Humor can be a powerful tool to create rapport. Humor makes the persuader seem more friendly and accepting. Humor helps gain attention, enables you to create rapport, and makes your message more memorable. It can relieve tension, enhance relationships, and motivate people.  Appropriate use of humor increases trust in your audience.

Another aspect of humor is the smile.  A smile is free, generates a great first impression, and shows happiness, acceptance, and confidence. Your smile shows you are pleased to be where you are, or you are happy to meet this person. As a result, they become more interested in meeting you. Smiling also conveys a feeling of acceptance, which makes your listener more trusting of you. It has been shown that sales representatives who smiled during the sales process increased their success rate by 20 percent. However, as with traditional humor, use a smile appropriately.

Global collaboration led by Stanford researcher shows that a posed smile can improve your mood

Does a fake smile work?  Can a smile backfire?  Can humor hurt influence?  The answer is both to all of these questions.  Join me for this week’s podcast on How A Smile (Certain Ones) And Humor (Targeted) Increases Likeability And Influence.