In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about reconnecting with our creativity by becoming a beginner again. As children, we are constantly pushed outside of our comfort zones. But as adults with more control over how we spend our time, we often avoid trying new things unless we’re guaranteed to do them well. This week, I’m talking with Cliff Goldmacher, a professional songwriter and music producer, about his unique approach to helping teams explore their innate creativity. Cliff works with teams to write songs, which stretches their comfort zones and strengthens their connections to each other while helping them tap their own creativity. If you’ve ever told yourself, “I’m not creative,” you’ll feel differently after hearing this conversation.
About My Guest
Cliff Goldmacher is a GRAMMY-recognized, #1 hit songwriter, two-time TEDx speaker and author who, for the past nine years, has been helping organizations innovate and build their creative confidence by teaching them to write songs. Cliff’s work has been featured in Forbes and Cliff’s book, The Reason For The Rhymes: Mastering The Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs, encapsulates the principles of his workshops. Cliff’s clients include Deloitte, Bank of America, IDEO, the ATD and Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management.
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Connect with Cliff:
Five Daily MicroCreativity Exercises: https://se295.infusionsoft.com/app/form/tr4tr-creativity-tip-sheet
Website: www.TR4TR.com
Work with Organizations: https://www.thereasonfortherhymes.com/workshops/
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Connect with Kim and The Impostor Syndrome Files:
Join the free Impostor Syndrome Challenge.
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Schedule time to speak with Kim Meninger directly about your questions/challenges.
Websites: https://kimmeninger.com
Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Cliff, it is such a pleasure to talk to you today, I've been looking forward to our conversation. And I would love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself.
Cliff Goldmacher
Thank you, Kim. I am Cliff Goldmacher. I am a professional songwriter, and music producer. And for about the last nine years, I have been working with organizations, teaching them to write songs. And the idea is that by teaching them to get out of their comfort zones, and to explore their innate creativity, which a lot of people are concerned they don't have, there's a whole wonderful cascading effect of good things that happen. And my way into that is by getting people who could not imagine themselves writing a song, to write a song.
Kim Meninger
It's, it's so funny, because you and I've talked about this before, and I so appreciate your take on creativity and how much you are encouraging people to embrace their creativity. But just the thought of having to write a song like how much resistance do you encounter? And how do you get people over the hump?
Cliff Goldmacher
Well, so it's interesting. What I have found is that there are two camps, there is a camp that immediately says, I love it, I get it. Let's do this. And then there's the camp that basically says, What are you talking about what I underestimated when I first got started doing this was the fear that executives feel about appearing foolish in front of their peers. So what I've learned over time is, is other than the immediate sort of just as you described, the sort of shocking part where I come up and say, and now I'm going to, we're all going to write a song, where you get the sort of, you get the blank expression, and you know that there's a lot going on behind that blank expression. Beyond that moment of discomfort, everything that I do is about breaking down the process into manageable pieces, where very clearly bright people can understand it. And then as soon as you do that, and as soon as you say, Well, if I just say writing a song, that's this monolithic, terrifying thing. But if I say songs are made up of metaphors and verses and choruses, here's how a metaphor works. Here's what verses do. They're effectively storytelling and choruses are all about great communication and summarizing what you want to tell your story about, all of a sudden, people get it. And not only do they get it, but they get into it. And just so that there's no confusion, we together write a lyric. But then I asked the teams, well, what genre is your song, and then I put it to music. So, so you're not going to be expected to learn an instrument, in 90 minutes, you simply have to write your lyric, and then I put it to music, and then all of a sudden, you've got a song. And it's, it's an exhilarating thing, I still get a huge charge out of it every time I do it.
Kim Meninger
It is so fascinating to me. And I think one of the things for me is that I have told myself for most of my life, that I am not a creative person because drawing doesn't come naturally to me, I can't sing. And there are certain things that I just have a very fixed mindset around. And I have opened my mind to the possibility of being more creative as an entrepreneur, because depending on how you find define creative, right, I've created my business, I've created my offerings, I, I'm I started something from nothing. And so, so I think that sometimes we just like there's that cliche about people thinking that they're not good at math. I think that, that for many of us, we've gone through life thinking I'm not creative, right? And then once that door is closed, it's really hard to reopen it again.
