Skills Secret Santa

Here’s a super successful sweet idea for you to try and you don’t need to wait till Christmas. My team had done ‘Marketplace of Skills’ some weeks ago and I had the skills sheets hanging around in the team area.

Three parts to the skills market stall:

• Skills I bring to the team

• Skills I have ‘under the table’ i.e. not directly relevant

• Skills I want to grow into/learn

As the team was winding up for the year, I suggested doing a Skills Secret Santa – where I randomly picked someone for everyone, they looked at the ‘to grow into’ areas and found some way to help that person. They had until the Sprint's end to come up with something. It didn’t have to be anything complicated.

Over the course of a week, a little tree appeared (not from me!) and envelopes and bags started amassing underneath. At the end of the Sprint Retrospective, we opened them!

There were a variety of things – page of links to interesting psychology podcasts, a voucher for a session with the coach on personality types, free courses on Photoshop/Illustrator offered through the library, time and help from other team members and a treasured book with many lovingly marked tabs (on loan only).

It was fun to find something for someone else and a great note to finish the Sprint and the year on. Try it and let me know how you get on!