My employer provided the entire engineering and sales organizations with access to Masterclass. This access was rolled out as part of an “All Hands” style meeting. 

What followed was an interesting exercise where we were put in teams of 6 or 7 and asked to select and watch ~45 minutes of video that we were all to watch on our own. After watching the videos on our own, our groups came back together and discussed 2-3 “takeaways” from the video.

We elected to watch Gordon Ramsay teach Kitchen Knife Technique, Chris Voss teach negotiation, and Annie Liebovitz teach photography. 

The interesting thing was that between the six of us, we all noticed the commonalities between these three otherwise disparate classes. 

  • Start slow
  • Practice/ Get repetitions in
  • You are doing this together (with the other party in negotiating, with the knives and food, or with your camera and your subject in photography)
  • Empathy and emotional connection are required (ok, maybe not so much with cutting food, but still…)

I quite enjoyed the exercise, and I’m grateful that the company decided to encourage continued learning by giving us access to this resource.