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You've written that all-important speech. Though the content is sound, you suddenly begin to worry that the speech is too flat. The temptation: Insert a couple of jokes on the fly.

While it might seem like a good idea to pep up a speech with a few laughs, you won't find it so funny when that doesn't work.

Yes, humour enhances a speech, putting audiences at ease and helping to make your words more memorable. But do it wrong and the joke will be on you.

So how do you make sure that humour will get the reaction you want? Just like the three Rs of school, there are three Rs for inserting humour into speeches: be real, relevant and rehearse.

Real

The first R should remind speakers to be realistic about what they're up against when they try to be funny.

The most successful comedians in the world break in new material with highly paid writers and endless editing. No business speaker sprinkling a few jokes into the text is going to compare favourably to these dedicated professionals.

As well, an audience at comedy events is primed: They've had drinks, are relaxed and hope to be entertained. No business audience is this ready to laugh, especially at an amateur's efforts.

You have to be realistic about how much laughter to expect. And that is to generate a chuckle or a smile. Thunderous applause and gales of laughter are for TV shows and night clubs.

If a line falls flat, keep going. Don't retell, explain or hit the audience over the head with a hammer. That won't make people laugh and just draws attention to your failure. Best to just move on.

Novices should also restrict their efforts to one attempt at humour per speech until they work up to a repertoire of just three to five workable lines per speech. That's quite realistic.

It's safe, as well, because business speakers often deal with sensitive topics. If there's a wrong way to take a joke and put it on the front page of the paper or company newsletter, you can bet somebody will.

Jokes about sex, gender or physical attributes? Get real. Off-colour remarks make people feel uncomfortable. Remarks should be suitable for a teenaged daughter or a neighbour.

Relevant

A business audience doesn't attend a speech purely to be entertained. They want to hear something relevant to the day, the issue or the situation they're in.

When free-trade agreement negotiator Simon Reisman spoke to a Toronto business audience after the deal was signed, he followed half a day of briefings by lawyers. He began his remarks by saying he'd been sitting in the audience all morning and wondered, "Did I do all that? If you want to know anything about the free-trade deal, don't ask me, ask one of these lawyers."

That put everyone at ease and even showed Mr. Riesman's respect for his fellow lawyers.

To gather relevant material, toss anecdotes, news items and quotes in a file for future use.

Oddball research findings, legal rulings from your industry, incomprehensible government regulation and the business deal that got away may often have humour value. Other good sources are the daily newspaper, industry magazines and business publications.

Rather than a joke book, try turning to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. This collection of quotations, phrases and proverbs is a good place to start finding relevant material. The quotes are categorized by topic and author so that a speaker can easily find something topical.

Several years ago, I heard a business speaker use a famous quote to good effect at a Canada-U.S. Business Association meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan told the audience he was reminded of a quote from Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had likened North America to a bottle of milk, with Canada being the cream floating on top.

Both U.S. and Canadian audience members greeted the remark with tremendous laughter and applause. It was relevant to that audience, which was focused on the trading relationship between the two countries.

Stay current. If you think a line might work with five other audiences and could have been used five years ago, steer clear.

Something that will work in multiple venues over many years is probably not specific enough to be relevant for a particular audience. Instead, that audience is likely to get the sense that you pulled out a standard line and didn't bother to do your homework.

Another litmus test: ask yourself if audience members have dealt with the issue recently. Have they seen it in the news? Or will they soon be encountering that law, regulation or challenge? If so, you have a relevant core to a humorous line.

Rehearse

Winston Churchill said: "I need not recount the pain I had taken to prepare, nor the efforts I had made to hide the work of preparation."

He is said to have spent hours practising -- which is a big part of why he's known as a great orator.

But most business speakers spend very little of their days speaking, and most of their time reading.

Moreover, most people spend their lives looking at themselves in the mirror, which is a flipped image, and hearing their voices through the bone and flesh of their own heads, not through the air, as audiences do.

As a result, few speakers actually know what they look or sound like.

It's a waste to rehearse a speech by skimming words and mumbling to yourself. That's called proof-reading. Proper rehearsal is done out loud, in full voice and with full gestures. It should be in front of a video camera, audio tape machine or trusted colleagues.

Video and audio playbacks of rehearsals give a speaker vital self-knowledge.

Most executives rehearse too quickly, as if speed-reading for their own comprehension, not polishing for the benefit of the audience.

Video and audio tape allow for multiple playbacks, intense focus on short segments and the study of body language and facial expressions.

It's important to test humour.

Deliver a quote or story several times around the water cooler, to neighbours and to family members to see if it has the desired effect. When it's finally told in a real speech, it will sound natural.

Professional actors put in their rehearsal time. After a recent performance at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, I lingered while the actors of "the best repertory theatre on the entire continent," according to famed New York theatre critic John Simon, fielded questions.

One audience member asked how much rehearsal is involved in a play. The actor said the rule is one hour for every minute on stage, plus extra time if there's singing, dancing, fighting or accents.

Speakers who want to succeed at the podium ought to keep that calculation in mind.

Toronto-based Allan Bonner trains executives in communication skills and is the author of several books on communication.

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