The Skills Marketplace
Time for the team building activity: 20–25 minutes
Setup effort: Easy (cards or digital board)
Estimated cost: Free
Business value: Reveals hidden skills, strengthens peer learning, and improves internal resource awareness in team building sessions
What is The Skills Marketplace?
The Skills Marketplace is a discovery-based team building activity where participants share professional skills they can offer and skills they would like to learn from others.
Each participant creates two lists:
skills they can help others with
skills they want to develop
The group then “shops” in this marketplace of expertise, discovering unexpected knowledge inside the team.
The exercise often reveals capabilities that colleagues were unaware of.
How do you run The Skills Marketplace?
Give each participant two sticky notes or digital cards.
Ask them to write:
1. One or two skills they can offer
Examples:
data analysis
presentation design
negotiation
project planning
2. One or two skills they want to learn
Participants then place their notes on a shared board.
Allow a few minutes for participants to browse the board and identify potential matches.
Encourage short conversations between people who can help each other.
The full team building activity typically runs 20–25 minutes.
Why it’s great for a team
Many teams underestimate the diversity of skills already present within their group.
The Skills Marketplace helps surface this hidden expertise.
In one short team building exercise, it helps teams:
recognize internal talent
encourage peer learning
reduce reliance on external training
build mentorship connections
increase mutual appreciation
Participants often discover that colleagues have skills outside their formal roles.
This awareness strengthens collaboration and resource sharing.
It is particularly effective:
in growing teams
during onboarding programs
in cross-functional groups
at team offsites
From an organizational perspective, peer-learning networks often accelerate knowledge transfer more effectively than formal training alone.
How to organize it effectively
Prompt clarity is the biggest success factor.
Encourage participants to think broadly about skills, including:
technical abilities
communication skills
industry knowledge
personal productivity techniques
As facilitator, remind participants that skills do not need to be expert-level to be useful.
For large groups, cluster similar skills on the board to create a clearer map of expertise.
In remote team building sessions, digital boards work extremely well.
End with a short reflection:
“Which skills surprised you?”
“Who discovered a new mentor today?”
When well facilitated, The Skills Marketplace is a powerful team building activity that transforms hidden expertise into visible opportunities for collaboration and growth.