A Man Walks Into a Bar … and Loses His Audience

Feeling nervous? Open with a joke. Want to warm up the audience? Open with a joke. Is the room half asleep? Open with a joke. This is advice you will hear often. It is almost always wrong.

The problem with telling jokes is not that humor has no place in presentations. It absolutely does. The problem is that jokes are difficult to execute well, particularly at the start of a presentation when your adrenaline is highest and your timing is least reliable. How many times have you heard a speaker open with a joke and bomb? It is painful for everyone in the room, including the speaker.

The Case for Humor Done Right

Adding genuine humor to a presentation is a skill worth developing. Used well, it can help your audience see you as authentic and human, create a bond between you and the room, break tension at difficult moments, and make your key messages more memorable.

The distinction is between telling jokes and being genuinely funny. Jokes are scripted, often borrowed, and dependent on precise timing. Real humor comes from observation, self-awareness, and an honest connection to what is happening in the room. It does not require a setup or a punchline. It requires paying attention.

Guidelines for Using Humor

The humor should be appropriate to the context and the audience. It should not be made at anyone else’s expense. Self-deprecating humor can work, but the line between "human" and "hapless" is thinner than most speakers realize. Done well, it acknowledges a small, relatable flaw that connects you to your audience. Done badly, it makes the audience wonder whether you should be at the microphone at all. Use self-deprecation once, keep it small, and move on. And if there is any doubt about whether something is appropriate, leave it out.

The Annual Conference Opening

Consider the executive director opening her association’s annual conference. Three hundred members are in the ballroom, coffee in hand, waiting for her to set the tone for the next two days. She has a joke queued up about how long it took the hotel to find the ballroom key this morning. It feels like an easy layup. But if the joke lands flat — and openers like this often do, because not everyone experienced the delay — she has used the most valuable sixty seconds of her keynote on a bit that did not work. Now she has to climb uphill into her actual message.

The safer move is almost always the same: open with the story of a member whose year was changed by what this association did, tie it to the conference theme, and save the humor for later in the talk, when it can land without carrying the opening on its back.

A Hard Lesson I Learned on Stage

I once abandoned a proven opening right before walking on stage at a major event. I had used it before, and it had worked perfectly. But at the last second, I second-guessed myself and decided to open with a joke instead. It bombed. To this day, it remains the lowest moment of my speaking career.

Lesson learned: do not change your opening at the last minute. When your nerves are at their peak, your brain will try to convince you that something — anything — is better than what you prepared. It is wrong. Unless something genuinely unexpected happens in the room that invites acknowledgment, deliver the opening you rehearsed.

If, after all of this, you still want to tell a joke, make sure it checks every box: it is funny, it is relevant, it is appropriate, and you can tell it well. All four. Not three.