Public Speaking Course:
Self-Effacing Humor
Self-effacing humor simply means to make fun of yourself. It
makes people believe your not superior to them and that your
a lot like they are. It is a very powerful form of humor that can be used during your
presentation. It gets its strength from highlighting your
weaknesses. It seems that people who have the ability to laugh at themselves
in just the right amount during a presentation are looked at as secure,
confident, strong, and likeable. In my public speaking course you will
learn how to use self-effacing humor the right way.
With self-effacing humor a little goes a long way. If you overdo it
during your presentation, instead of looking confident you will look like you have low
self esteem. That is not the effect you your looking for. If you can't bring yourself to use any self-effacing
humor, you should learn. I must be candid here. Most people hate to
deal with a stuffed shirt. Unfortunately, if you can't poke a little
fun at yourself, that is the way you are perceived.
I think the reason self-effacing humor works so well is that weak people
feel the need to inflate themselves and powerful people don't. If you
have the confidence to tease yourself, you are indirectly sending the
message to the audience that you are secure and powerful, which is intrinsic
to your "aura" of all you learn in your public
speaking course. Most audiences
can see right through speakers who are trying to puff themselves up.
It turns them off quickly.
Someone who is not afraid to tease him or herself is the one who makes
the greatest connection with the audience because everyone in the audience
has embarrassed themselves or failed at something at one time or the
other. If you use self-effacing humor, the audience knows that you know how it feels to
fail and that is a very powerful skill to use.
Katharine Rolfe, President of The Lighten Up Club, takes self-effacing
humor one step further and taking steps beyond the norm is part of
what you will learn in your public speaking course. She says, 'I call it self-appreciating humor
because it conveys a positive appreciation of ourselves as humans who
are simply out there doing our best and bumbling along as we go.' Katharine's
organization believes the key to a happy life is the ability to laugh
at yourself, for then you are never without a source of amusement, when
you need a laugh to lighten up your life, you always have yourself.
Unless you are a Don Rickles type presenter (known for his hockey puck
teasing style of humor), you should never set yourself up as superior
to the audience either socially, financially, or intellectually. You
want the audience to accept you as one of them. Let them feel superior
to you in some way. Your audience would rather hear about the time you
fell on your face, rather than the time you won the race.
That is why self-effacing humor is great during your presentations.
The audience likes the fact that you openly admit any weaknesses you
have. They
laugh, but they still respect you because you are self-confident enough
to joke about yourself.
There are any number of things you can make fun of about yourself.
Your physical appearance is good if you are especially tall, or short
or fat or bald. Just make sure that the physical appearance is obvious
to the audience. If you are disorganized, you could tease yourself about
that. If you can't parallel park, you could tease yourself about that.
Just about anything will work as long as you are the target. This
skill is all about being "on target" and connecting
with your audience.
What you want to avoid teasing about is any subject that has a direct
tie to your credibility, for your credibility is why they are paying
you to be in front of them speaking. For instance, if you were a nuclear
control room technician, you would not want to joke about the time you
pushed the wrong button. But, if you got fired from your job as a nuclear
control room technician for almost pushing the wrong button, then this
fact might be a good topic for humor. It could turn into a great topic
if you now own a landscaping company or are in some other non-threatening
position.
To use self-effacing humor, you don't
necessarily have to joke about yourself. You can make fun of your family
background, your profession, or anything else that directly relates
to your life. I tell a story in my presentations about the time my mom came
from our very small hometown to visit me in the big city of Washington,
D.C. The audience hears about how small Claysville is and that my mom's
house is way out in the sticks. We didn't have city water, or city sewerage,
or cable TV. I then go on to tell how we took a trip on the Spirit of
Washington for a dinner cruise and went sightseeing all over the capital.
Here's how the end of the story goes:
"When we got home that evening I was exhausted, so I told mom
I was going to bed and that I would see her in the morning. She said,
"OK. I'm just going to watch the news and then I'll go to bed."
I got up at about 2:00 a.m. and there was mom sitting in front of the
TV. Her head was nodding and drooping. I said, "Mom. What are you
doing?" She said, "I'm just waiting for the news to be over."
Well she would have waited a long time because she was watching . .
.CNN 24 hour headline news."
In this story I was not directly teasing myself. I was teasing about
my small town upbringing and about the innocent and funny mistake my mom
pulled when she came to visit.
Former president Ronald
Reagan was a master at using self-effacing humor. In his bid for the
Presidency in 1980 his age appeared to be his biggest obstacle. He attacked
the problem with self-effacing humor. He would joke about his age all
the time which then turned age into a non-issue. He told a group of
reporters once, 'Thomas Jefferson once said, 'One should not worry about
chronological age compared to the ability to perform the task.' . .
. Ever since Thomas Jefferson told me that I stopped worrying about
my age.'
Look for opportunities to use self effacing humor during your presentations.
This will be one of your most powerful skills to connect
with the audience and a subtle way to show your strength by joking about
your weaknesses.
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