How to add humor to your speech—without being a comedian

(Editor’s note: This was one of the top viewed stories of 2015. We’re rerunning it as part of a look back at the articles that captivated our readers the most.)

Humor is a powerful tool. If you can get your audience to laugh (or at least chuckle or smile), you’re golden.

While you may not have the desire to do a full on humorous speech, there is no reason why you can’t add some humor to your presentations to mix things up and engage your audience.

This is not to say every speech you deliver should drip with humor. However, the occasional use of humor, whether peppered lightly throughout your presentations or used heavily in the occasional dedicated funny speech, can have a few benefits:

Some people believe you can’t learn to be funny—either you have it or you don’t. From my experience teaching people humor and comedy, I strongly disagree. Humor is a skill you can cultivate and develop.

Below are five things you can do to tap into your inherent humor and add it to your next speech:

1. Identify things that make you laugh.