Humour creates a bond between you and your audience. It demonstrates flexibility, while helping you break barriers and create emotional depth with your message. It eases the tension that may have emanated from divulging complex information. It captures your audience’s attention, reduces their anxiety, and makes their experience memorable. However, inappropriate use of humour can trivialise your speech.
Also, strive to capture attention. Humour acts as a powerful attention-grabbing tool in public speaking. A good humour well deployed may be all that is needed to successfully hold your audience interest. Nevertheless, you should consider the following: supposedly good humour may not sound that way if uttered at the wrong time.
Humour can help ease tension and alleviate nervousness, both for the speaker and the audience. It serves as a way of distilling preconceived notions or opinions by the audience. It also makes you as simplistic as possible. This is because humour lightens the atmosphere and creates a more relaxed environment. To actualise this, avoid the use of deprecating humour as this can make you lose your audience immediately or pass the wrong message.
Again, tailor humour to your audience. It is of significance to understand the audience’s preferences, culture, and sensitivities when using humour. One of the easiest ways to dissatisfy your audience is through your speech. Humorous expressions or remarks that can be deemed insensitive or offensive to specific audiences or culture should be avoided.