Many speakers will videotape their talks or record them and play them back later to improve. However, if this speaker does, he would have heard this joke getting a laugh, and he wouldn’t realize that only the men were laughing. He had alienated half his audience without realizing it.
I asked him afterwards how old his ‘baby’ was, and he said she’s now 16. So, he’s been alienating the women in his audience for 16 years with the same tired joke. I asked him how his wife felt about his leaving her with “four screaming children” and he explained how he had helped his wife during their upbringing, changing diapers, night feedings, etc. So, it’s not like he was only out running, but his joke makes it sound like he was. The woman in the audience never hear that he actually helped his wife at all.
So, here’s a hint for the really advanced speakers out there. Next time, instead of videotaping yourself during your speech, video tape your audience. You might find that some of your humor is alienating part of your audience. If you only videotape yourself, you’ll never find this out.
Originally posted at www.werth-it.com/blog by Katherine Wertheim
