Working in conference business I had an opportunity to see many great presenters. Lucky me! In my opinion one of the most important ingredients in successful presentation, or event business conversation is Humor, does it come easy to you?
Not to me. My presentations tend to be quite serious, and I am going to change it. I have made it my goal 2 or 3 years ago.. .it is still work in progress. Not that I have not being doing anything about it. Here how I started:

1. I bought an audio book How to Write Selling Humor – very interesting, it made me understand more about humor. I can recognize some of the “tricks” now when I listen to others. Also, I understand that no matter how good you are and how hard you try, you will never have 100% of your jokes understood by everyone, there will be always some one in the audience who find it funny and others – not, so we should not be afraid to take a risk.

2. I have selected Humorous Manual at my Toastmasters club and asked my mentor to coach me, we worked hard on building humorous lines into my speech…we had lots of fun and got some good ideas. Time to present – I can’t tell them, this is not MY humor, American style does not suite me. It doesn’t sound convincing when you are telling someone else’s lines… Wait, how the others are doing it?

3. I have attended every humorous contest of District 59 contest for the last 5 years, watched the best humorous speakers, I have met the best of the best, I asked advice. I had a lots of laugh. “I watched, I listened, I took notes” – John Zimmer, the winner of many Humorous Contests in District 59. I love his blog Manner of Speaking, check out this post: Anatomy of a Humorous Speech Great tips! Helps you really understand the process of humorous presentation, but can I make my speech or presentation more humorous now? Not sure. I guess all I need to do at this moment is Practice, Practice and Practice. This is the key to success. The hardest here is to not to be afraid that it will not turn out the way you want, Dauglas Bairbanks says that only certain % of the lines you plan to be humorous people are laughing at, I believe its one third. That should not make us stop trying.
I like to learn how to make more jokes in presentations and business conversation; it relaxes the customer and helps build relationship…. I know, a fear of failure is keeping me from practicing it more often and therefore progressing in this area. This is what I need to change, just how?