03. The Humanising Effect of Humour in Presentations

It's episode three of The Presentation Boss Podcast! Your hosts Kate and Thomas are this week talking about how humour can benefit any presentation. They chat about the benefits of humour, how to find humour and how to add humour to your next presentation. We all like to be seen as humorous, funny or at least entertaining when we're presenting from stage. But it can be hard to find the entertainment value, especially in corporate presentations. So this episode aims to tackle those challenges and yes, there are some terrible jokes of our own thrown in too! Bonus! In the recording is Kate's 11 day old baby. There may or may not be small squeaks and soft murmurs from him in the background. What You'll Learn • Why you want to use humour in your presentations • How you can start using humour if you don't think you're particularly naturally funny • The reasons audiences will like you more if you use humour • Do informative presentations even need humour? • Shouldn't we be concerned that humour is exclusive to serious content? • What to be aware of with self-deprecating humour • The different types of humour and which to use with your audience • Who in the room you could poke friendly fun at • How to start adding humour when I don't think I have the funny skill • Leveraging existing humour for your own benefit • When in your presentation to add humour • A lesson in humour from Steve Irwin • How an engineer used humour to boost meeting attendance • How to emulate others in the creative process Mentioned In The Show • Dr. Jamie Seymour talks about Steve Irwin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twyoQ8LWatU • Andrew Tarvin TEDx Talk 'The Skill of Humor': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdZAMSyn_As Resources and Links • Presentation Boss on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/presentationboss/ • Presentation Boss on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/presentation-boss • Kate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-norris/ • Thomas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-krafft/ • The Presentation Boss Podcast: https://presentationboss.com.au/podcast/ Quotes From This Episode • "There is nothing we don't enjoy more, when it is more entertaining" • "The more your audience likes you, the more effective you're going to be in communicating your message to them" • "When you're speaking, you have an opportunity and an obligation to try to entertain" • "Whenever you're making [self-deprecating] humour, make it about yourself, but not about your expertise in the field on which you're talking at the moment" • "Stay in your lane" • "It got people's attention, you've now got people listening for the next silly thing he might say" • "There's a lot of scope, no matter what industry you're in, to use a bit of humour" • "There's certainly no rule that you need to write all of your own jokes or humour or anecdotes" • "Get going, then get good"