Remember the time when you were a kid in a school uniform and had to walk in line to get into your classroom? Remember the time when you wore something radical and let your hair grow and were scoffed at for doing so? Heck! That's about the same time the world and the system started to slowly take away the fun from your life.

Though conditioning and discipline are needed at work and in life, but we also need to peep into the flip side of things and get a better perspective on what we are doing and what our work is all about. Looking at the lighter side becomes de-stressing, therapeutic, and increases learning.

Imagine a room full of listeners with mindsets of their own staring at you, challenging you to change their perspectives and daring you to tell them something that they don't already know. That room is charged with tension and hostility; the solution to that is humor and laughter.

Laughter succeeds not only in cutting down anxiety. It also breaks ice between you as the speaker and most people in the room. The question then arises: What kind of humor? When exactly is the time and place to add fun, and how should it be presented?

The kind of humor I personally like is home-brewed, situational, and self-inflicted. Any flip point of view about the place, the surroundings, the speaker or the topic of the speech would be relevant and non-offensive. This kind of humor is not directed towards any class, creed, or community.

The timing of the humor is also extremely important. Humor should be delivered when least expected. It should come in as a pleasant surprise. It can also come in when your audiences are on a participative roll and laughter becomes contagious and continuous. Humorous statements and remarks work best when they make the minds of the listeners take a flip.

Humor should not be put into a speech because it is the trend or because all the books on presentation skills and public speaking say so. Humor should be put in to build rapport, camaraderie, and to expose the human side of the speaker, the audience, and the subject at hand.

I once attended a workshop on comedy by a troupe of Shakespearean dramatists. The exercises were simple and easy but they worked very well because they all had an element of surprise, shock, and dealt with the acceptance of human absurdity. There were exercises that included slips of tongues; unintentional puns, exaggerations, underplay or words and incongruousness of words to facial expressions.

Raju Mandhyan

Author of "The Heart of Public Speaking", Raju has fifteen years of exposure to manufacturing, sales, marketing and international trade; seven years as an independent coach, consultant and trainer specializing in Communications, Creativity and Leadership; and former resident trainer of British Council and part-time faculty of Ateneo Professional Schools in the Philippines. His talent rests not in telling you things that are right and useful, but guiding you through your own thoughts and helping you find truths and applications for the 21st century corporate world.

Founding director of Inner Sun Consultants, he is a B.E. in Engineering, a candidate for an MBE from the University of Asia-Pacific in the Philippines. Currently an Advanced Toastmaster Gold, a Buzan Licensed Instructor for Mind Mapping?and a freelance faculty for Celemi?and the American Management Association.

www.mandhyan.com