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How to Cultivate Relationships for Effective Teamwork
A bench full of star players does not automatically produce a winning team. Use these exercises to build a sense of membership on your team.
Once a year, about a hundred miles outside of Reno, the Burning Man festival descends upon the desert for a weeklong social experiment in community, art, transcendence, and bacchanalia. Seventy thousand people supported by two thousand volunteers appear out of nowhere and stand up a self-contained society founded on ten principles: radical inclusion, self-reliance, self-expression, community cooperation, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy, and leaving no trace. Simply by being there, by stepping into the space, you’re making a commitment to those values. And if you’re more than just a tourist, if you truly embody them, you’re a “Burner.” You’re a member of the tribe.
The experience is so different from mainstream society that Burners refer to everything beyond their ephemeral city as the “default world.” “The Burn,” as they say, runs on a gift economy. You’ll rely on the kindness and generosity of strangers, and they’ll rely on you. Food and entertainment are not for sale, but there are plenty of both. People come together to form “theme camps”—subcultures…