work for you in order to maximise your success in business – and bring more fun and excitement into your professional life at the same time.
1: Look at things differently
Humour and comedy are all about bringing an unexpected perspective to a subject matter whilst everyone else is looking at conventionally. So cultivate this habit, and use it to surprise your audience by delivering the unexpected. This is the essence of what makes us laugh.
2: Punchlines
Employ the classic set-up-and-punchline structure used by stand-up comedians; first, put in place everything that is needed to set the scene for the unexpected punch-line. Use pauses to enhance the effect – comic timing.
3: Other tricks of the trade
Also employ other devices used by comedians as vehicles for humour, such as story and anecdote, exaggeration, or giving an unusual twist to common clichés such as ‘I have some bad news and some good news….’
4: The rule of 3
Remember that lists of three items are funnier than two or four:
“…By love, of course, I refer to romantic love – the love between man and woman, or a boy and his dog, or two head waiters” (Woody Allen)
5: I’m not funny
Don’t buy into the idea of “I’m just not funny”. Everyone can be funny – it’s just that some people haven’t yet learned how to use that latent ability, or developed the confidence to carry it off. Both can be achieved – we’ve seen it over and over again.
6: Deprecation
Make yourself the butt of your humour, rather than someone else. You’ll get more empathy and connection this way – people will laugh because they have had similar experiences. Woody Allen says comedy is ‘truth plus pain’. Things going swimmingly well just isn’t funny.
7: Repertoire
As stand-up comedians do, build up a repertoire of anecdotes and humorous segments relating to your subject area, which you can repeatedly use, improve upon and steadily refine your delivery.
8: Ad libbing
You may also wish to develop your capability in spontaneous humour, in addition to using pre-planned and practiced content. The key attributes to cultivate here are:
-Being yourself – not imitating anyone else
-Being in the present moment – not dwelling on what has just happened or what might happen next
-Saying ‘yes’ to opportunities as they arise
-Always looking at things differently
9: Managing risk
Practice your humour in low key settings where not too much is riding on how well your material goes down, and whether anyone laughs – like down the pub with mates. When you know it works, you can roll it out in more important professional settings. But don’t be overly fearful of things going wrong or people not laughing – ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen? We’re usually unconsciously exaggerating that.
10: Appropriateness
Humour can do you a great deal of good, but used badly it can do you a very great deal of harm. Be very mindful of appropriateness of your material for a particular audience and particular context. Especially when being spontaneous, keep a part of your mind on monitoring alert in order to jump in and prevent you saying something inadvisable.
“For you to be successful, sacrifices must be made. It’s better that they are made by others. But failing that, you’ll have to make them yourself.” - Rita Mae Brown
For examples of humour being used in a masterful and hugely effective way to make serious points, watch these two video clips of highly outstanding TED talks:
Thank you to Gerry for providing this blog. Gerry Thompson runs Positive Comedy Training, offering one-to-one coaching and team trainings in presentation and public speaking skills. For more information visit: www.positivecomedy.com or call 07986 561 860.
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If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk