How to Deliver a Great TED Talk: Presentation Secrets of the World's Best Speakers (How to Give a TED Talk) (12 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

How to Add Humor to Your Speech

Humor is a great way to engage your audience in your speech. Not only does humor keep your audience interested in your presentation, it also aids learning. Some of the most popular and inspiring TED talks of all times are also the most humorous. For example, in Sir Ken Robinson’s popular TED talk, he makes the audience laugh an average of once a minute. Dan Pink’s TED talk also contains great humor.

We’ve already discussed in earlier chapters that you should avoid jokes. So, how can you add humor to a presentation without resorting to telling jokes?

CREATE AN EXPECTATION, THEN SUDDENLY BREAK IT

A comment is humorous when it creates an expectation and then suddenly breaks it. We laugh when we are surprised. This is why we usually burst into laughter when we see someone suddenly trip and fall on their face. It was unexpected – it was a surprise – and it causes us to laugh. The side benefit of laughter is that it makes us more alert, which aids learning.

Ken Robinson
is a master at creating expectations and then breaking them. Consider the following line:

“If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often... thankfully.”
(audience laughs)

In comedy, the part of the line that creates the expectation is called the set-up. In this case, the set-up is “If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often ...” Sir Ken’s set-up makes us think that he is complaining about his wife not cooking often enough. The punch line refers to the part of the line that suddenly breaks the expectation. In this case, the punch line is the word “thankfully.” It suddenly breaks our earlier expectation because we find out Sir Ken is actually
glad
his wife doesn’t cook often!

The thing that makes a comment humorous is the
sudden
breaking of the expectation. Thus the shorter the punch line, the greater the laugh. If Sir Ken had said, “If my wife is cooking a meal at home, which is not often, and I’m thankful about that,” the comment wouldn’t have been as funny. If you want to produce a gigantic laugh from your audience, keep your set-up and punch line as short as possible.

Here’s another example of this technique from
Dan Pink’s TED talk
:

I didn’t do very well. I, in fact, graduated in the part of my law school class that made the top 90 percent ... possible.
(audience laughs)

The set-up creates the expectation that Dan graduated at the top of his class. The punch line of “possible” suddenly breaks that expectation and gives us new insight that Dan graduated in the bottom of his class. Our brain realizes that it’s had a verbal trick performed on it, and so we laugh. The other reason this line works so well because it’s self-deprecating humor – Dan is poking fun at himself.

USE SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR

Self-deprecating humor refers to making yourself the butt of the jokes. If you’re willing to make fun of yourself, you’ll never run out of humorous possibilities.

Consider the following piece of self-deprecating humor from Dan Pink’s TED talk:

“I never practiced law a day in my life; I pretty much wasn’t allowed to.”
(Audience laughs.)

Self-deprecating humor works because it shows that you’re willing to poke fun at yourself. It gives the audience permission to have fun because you’re having fun by making fun of yourself. Furthermore, it makes you more likeable as a speaker because we all like people who take themselves lightly.

Here’s another piece of self-deprecating humor from Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk:

“I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England ... as you can see.”

Sir Ken pokes fun at himself because it’s obvious from looking at him that he doesn’t do ballet.

The lesson here is this: don’t be afraid to poke fun at yourself on stage.

OVER-EXAGERRATE

People also laugh at obvious over-exaggerations. Consider the following piece of humor from
Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk:

When I first started telling people — when I was a teenager — that I wanted to be a writer, I was met with this same kind of, sort of fear-based reaction. People would say, “Aren’t you afraid you’re never going to have any success? Aren’t you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing’s ever going to come of it and you’re going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure?” (audience laughter)

The obvious over-exaggeration of the last comment is what causes people to laugh.

In his TED talk, Sir Ken also used over-exaggeration to get a laugh from his audience. Consider how grossly he over-exaggerates his wife’s ability to multi-task:

“If she’s cooking, you know, she’s dealing with people on the phone, she’s talking to the kids, she’s painting the ceiling, she’s doing open-heart surgery over here”
(audience laughter)

Here’s another example of over-exaggeration from the same talk by Sir Ken:

[If you are at a party and someone asks] “What do you do?” and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face. They’re like, “Oh my God,” you know, “Why me? My one night out all week!” (audience laughter)

There are entire books devoted to humor, but I find that the above three techniques are the ones from which I generate the bulk of laughs.

IN A NUTSHELL

Use the following techniques to add humor to your presentation:

• Create an expectation, then suddenly break it
  
• Poke fun at yourself using self-deprecating humor
  
• Playfully over-exaggeration to get a laugh from your audience
  

CHAPTER TWENTY

Rhetorical Questions

Asking rhetorical questions is a great way to get your audience emotionally engaged in your speech. Rhetorical questions give audience members the opportunity to reflect on their lives, thus helping to build an emotional connection between your speech and their lives.

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS THAT ASK YOUR AUDIENCE TO IMAGINE

For example, if you were giving a speech on the power of focus, you could ask the question, “Just imagine: how would your life be different if you had the ability to focus 100% on what needed to be done? How much more would you be able to achieve? What goals would you finally be able to achieve?”

This rhetorical question gets audience members to imagine their lives being better if they could do whatever it is that the speech promises to help them do. It gets the audience members excited about the speech because they are excited about improving their lives.

Notice that the rhetorical question is much more powerful than the statement, “If you had the ability to focus 100% on what needed to be done, you would be able to achieve so much more in life!” The rhetorical question invokes an emotional response from the audience by getting them to imagine their lives, whereas the statement simply goes in one ear and out the other.

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS THAT ASK YOUR AUDIENCE TO REFLECT

You can also use rhetorical questions to get your audience to reflect on their lives. For examples, in a speech I once gave about my ex-girlfriend (whom I called Nancy Negative), I told a story about Nancy Negative shooting down my dream with her negativity. I then asked the audience, “Who is your Nancy Negative?” This rhetorical question took an object out of my speech (in this case, Nancy Negative) and put it into the audience’s lives. This rhetorical question got the audience to reflect on all the negative people who were killing their hopes and dreams.

Similarly, if you are telling a story about mountain climbing, you could ask your audience the following rhetorical questions: “What mountain are you climbing? What peak are you trying to reach?” Such questions take an object out of your speech (in this case, the mountain or peak) and put it into the audience’s lives. It gets the audience to reflect on their lives, the obstacles they are facing and the goals they are trying to achieve in their lives.

Rhetorical questions don’t necessarily have to get the audience to reflect on their lives. They can also get the audience to reflect on their society. For example, if you are giving a speech on gun violence, you might say: “Every day, two hundred children die in acts of gun violence. How many more have to die before we take action?” This question invokes powerful emotions in the audience because it gets them to reflect on the state of their society and, at the same time, makes them feel responsible by implying that they have the ability to prevent the deaths.

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS THAT REFLECT YOUR AUDIENCE’S THOUGHTS

Rhetorical questions can also be used to voice out loud your audience’s thoughts. If you voice your audience’s thoughts aloud, your audience members will feel connected to you. They’ll think, “Wow! That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

For example, in her TED talk on body language, Amy Cuddy knew that her audience would be wondering about the practical applications of the theory she had shared with them. Therefore, she asked the following rhetorical questions:

“But the next question, of course, is can power posing for a few minutes really change your life in meaningful ways? ... Where can you actually apply this?”

Similarly, if you know your audience members will be thinking, “What happened to Mr. ABC after he made decision XYZ?”, you can simply say, “You’re probably wondering, ‘What happened to …?’” This builds a rapport with your audience, helps move your story along and creates curiosity about what happened next.

To make the best use of this tool, go through one of your speeches (either the transcript of your speech or an audio/video recording of it). As you listen to your speech, put yourself into your audience’s shoes and ask yourself, “As an audience member, what questions pop into my mind?” Use this knowledge to voice out loud what your audience might be thinking in the form of rhetorical questions.

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS THAT ASK YOUR AUDIENCE TO COMPARE

Finally, rhetorical questions can also get the audience members to compare between two choices.

The most famous question of this type comes from Ronald Reagan, who said during the 1980 presidential election:

Ask yourself, ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?”

Notice how this question stirs more powerful emotions in the audience than simply saying, “We were better off four years ago than we are today.” The question asks the audience to reflect on their life at present, compare it with four years ago and come to the inevitable conclusion that they aren’t better off. Since it’s the audience members who come to that conclusion, they are more likely to buy into the argument than if they had that conclusion thrust on them by Reagan.

Here’s another comparison question from Zig Ziglar:

“Are you a wandering generality or a meaningful specific?”

This rhetorical question gets audience members to reflect on their lives to find which one they are, and they naturally make the conclusion that they want to be a meaningful specific.

Rhetorical questions are very powerful in arousing audience emotions. Use rhetorical questions to get your audience to imagine, reflect and compare, and to voice out loud your audience’s questions.

IN A NUTSHELL

Use rhetorical questions to arouse your audience’s curiosity and keep them emotionally engaged in your presentation. There are several types of rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions that:

• Ask your audience to imagine
  
• Ask your audience to reflect
  
• Reflect your audience’s thoughts
  
• Ask your audience to compare