Public Speaking Training - Use Humor to Maintain Interest Level

To effectively use humor to maintain interest, you must first understand the listening pattern of an audience in a typical boring presentation.

A typical "goodnight kiss" presentation starts out with a hopeful audience at or before the introduction of the presenter. If the introduction is halfway good, the interest level will stay up or rise slightly. Then the boring presenter gets up and tells a dumb and/or irrelevant story or joke and the interest level begins to fall rapidly. As the presenter gets deep into the subject matter, the audience passes through sleep (ZZZZZs), rapid eye movement sleep (New Improved ZZZZZs) and soon into a comatose state (Extra Heavy Duty, Industrial Strength ZZZZZs).

At a critical moment in the presentation, the interest level of the audience rises sharply. This is usually the moment Mr. or Ms. Hammock Head says, "In conclusion." This sharp rise in intensity is primarily due to the audience members putting on their shoes and gathering their briefcases. After droning on for another 15 minutes, the on-stage anesthesiologist figures enough is enough and immediately drops dead, but no one in the audience notices.

Even if you are a really good presenter, it is still tough to keep an audience's interest level up. Every person in an audience daydreams to a certain extent. He or she can't help it. The human mind can listen far faster than you can talk. The mind of each audience member is naturally bored. For those of you that like numbers, the average rate of speech is 140-180 words per minute. The mind is capable of listening at 700 wpm. It's no wonder audience members get bored.

Use humor as often as needed! Find out more great speaking techniques!