In an age of Zoom fatigue, it may be tempting to ditch those silly team-building activities that elicit eye-rolls and groans at many a staff meeting.
Yet a focus on pure efficiency may be short-sighted, especially if your team or organization is struggling to find a collective purpose. It turns out that emotion sharing—and not just information sharing—is a powerful yet often-overlooked part of building a group identity.
That’s a key takeaway from an in-depth study of one of the most eclectic groups of all: the Maker movement, a loose collective that began with electronics hackers and hobbyists and grew to include people with seemingly nothing in common—crafters and physicists, bakers and blacksmiths, 3D-printing whizzes, and do-it-yourselfers of all stripes.
“Emotional contagion”
Pre-pandemic, Maker Faire gatherings around the world attracted tens of thousands of people to…
