Why is humor in a speaking engagement so important? You don’t want to bore your audience to death, do you? Or put them to sleep perhaps. This is the purpose of injecting humor in any speech. Eric Feng, a celebrated Toastmaster in Singapore, is well versed in this skill.
In his public speaking blog, Eric Feng discussed about observational humor. Observational humor, as he defines it, would mean a kind of humor where a speaker mentions a situation or a particular conversation during a specific session that is funny.
So the humor is actually understood by the same group of people present at that time. Basically, to look at the funny side of things is called observational humor.
So how is this done?
First, there should be a commitment from you as a speaker to look for humor during the session. He called this, ‘putting on the humor hat’. “Lines that will be thrown as observational humor don’t just fall from the sky,” he says. But rather, it’s a result of constant practice and focus on discovering it.
Past experiences as well as being updated with current events may also help in creating lines. Who knows, maybe you can relate these things with what is going on during the meeting. It is also important to gather observations before the meeting starts. Bottom line is to show up early. By doing so, one could have the feel of the scenario, the place, the topic to be discussed, the audience and you get to actually interact with them even before the session starts. It may be difficult in the beginning, but it is a skill that every Toastmaster should have. And soon, you will find yourself being able to speak a line or two with observational humor.
He ended this topic with a challenge to “begin tuning your humor radar”, thus practice looking for observational humor in meetings. It is a discipline in itself.
Do check out Eric Feng’s site and be inspired and enlightened. It will be worth your time.