Public Speaking Course:
Funny Question and Answer Sessions
A great tip from my public speaking course is that your question-and-answer
sessions are great opportunities to emphasize your funny style and get your
audience involved.
In your public speaking course you will practice different ways opening up
your Q & A sessions with humor. You could say, 'The last time I opened up
for a Q & A session, the first question I got was 'What time is it?' or 'Can
I be excused?' or 'Aren't you getting tired up there?' Say anything except the
expected 'Okay now I'm going to open it up for questions.'
A good public speaker will be fun and different from the norm. A way to
prepare for your Q & A sessions is to spend some time anticipating what
questions might be asked. After doing that you can create funny answers to use
before your real answer. This technique is a lot of fun, just be careful not to
sound like a smart aleck when saying it, or you might accidentally offend the
one who asked the question.
When you give a witty response to an audience member's question it
should appear spontaneous. You will need to be ready with well-rehearsed
responses from your prior planning. If you want to take more control of the
humor used in a Q & A session, you can easily do that too. Here are two
solid methods that I use all the time.
The first is to plant stooges in the audience. The second is a variation on
an old standby Q & A method.
When I refer to stooges in the audience, I mean that you should choose one or
more people from the audience to help you out. You contact these people either
by phone when you are doing your pre-program research or during the time you are
mingling beforehand with audience members. You simply ask them for some help
during the talk. If they agree, tell them to raise their hand during the Q &
A portion of the talk. They will be asking a certain fake question you give
them.
Remember though that you must supply the question. The more customized it is
to the audience, the better reaction it will get, and mastering these skills in
your public speaking course will make it special. The question that will be
asked could be what is funny or your preplanned answer could be. Either way
should get you a laugh from the audience.
If you got the president of the company to ask a really dumb question like,
'How much did we pay you to be here?', that could get a great response from the
audience.
Or it might be funny if you got one of the top salespeople to ask, "Do I
get to take the company jet to my next sales call?" You will need to a lot
of pre-program research to find out what questions might be funny to your
audience. I will give you a little hint though. The answer to what might be
funny to the group you are addressing will most likely come to you while you are
doing your research on the group. That is another reason why your pre-program
work is so important. Sometimes all the humorous material is handed to you. All
you have to do is apply it in the right place.
If you want even more detailed control over what funny material is used in
the Q & A session, you can use a very common technique. You can solicit
questions from the group to be submitted on 3-in. x 5-in. cards. All you have to
do then is slip in a few fake ones. That way you get to be in control of reading
both the question and the answer. This would be the way to go if you are
uncomfortable about recruiting stooges from the audience or just want to have
more control.
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