“Share something you’re proud of.”
My husband Sam extended this invitation on a recent team meeting, and it launched a cavalcade of people talking about cool personal projects, achievements, and stories. He saw new sides of people he had worked with for years. It was so meaningful that Sam told our family about it at the dinner table.
I borrowed the idea and expanded it into an event with my own team: The Talent Share. It was part learning session, part talent show, pure delight. Presentations ranged from polished PowerPoints and videos to informal, unscripted chats. We got musical performances, behavioral science tips, and magic tricks. We learned about cosplay, watch collecting, stained glass, and how to decode body language. We learned about one another. We learned how to do The Worm. My face hurt from smiling so much.
I believe that the talent of our people is an organization’s richest treasure, and the best leaders find creative, healthy, inspiring ways to bring that treasure to the surface. Making room for self-expression can be a powerful way to foster inclusion and belonging, encouraging employees to bring more of their quirky selves to work.
In that spirit, I’m sharing this idea with you, along with a few practical tips on how to host a Talent Share at your organization.
Pick the right context.
You could make Talent Share a brief, recurring segment of a regular team meeting, or dedicate a full meeting to the activity like my team did. If you do the latter, be respectful of competing priorities and deadlines. We timed ours to mark the end of a major project phase.
There’s a baseline of psychological safety required for this to be successful; while I think this could work for bonding a new team, I would be cautious to try this with a team that’s contentious or fractured.
Leaders, set the tone.
I’ll reiterate what I said about psychological safety: This is vulnerable stuff. When the most senior person on the call shares something personal, it makes it safe for others to do so. If you’re a leader who is not willing to share, this isn’t the right activity for you.
On my team’s Talent Share, our senior leader sang a duet with his daughter. I shared a story about my family’s history in Poland. Another leader showed a video of herself rock climbing. This made space for anyone on the team to share something meaningful, earnest, and human.
Set a (flexible) framework.
I sent the meeting invitation a week before and laid out the expectations: Nobody is required to present, but everyone is encouraged. 5 minutes is the maximum time per presenter. Your topic does not have to be work-related.
I also provided some ideas for topics and offered to work 1:1 with anyone who wanted help. Then I briefly panicked, because nobody replied.
Solicit volunteers.
My invitation went to the entire team, but I also approached a few people individually to ask them to present about topics I knew they were passionate about. Everyone I asked said yes; it feels great to be recruited for your talent. A domino effect occurred: once a few presenters were on board, others came forward. Soon, we had a dozen people ready to share their talents.
Sort out the technology ahead of time.
I played emcee for our meeting, which meant managing speaking order, keeping time, spotlighting presenters “on stage” while they spoke, muting lines with background noise, and having YouTube videos queued up for live sharing.
Audience participation matters, too. Our team is hybrid, but we decided to host the Talent Share virtually so that remote employees could fully participate, with a cameras-on expectation. In addition to asking questions and giving feedback on the call, the team made liberal use of emojis and GIFs to cheer on the presenters.
Embrace the mess.
Sure, there were awkward moments and a couple of technical glitches as we tried to figure out how to run this meeting like none we’d ever held before. Releasing the pressure to be perfect made the Talent Share more authentic and enjoyable. That’s why I’m encouraging you to try it with your team, not with a formulaic set of instructions or a rigid PowerPoint template, but with a few general guidelines and anecdotes.
There was something magical amid the mess, a spark that stuck with me and made me want to bottle this idea up, shake it, and pop it open for all of you here on LinkedIn.
If you try a Talent Share with your team, please tell me how it goes!