- I have often heard professional-level speakers say,
you should start your presentation with a joke.
That attention grabber is critical,
and I wanna disagree with this advice.
I do not recommend telling a setup, punchline-style joke,
the kind that a stand-up comic would tell,
and there are a lotta reasons why.
Now at the same time, I am 100% in favor
of using lighthearted humor in a presentation,
and I do it often when I do professional-level presentations
and when I teach in college.
So there are some differences here,
but I can give you a really straight ahead way
to add humor without the big risk of a punchline-style joke.
So let's take a look.
(light music)
Hi, I'm Alex Lyon, and this is Communication Coach.
We're here to help you increase your impact
and lead your teams to higher levels of excellence.
Lotta bad advice out there, in my humble opinion,
about telling jokes as attention grabbers.
Here is the most common situation that I have seen.
The speaker tries to start off with a joke
that they have created, and then nobody laughs.
And then instead of just moving on,
they start chuckling nervously to cue people
that that was a joke.
The audience may or may not chuckle nervously,
and it's an incredibly awkward situation.
Now think about this, this is the first moment
of your presentation, and you completely bombed
and there are nothing but crickets and nervous laughter.
This is not the way you want to start a presentation.
It's really high risk and really low reward.
So I am against these stand-up comic-style setup
and punchline one-liner jokes.
Now, having said that, I'm gonna sound
like I'm contradicting myself, but I am not.
There's a lot of ways to add humor
to your attention grabber without the big risk.
So let's look at three easy ways to add
some lighthearted humor and still grab
your audience's attention.
The first way is to deliberately quote
someone else that's funny.
Now by quoting them directly, by saying as Jerry Seinfeld
once said, or as George Burns once said,
then you may even have the piece of paper in your hand
and read the quotation.
What you're doing there is you're drawing
people's attention to what that other person said,
and it takes the attention off of you as the joke teller.
So you know they have a funny line that kills.
It's already been tested.
They're stand-up comics, they probably worked on it
for years to get it just right.
And now you're both, you and your audience,
focusing on that little line,
that little humor, as an object that you're both looking at.
So the attention's not on you.
And if it bombs, which they usually don't
because if they're funny, they're funny,
because it's already been worked out,
then what you do is you get a little chuckle,
you get a little laugh.
But if it bombs, then it's not really on you.
It's on George Burns, it's on Jerry Seinfeld.
I was saying to my wife the other day,
you know Jerry Seinfeld said in his bit,
"My parents just moved to Florida.
"Now they didn't wanna move to Florida,
"but they're 65 and that's the law."
And my wife laughed huge.
I'm always trying to make my wife laugh,
but she laughs when I tell Jerry Seinfeld jokes,
and I think it's because you can hear the comedian
telling the joke in your mind as the person shares it,
and it transports you a little bit more
than hearing me, Alex Lyon, as the speaker
tell my one-liner joke.
So quote someone else that's funny.
Use a quotation.
That's a great attention grabber, no problem.
The other way you can add humor is by telling
a lighthearted story.
And the way to make a story lighthearted,
and by the way I have a whole nother video
on how to tell stories as attention grabbers,
I'll put that link in the description below,
is you add a little bit of a goal to the person
in the story.
They're trying to reach a destination,
achieve something, and that way your story gets humorous
because the obstacles along the way prevent them
from reaching that goal, and it becomes
pretty lighthearted, pretty funny.
That's the whole reason why a movie like Dumb and Dumber
is funny because it's a road trip movie
where these two guys are trying to get from A to B,
from Providence to Aspen, to see about a girl,
and everything that can go wrong does go wrong
on their way.
And so, all these mishaps become very humorous
because you know there's a goal in mind
that is preventing, and they're being prevented
from getting there.
So adding a little bit of a humorous goal
to your story can make that story more lighthearted.
So you can tell a story.
It's not a punchline, but it adds just a little bit
of a chuckle, a little bit of a smile,
to your audience's experience.
And the third way is really easy,
and that is to show something visual
on the screen that you know is funny.
So maybe there's a cute picture,
maybe there's a little bit of a joke even on the slide,
and you don't have to tell it.
You just have to say something and then show the image,
and people chuckle.
You've probably seen speakers use humor this way.
It's a very low-risk way because when you were looking
at the internet or doing your reading,
you came across it and you laughed,
or somebody forward it to you and you laughed.
Everybody thinks it's funny.
Everyone knows it's funny.
And so you share it in a presentation and it's almost
guaranteed to get a smile.
So I am 100% telling your own setup,
punchline-style jokes, but I am also 100% in favor
of using lighthearted humor, and these are three
low-risk ways to do it without worrying
about nobody laughing
and just hearing those crickets chirping.
That's a really hard way to start a presentation.
And trust me, I've seen a lotta people crash and burn,
and they just completely fall apart
because they're trying to do it that way.
So question of the day, what are your suggestions
for adding humor but not jokes to your attention grabbers
in your presentations?
I would love to hear your comments and your questions
in that section below.
So thanks, god bless, and I hope you grab
your audience's attention really well
in your next presentation.