In teaching, I enjoy it when I see an instructor who establishes a personal bond with their class or audience. Often this can be done by telling personal stories. Teachers can show he or she is one of us and experience the same trials and emotions we do. Another way to engage an audience is through humor. Making a joke that is related to the subject of the class or presentation can help create a positive mood of your class.
Here are some examples of ‘one liner’ that are used at one office by phone operators. You can see how these one liners are used in this occupation then you define how you can create your own ‘one liners’ throughout your lessons.
If you have a humorous side, take advantage of that trait and see how you can use it in your conversations and presentations.
Humor can even be used in a brief phone conversation. In my job, I am a phone operator at a software company. I have the responsibly of taking a call, getting an assessment of what is needed and getting them to the specialized tech who can help them. The calls range from 30 seconds to two minutes. Many times when people call, they are frustrated, they have been trying to fix their own issue for a quite a while with no success. What the customer first hears a ‘human’ that brief dialog can sometimes influence their mood. This is a good time to implement the ‘one liners’.
I’ve seen some good examples of how operators use humor to relax the customer. One key thing is to set the mood initially. Many of my peers will say “Good morning’ as part of their first words of the call. This is an invitation that both of us can have a nice day.
It’s also nice to tell them, “Thank you for calling.” It shows you value their business.
In a call, we need their account number and sometimes, they don’t have it. We ask for their address as an alternative. One operator will say. ‘Please give me your address so I can find you.” As they give their address, that operator will say, in a lower tone, “I didn’t know I was lost”. This is a play on the line ‘So I can find you’. She is pretending she is expressing the internal thoughts of the customer with saying, with “I didn’t know I was lost.” This has caused chuckles from some customers.
If I like someone’s name I will tell them. “You have a cool name.” They will say “Thanks.” Or if they have a difficult name and I try to pronounce it I may ask “How badly did I slaughter your name?” Then they will tell me. It can sometimes break the tension.
Occasionally, call centers will have a flood of calls coming in all at the same time. There are a lot of calls and long waiting times. A usually short wait for an operator may end up being much longer. The customers become irritated. Some will complain about the flood of calls. One operator will acknowledge the complaint. They will say “It’s like drinking from a fire hydrant over here. And I’m not thirsty!” This will sometimes make a customer laugh and break the tension. It also enables the customer to feel sympathy for themselves but also for the techs and phone operators. We are all experiencing a shared pain.
A sincere compliment of a person’s work ethic can also improve a phone conversation. If a call comes in from CA early in the morning, 6:30 am their time, one operator will say. “Wow, you’re early.” This is an acknowledgment that you see they’ve come to work early. They are a dedicated person and worker.
Sometimes humorous shock value can be of a benefit. Let me explain. Someone calls because a piece of software is not working. One operator will say “Well, shame on it. If you have to work and I have to work, so should it. It’s only fair!” This humanizes the software for being a rebellious coworker who not carrying their load. We also do a silent acknowledgment that the caller is trying to do their job and the software isn’t cooperating. It’s a subtle hint comparing the software to some anonymous coworker who may not be doing their work as efficiently as the caller.
In an effort to show courtesy to tech support, an operator will give a customer the hours of operation. They will remind the customer, “Please don’t call 5 minutes before we close, that would be cruel to the tech.”
Sometimes a phone operator has to wait on the phone with a customer while waiting for a reply from someone else. What kind of small talk do you cover? One operator tells terrible, terrible pun jokes. For example, “What is Beethoven favorite fruit?” “What?” the customer will ask. The operator will say “banana.” Making the name of the fruit sounds like the tune of Beethoven fifth. Ba-ba-na-naaa. It can make a customer groan. Yet it can break the tension of having to wait for a reply.
Another pun, “where does The Long Ranger throw away his trash?” (Remember the old TV show?) Answer: “To-the-Dump. To-the-Dump. To-the-Dump Dump Dump.” But you say those words following the long ranger theme song.
Once an operator learns where a customer needs to go, we have to occasionally tell them that there will be a long wait time. I tell them. “The wait times are lousy.” Then I tell them how long. That way, we both know what to expect and I personally acknowledge the inconvenience of their time. They appreciate knowing up front. If there are 18 calls in the queue and the person who has been waiting for longest is nine min. I don’t tell them it is a nine min wait time. I say the time might be up to 30 minutes or such as that would be a more realistic wait time.
It would be cruel to give them an inaccurate wait time when I know it’s going to be longer.
So how can the above techniques by phone operators be used in teaching? One would be that as you plot out your lessons, see what areas could provide humor. Where could you use a bad pun or a joke?
If you teach the same people/kids each day or each week or each month, you might establish several standing jokes. Let’s say as a presenter, you have a piece of equipment that is consistently unreliable. You create a mysterious ‘entity’ name, Alfred. Each time you have a hardware issue, say “it’s Alfred’s fault.” You personalize the hardware. “Oh, Alfred, shame on you.” Or “Bad, Alfred.” You can involve your audience, “Everyone, repeat after me, “Bad Alfred.”
If something goes wrong one response is to be silly and overly dramatic, if it fits who you are. Thrust your hand to your forehead. “Ohh it’s a hard life!”
Or perhaps, you want to activate the mechanical karma; like combining a celestial consciousness to help improve the behavior of an inanimate object, as a joke. Machines aren’t influenced by mental desires. I know that from my PC. You might say something humorous like, “everyone tap your heads.” Perhaps with our combined mental powers, we can….” Etc etc.
Do you have a visible or teaching shortcoming? Acknowledge ii as the elephant in the room.
I’m short. So I might say. “I may be short but I have tall thoughts.” Or “I’m not short, I’m just concentrated. You won’t believe how tall I am in the shower.” In a personal conversation, I may say, “Call me short and I’ll bite your kneecap off.”
Let me give a specific example from an experience in college. (Ah, using a personal story when teaching, but that concept will be illustrated elsewhere.) In college, I participated in a class called Program Bureau. It was a choir class. The teacher was an extremely large woman. When we would go out, performing, she would jokingly ask the audience. “Can you see me?” The audience would laugh. It helped bond them to her. Mrs. D. was one wonderful and talented woman. She was an excellent example of infusing a class with a positive personality.
She made that class my favorite that year.
Another shortcoming may be spelling. That makes it real fun when trying to write things on a board. The smart thing to do would be to plan out in advance what I’m going to write as part of my organization of the lesson. That would ensure that all things are spelled correctly. Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that. Oh no! As a joke, I might say “this bad spelling is dedicated to all the teachers in the room. To make you cringe. You’re welcome.”
Or “If you don’t like the spelling, I’m looking for volunteers to come up and write on the board for me?” No volunteers.
My penmanship isn’t so hot either. When in religious class, I might say “With this penmanship, you might need the gift of tongues to translate this.” of course, the logical thing would be to print out, in big text, the words, and phrases you want to use and then just attach them to the board with magnets or such. But you’re being logical and organized. Stop that!
Make your lessons fun as part of your presentation and there’s a good chance your audience will be much more receptive to the message you have to share. You establish a bond with them.
