Many experienced presenters believe that humor plays a very important role in enhancing the efficacy of a presentation on any topic. Humor helps to "break the Ice" and generates confidence in the presenter, while it helps the audience to feel free with the presenter. This in fact makes the audience less critical of the presenter. Additionally, humor is an effective tactic to generate interest in the audience who expects an interesting presentation from a presenter who has started off the presentation well.
However, humor is not always appropriate in
all types of presentations. For example one is
not expected to use humor in a presentation that
talks about serious economic disparities between
nations or about a great personality who is no
more. Similarly humor would be very inappropriate
in a presentation that deals with war and destruction
or terrible sorrow. In essence, it follows that
humor must not be used when the presentation has
serious and sensitive emotional appeal. If one
uses humor in a presentation that affects the
finer emotions of the audience, the audience will
consider the presenter to be insensitive and of
inappropriate manners.
However, humor is very effective when used to describe politics; even serious issues of politics, business, education etc. It may be seen that humor must be liberally used in presentations that do not personally affect the audience, or when the views do not conflict with the personal and strongly held views of the audience. Very few people have the capacity to laugh at themselves and so it would seem very inappropriate on the part of the presenter when he or she uses humor to drive home a point while many in the audience do not find the happenings amusing enough. Hence, as a rule of the thumb, always use humor when no one in the audience is going to get affected personally by your remarks or gestures or off-the-cuff remarks.
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