Use humor to create a positive impression of your business.
Using humor in business presentations can put audience members at ease, keep their attention and illustrate points pertinent to your presentation goals. Selecting and incorporating humor into business presentations can be risky; it's possible to inadvertently offend your audience or have a joke fall flat.
Instructions
1. Consider how all members of your audience are likely to respond when selecting humor for a presentation.
Connect humor to your presentation topic. Consider your business and the products and services it provides. Evaluate the audience for your presentation and potential cultural and moral issues impacting how an audience interprets humor in a business presentation. Identify consequences of offending your audience with an inappropriate joke. When giving a presentation on improving profits, slip in a quote such as Ambrose Bierce's definition of a corporation as "an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility." Following up with a comment about the undesirable fate of recent corporate scammers confirms that you're not recommending cooking the books for increasing profits.
2. Humor should not confuse the audience or distract the audience from your topic.
Research your audience members, and their reasons for attending your presentation. Design your presentation with your goals of motivating, selling or converting an audience to your point of view in mind. Humor can soften a hard sell, and provide breaks between complex or difficult topics. Position key points immediately after a humorous interlude to control audience attention.
3. Don't make assumptions about how an audience may respond to humor.
Design a simple presentation, and avoid adding humor if you are worried about presenting the topic. Speaking to a group is difficult. Nervousness, insecurity, and anxiety are common feelings when giving a presentation. Humor that seems clever may backfire if you are stressed about your presentation.
4. Joking at the expense of business competitors is not professional.
Select humor that is not derogatory or negative; keeping the tone light and positive is a safe choice. Avoid using humor critical of or insulting to race, gender, religion, ability, age and ethnicity. Humor involving stereotypes, adult topics and profanity are inappropriate for business presentations. Humorous topics might offend audience members for reasons not evident to you.
5. Humor in business presentations assists with engaging your audience.
Gauge potential reception to humor by observing your audience. Consider your audience when deciding if or what types of humor to use in your presentation. Disrespecting business competitors can come back to haunt you and does nothing to emphasize your company's strong points. Continue with your presentation if a joke falls flat. Audience members may become restless, tired and distracted toward the end of a business presentation. Signs of boredom and checking watches are cues to skip the last bit of humor.
