The former President of Nigeria  Olusegun Obasanjo fondly called “ Baba Iyabo” made an attempt to ask the nation if we needed a federal police system at the same time former Governor of Lagos state Asiwaju of Yoruba land Tinubu was advocating for a state police, the issue became so popular that it generated lots of opinions among Nigerians in and out of the country and in my contribution which was titled “ Towards internal Security” which was...

Expanding or diminishing proportions can be a fun way to create humor in a public speaking engagement. It's similar to a caricature artist that outrageously exaggerates the features of an individual, while still keeping the person recognizable.

I did a public speaking engagement one time for Secretaries Day at a large insurance company. I was making a point about how hectic it always was for the secretaries. It went like this, 'You're answering the telephone, the fax machine is...

Audience gags are offbeat jokes that occur unexpectedly during a presentation. Dr. Joel Goodman, from the Humor Project, does one where a telephone rings during his presentation. He answers the phone that was hidden in the lectern and pretends to talk to his mother. The same joke would be called a running gag if the phone rang at several other times during the program.

Ten Wanted Men

I staged a gag at a seminar one time that was loads of fun and took less than one minute to...

For ages and ages and ages speakers have tried to make some kind of joke at the beginning of a presentation. Then they typically bored you to tears for the balance of the talk. How about trying something different?

In many cases, what I do is to jump into the material hard and fast. This makes the crowd think that I'm a no nonsense kind of guy (which couldn't be further from the truth). What I'm trying to do is lead them down one path and then surprise the heck out of them when I...

If it is hard to hear, people won't listen. When speaking in public you must have an excellent sound system because some of the time you will be speaking while your audience is laughing. Stand-up comics need good sound too, but they are a little different because they tell a joke, then people laugh (they hope). They tell another joke, then people laugh. A good public speaker will be rolling right along making points, showing product features, telling stories, and dropping one-liners and...

* Use stories during public speaking engagements to illustrate points and state the point in addition to telling the story. Always make your story relevant to the subject at hand.

* Select stories to match the intelligence, experience, occupation, and age of the audience as well as the nature of the occasion. You don't want to talk over the heads of the audience members and you don't want to bore them with stories that are too simple.

* Space stories at intervals to provide...

When setting up a story:

* Don't say the words funny, reminds me of, or story. These words are so overused they alert the audience that a story is coming. This causes audience members to resist your story rather than get caught up in your story. They say in essence, Let's see you make me laugh, or OK here comes another story.
* Don't say, I heard a good one the other day for the same reason you don't say it reminds me of. The audience will resist and challenge you to make...

One of the worst mistakes you can make as a public speaker is talking too long. Not only will you send some folks to never, never land, you will make some of them downright mad. It doesn't matter if your entire speech was brilliant and the audience came away with information that will change their lives. If you talk too long, they will leave saying, "That speaker just wouldn't quit." Don't let this happen to you! Say what you have to say and sit down. Before you do, give them...

To add some humor to your public speaking engagement you can make fake newspaper articles and headlines and book covers by using your computer software and printer.

To mock up a newspaper article, simply find the column function of your word processor and set the column width to approximate a real newspaper. It does not matter that your are not holding up actual newsprint because you could have simply cut the article from a newspaper and had it photocopied. If you want to actually...

When you speak a lot you run into some crazy room setups. It's your job to be there early to make sure all the little preparation details taken care of. One of these details is the visibility of you and your visuals from each chair in the audience.

It doesn't even amaze me any more that a hotel room setup crew would put up a projection screen that 1/3 of the audience couldn't possibly see. Most of the time this occurs when tables and or chairs are placed too far forward in the...