Whether the keynote address at your industry annual award dinner or remarks to your team meeting – a little bit of humour can go a long way.

Humour is proven to build connections with an audience, making a speaker not only more liked but also more trusted.

Good humour well delivered is often story focussed and telling stories is the quickest way to ensure your words will be listened to and remembered.

The problem comes for many in not having the confidence to deliver a joke or humorous story in the way you would if sharing a drink with an old friend.

Instead of telling, too many read.

You don’t use your own words; you memorize those of someone else.

This creates limiting factors to your objective: being funny.

If you want to be genuinely funny – particularly if talking to an audience who knows you well – use your own words, phrases and experiences.

If you try and read out a humorous story word by word, you will fail.

So, if you want to include a funny anecdote or enlightening piece of humour in your next speech do this:

1. Practice your story a number of times aloud to get it clear in your mind thinking about where to pause, what to emphasise and imagining how your audience will react

2. When practicing make it relevant to your audience and appropriate to the context in which you will be speaking

3. Reduce the story down to a few short key phrases to jog your memory and write these down on a small card

4. When the time comes to deliver your words, you will have these phrases to hand to jog your memory if required

By using your own words, and following this process, you will make sure that the story is genuinely yours.

Even better, you will also have chiselled it into your brain in a way that ensures you deliver it brilliantly by telling it, not reading it.