Somewhere along the way we all decided that being serious equals being professional. Meanwhile the real work happens somewhere else: at the coffee machine, in the hallway, during the idle chatter we secretly feel guilty about. The Dutch have a word for it: ouwehoeren. Psychiatrist and entrepreneur Bram van der Boom takes down the myth. People who master it build better teams, better deals and a better working life.
Free, 4 minutes, and you get a score your colleagues will envy. Or not. That tells you something too.
Ouwehoeren (Dutch, untranslatable): the art of loose, playful, agenda-free conversation. The hallway after the meeting is more productive than the meeting itself. You know it. Everyone knows it. And still we pretend it's the other way around.
It is the work. Deals, teams and companies are built in the informal moment. Science has known it for decades, organizations systematically ignore it.
It can be trained. Almost anyone can learn it, and it starts with the willingness to take yourself a little less seriously. This book never asks you to become someone else.
A psychiatrist who became an entrepreneur saw the same law in the therapy room and the boardroom. Understand it, and you build a team where people dare to say what they think.
There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.
Eva HoffmanHow good are you at the informal game? This is not a humor type test. It measures how strongly you connect: daring, reading the room, recovering, being real and drawing people toward you.
The Magnet, the Stand-up, the Sweetheart or the Sniper. Twelve situations, two axes, a result you'll recognize the moment you read it. So will your colleagues.
Straight from the book. Open this card during your next meeting and tap every phrase you hear. We'll wait.
Every claim in the book rests on research and on a true story. Three previews.
Other primates bond through the body: grooming, picking, scratching. We found a faster alternative: language, and above all its lightest form. Laughing together triggers exactly the same endorphins. A good chat at the coffee machine does neurologically the same as an arm around your shoulder.
Google spent years searching for the formula of the perfect team. The answer: psychological safety, the feeling that you can say what you think without being punished for it. And the shortest route there runs through laughing together.
Working from home eliminated exactly what this book is about: the spontaneous, unplanned encounter. Organizations visibly struggle with connection, retention and culture. This book gives the answer other management books skip.
This book teaches you no tricks and never asks you to become someone else. It shows you how to take off the mask, how humor works (even if you think you're not funny), and how to build a team where people dare to say what they think. Because they laughed together first.
The myth of the professional, informal talk as a craft, and what a therapist and a croquette teach you about connection.
Crazy authenticity, the duet effect, humor as a superpower, and flirting for advanced students.
The coffee machine as boardroom, and how to build a culture where informal talk simply counts as work.
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