Five styles of humor on the platform - which one are you?

Picture this: entering a seminar room filled with seventy hostile supervisors.

I have been hired to present on the topic How to Lead Group Meetings. None of them wants to be there.

Their boss introduces me. There is no applause as I step up to the platform. I stand for a moment in silence as I study crossed arms and downturned faces. I say, "I'm here today to teach you The Seven Most Successful Strategies for Skipping Out of Seminars, and you obviously need help in this area."

Some light laughter. A number of arms uncross. Several faces look up. I list such topics as How to Fake a Note from Your Doctor, Self-Cloning Made Easy and Whine Your Way to the Golf Course. People are sitting up straight now instead of slouching in their seats. Their boss looks nervous, but I have her permission to use this approach.

The laughter softens people up enough for the next step. They choose partners and tell each other what they would rather be doing. More smiles, more faces light up. I then open the floor to discuss what is important to them. Many say they need to learn how to deal with difficult employees, not lead group meetings. Since that is part of the seminar anyway, I start with that topic. They seem much more open and willing now. Ironically, a participant asks, "How do you get a group of grumpy, unwilling people to participate?" All I have to do is stand there with a wry smile on my face and the whole room bursts into laughter.

The rest of the seminar is productive, creative and eye-opening. The boss is relieved. I thank her for trusting me. This is just one example of how humour enhances, and in some cases saves, a speaker's presentation. Notice I say "humour" and not "comedy", because the two are different. I never considered myself a comedian. I was rarely the person telling the latest joke, doing pratfalls, or playing tricks on people. But I did notice that when people laughed, it was because I told a story or made an ironic observation. My early attempts at humour on the platform failed because I thought jokes were the only way to lighten up a group. The truth is, I neither had the talent, time or patience to write a good joke. By honing my innate humor skills first, I eventually built enough confidence to get groups laughing. After many years of researching a variety of humour forms and working with a dozens of speakers, I created a humour personality profile.

Far too often I hear my clients say, "I'm just not funny!" Usually they are trying to be someone else. I believe everyone (given the right circumstances) can make people laugh if they start where they feel comfortable.

I worked with an IT manager whose boss promoted him to sales. His rival was what I call a Demonstrator humorist. She was lively and extroverted, and captivated her listeners with impressions and playing off her audience. My client felt extremely intimated by this style. Yet during our coaching sessions he often made witty observations on the sales process or hilarious self-deprecating remarks. He was more of a Contemplator humorist. I encouraged him to make note of his remarks and use them during his sales talks. As it turned out, even though his style was more low-key than his colleague's, he won people over with his humility and by remaining true to his own personality.

I also worked with an aspiring keynote speaker who thought she had to be a great storyteller like the Narrator speaker Jack Canfield. Yet she found it challenging to understand story structure and deliver anecdotes with animation. She had a very logical mind and liked to play with words. I suggested joke writing to her. She got Judy Carter's book The Comedy Bible (Fireside, 2001) and worked up a short stand up act that successfully delivered her material in a light-hearted way.

There are five basic humour styles. Use your intuition to see where your strengths lie. Demonstrators tend to be open, people-oriented, animated, and impetuous. The comedians Robin Williams, Lucille Ball, Jim Carrey, and Carol Burnett all fit this profile. They are good at improvisation, caricatures, impressions, and physical comedy. A good way to enhance these skills is through comedy improvisation classes.

Narrators are warm and people-oriented, but more indirect and diplomatic. Bill Cosby, Mary Tyler Moore, and Johnny Carson fit this profile. Their type of humour is derived from relationships between people. They make good storytellers and do well using audience participation to elicit laughter. Try working through a book such as A Story is a Promise by Bill Johnson (Blue Heron, 2000).

Assertors are natural leaders, task-oriented and direct. The humorists David Letterman, John Cleese, Candice Bergen, and Roseanne all fit this profile. Assertors tend to be attracted to jokes and pointed humour. Look at the Judy Carter book I mention above or try a stand-up comedy class. Contemplators are task-oriented but more indirect and analytical. Humorists like Steven Wright, Woody Allen, and Ellen De Generes fit this profile. They like witty one-liners, observations, and irony. Like Narrators, they are more low-key, but can just as easily win over an audience with their intellectual style of humour. Work through the exercises in Comedy Writing Step By Step by Gene Perret (Samuel French, 1990) for practice.

These styles, of course, are highly generalized but allow a good overview of how personality affects humour. Most people display qualities of more than one style. This is ideal for a speaker, since you not only want to remain true to yourself but also attract the variety of styles you will find in your audience. When you can easily switch between styles, or better yet, use them all at once, you know you have attained the Holy Grail of all humour styles, which I call the Creator.

To hear more tips—consider hiring Carla to be a speaker at your association, sales rally, or staff development session. As a keynote speaker, trainer and coach, Carla helps people stay in high performance states. Her motivational and inspirational presentations on change management, communication skills, creative leadership, humor at work and presentation skills are popular in Canada, the United States, the UK and Asia.

www.carlarieger.com