Don’t Waste Great Jokes on Your Audience

“So a funny thing happened when…”

Do you have to get your audiences to laugh to win them over?

Many say ‘yes’; And with good reason. After all – it’s a fact – the effective use of humour can boost a speaker’s capacity to connect with an audience.

It offers a great way to help your audience to enjoy the experience of hearing a talk, to feel more relaxed and receptive, and even to defuse tension or anxiety when tackling potentially difficult topics.

But does this mean you need to be a teller of jokes or a bit of a comedian to maximize audience engagement?

Actually no. And here are 2 reasons why – the first will be obvious and the second one may be more of a surprise:

#1. Even Good Jokes can Fall Flat

Let’s have a look at some jokes that make people laugh. Check out the top 3 gags from the Edinburgh Comedy Festival last year:

“You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks” (Stewart Francis)

“Last night me and the missus watched 3 DVDs back to back. Luckily I was the one facing the telly.” (Tim Vine)

“I was raised as an only child, which really annoyed my sister” (Will Marsh)

What do you think? Did you laugh – even a little?

Maybe?

Of course, the truth about jokes is that different people find different things funny. So there’s no guarantee that you found any or all these remotely amusing.

But, leave that aside for a moment.

Also – and please indulge me on this – can I ask you to make a few sweeping assumptions about jokes you could tell?

Let’s say:

You have a plethora of knock’em dead, surefire funny jokes
You can remember them perfectly, using all of the right words and not forgetting bits – which is kind of important, since most jokes need to follow a sequence to work
You have the nerve, timing and demeanor to tell jokes well, and
Your jokes lend themselves to reinforcing points you want to make

Brilliant. You could have an audience in stitches and begging for more. And congratulations, you’re among the smallest fraction of us capable of consistently getting laughs at joke after joke – which is why there are so few stand up comedians who make a living from telling jokes.

And yet, even if you have all of these things going for you…

…You could still be wasting your time and the audience’s time!

#2 Jokes May Compete With the Effect You Want

You see there’s some bad news here for those capable of having us falling out of the rafters and clutching our sides because we’re laughing so much.

Science is not on your side. Even though your audience may enjoy what you say, there’s a good chance your words will be forgotten in short order.

Robert Provine, professor of psychology at Maryland University and author of “Laughter: A Scientific Investigation” explains:

“What makes a joke successful is also what makes it difficult to remember. The punch line involves an unexpected turn. “

The Telegraph, Mar 2009

Memory researchers suggest additional reasons that great jokes may elude common capture.

Daniel L. Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of “The Seven Sins of Memory,” says there is a big difference between verbatim recall of all the details of an event and gist recall of its general meaning.

“We humans are pretty good at gist recall but have difficulty with being exact,” he said.

New York Times, Mar 2009

So here’s the thing with jokes – and I’m not saying you should never use them, as they can absolutely be used for effect and to amplify ideas…

…Don’t rely on them as a primary means of imparting a message to your audience, as – unlike great stories that can often be remembered years after you sit down – they:

Are rarely as memorable as you might like to think
Can compete with (or even over shadow) the messages you want to share, and
May reduce your audience’s capacity to remember the messages you really need them to take away after you sit down

As a speaker – if your goal is to educate and persuade versus merely to entertain – steer away from using jokes as your main attraction or as a focal point.

If your aim is the former, focus more on great stories to engage your audience. They are easier to tell, easier to remember and are much more likely to result in audiences forming positive views regarding the speaker – including authenticity and trustworthiness.