The Art of Humour at Work

You watch your hilarious colleague or boss make the client roar with laughter while you struggle to chime in with a witty remark or even a funny quip. This is the norm for most people. We could be hilarious with our friends or family members but when it comes to business partners or clients, we’ve somehow lost our funny bone.

When people meet someone who can make them laugh and enjoy a good conversation, it’s therapeutic. Life is stressful, and people are carrying a lot of pain with them. There are very little things we can actually control in life, and a lot of things to be depressed about. If you’re able to use humour in business meetings, you could change the trajectory of your meetings.

If you manage to make your counterparts laugh on a regular basis, then you've hit the jackpot because people would just want to be around you. You become the person with good vibes and an energy that draws others and makes them feel good. You’re sort of like Santa Claus who brings a sack full of laughter.

This would be great, of course, but can we all be funny? I get that some people are funnier than others, but I don’t believe that anyone is just born funny. Humour is an art that can be developed. Some people develop it more easily or naturally than others but it’s still something that can be developed practically.

I’ll give you a backbone for making your conversations more humorous in the next chapter. For now, I want to highlight what not to do when you’re building relationships through humour. Get rid of old habits and mindsets so that you can start building new ones that leave trails of laughter while signing your deals and achieving your business outcomes.