I have a one on one client that I’m working with at the moment who wants to know how to add humour to a boring topic. She is a Workplace Health and Safety Consultant, and as you can imagine, it’s a little bit of a dry and boring topic – yawn! We are working together to liven up her presentation and make it a bit more engaging and entertaining for her audience (as well as a little bit more fun for her to present!)
If you have a very boring topic that you speak or present on, and you’re wondering, “How am I ever going to make that funny?” make sure you watch this video. In it, I share three tips on how to add humour to a boring topic.
Cheers Kate
P.S. You’ll find the video transcription below if you prefer to read!
Video Transcription:
Hello. Kate Burr from kateburr.com here, and I was wondering if you have a very boring topic that you speak or present on and you’re wondering, “How am I ever going to make that funny?” Because I have made a video especially for you.
I have a one-on-one client that I’m working with at the moment who is a Workplace Health and Safety Consultant. And as you can imagine, it’s a little bit of a dry and boring topic, so she has employed my services to make sure that she can liven that up and make that a bit more engaging and entertaining for her audiences but also, a little bit more fun for her to present.
If you are trying to make a boring or dull or dry topic humorous, I have got a couple of tips for you to help you out.
Use Humour to Break Down the Barriers
The first tip is, use humour to break down the barriers. There is going to be a whole heap of barriers that are going to be in place when you go out to speak. People like, “We don’t really want to listen to this. Do we have to? This is such a waste of our time. What a boring day. Oh my gosh, stab me in the eye with a fork.” Sort of thing.
We don’t want to have any of that sort of stuff, so let’s use humour to get all of those preconceived ideas out in the open and break down the barriers. And also, by having a bit of a laugh with your audience, people are going to go, “Oh, maybe this isn’t going to be that bad. I don’t feel like I’m in a hostage situation quite so much anymore.”
You also want to build that rapport and engagement with your audience really early up with humour. So that people go, “Oh. Yep. Okay. I think we’re going to be okay with this person. It’s not going to be a terrible day after all.”
Make sure you use humour right up front if you’ve got a dry or boring topic. So that people can just go change their stereotypes and their opinions of you straight off the bat. And then they will be feeling a lot more comfortable to listen to what you have to say.
Use Humour to Highlight What’s In It for Them
The second thing you need to be thinking about and get really clear on is, what’s in it for them. Why do the audience need to listen to you? Sure your topic might be boring or dull or blah but, it’s probably also really beneficial. So you need to use humour to make sure that they understand the benefits of your presentation and the content and why your message is so important.
What you need to do is, make sure that you put it (your message) into a context that they will care about. Once you do that, then you’re going to have a lot more chance of engagement with your audience and with your topic.
Use the Humour Zone
And thirdly, I want you to think about using the humour zone. The humour zone is your message on one side and their world on the other side. And where those two circles cross over is the humour zone. And that is the best place that you’ve got opportunity to get success with landing humour. It will be on point for you but also something that they can relate to.
What you need to do is take your content and put it in a context that they will understand. So it may be something that they don’t have a lot of familiarity with so you want to be using a model to explain your content in a model that they will understand. And once you can do that, it’s much more relatable, it’s much more entertaining for them and it’s also more engaging for you and your audiences.
What is your topic? I would love you to let me know. Please drop me a line or leave me a comment and let me know what your topic is and whether you think that’s dull, boring and dry or if it’s difficult for you to get buy-in from the audience. Please let me know.
If you enjoyed this video and you would like more tips on how to use humour to be funny on purpose and get that engagement with your audience, please join my free Facebook community, it’s Funny on Purpose: for Speakers, Leaders, Business Owners and Experts.
In there we share weekly tips on how to be more funny on purpose, and also just filling up on funny because I have this saying “if you want to be funny, you need to get funny coming so that funny can come out later”. So we go through a whole heap of that sort of stuff and have a lot of fun as well in the group.
Hopefully, you can join me in there and thank you very much for listening to this video. I will see you again next time. Bye-bye!