Cliff Goldmacher
So there's so much to unpack around this idea that that people consider themselves not creative. First of all, there's the idea that we are as kids all creative because we don't know any different. And we're fearless. And that's amazing. And then there's the idea that, like you said, you get sort of fixed in a certain thing. Well, that's productivity and you're expected to be fixed and a certain thing, so you can get that thing done. But, but when it comes to the idea of creativity, it doesn't have to mean that you can write a sonata, you know, creativity and really when I do songwriting, it's really a way into a larger concept of creativity. I'm not expecting people to come out of their work with me and say great If it's time to become a professional songwriter, what I'm expecting them to do is say, I didn't think I could do this. It's a creative thing. And yet, I broke it down into small pieces, and I did it. So then when you look at things like entrepreneurship, or any other challenge that requires you to think differently, you can go back to that moment where you wrote a song that you didn't think you could write, and you show that you are creative. And you'll realize, okay, I have this in me. Now, let me apply it in a way that is meaningful to me and useful to me.
Kim Meninger
That's such a powerful way of unlocking that part of our brain because I often think about too, when it comes to confidence. And perfectionism is often a big part of the self-doubt experience. And I think about I love how you talked about kids because when we're kids, we don't really have a choice about how we're spending our days, right? We, there's a curriculum that our schools follow, and we have to learn things, whether we like it or not, and our parents are putting us in different extracurricular programming. And so we're constantly being exposed to new things. But as we get older, and we have more agency, we then only, you know, most, at least perfectionist, and a lot of High achievers often only choose the things that were guaranteed to do well, so we keep reinforcing those strengths. But we make our worlds really small. And so the, in the process, anything that falls outside of that feels incredibly scary, and, you know, impossible to do. So I love what you're doing, you're really sort of forcing us outside of our comfort zones and reminding us, oh, yeah, actually, I can learn something new, I can think differently than I do every day.
Cliff Goldmacher
Well, right. And, you know, if you if you look at this the wrong way, it's a threat to your expertise, right, I work with a lot of sort of, for lack of a better way to put it Masters of the Universe, right? The C-suite is all about people who are at the very top of their game. And what I'm asking them to do is to become beginners again. And at first, there is resistance because they've worked a long time and really hard not to be beginners. And second of all, they don't want to appear like they're not in control, because it's all about the the appearance of having everything under control. But the moment you get past that initial resistance and you explore what it feels like again to have a beginner's mind and then come up with something as tangible as a song, it's really powerful. And it's a really great reminder that every once in a while stepping outside of your comfort zone, can really generate some, some incredible results and give you the confidence to do things you didn't think you could hmm,
Kim Meninger
I love that you're talking about a, at the highest levels too, because I think that is really important. From a, I often think about this in the concept in the context of the growth mindset, right, and just how easy it is to get fixed in how we think about things, not just in terms of our own capabilities, but just in the way that we order our world. And a lot of these people have the privilege of being able to create a bubble, right, they have power, and they have resources to be to be able to create this, this bubble that keeps them feeling powerful. And this kind of vulnerability that you're describing has to be a rare event.
Cliff Goldmacher
So there are a couple of other parts to the to the work that I do that I think make this make sense. And part of it is that there is a huge emphasis placed on collaboration. So one of the things that I do at the end of the sessions as I asked the assembled group, but what concerns you the most, and almost without exception, one of the comments I get is, I thought I would have to do this on my own. So it's a good reminder that if you're doing something that takes you outside of your comfort zone, you don't have to do that alone. Nobody says you have to be miserable when you leave your comfort zone. And what I like about the emphasis on collaboration is it's a good reminder that together, we can do things that maybe on our own, we might not be able to. So there's a collaboration aspect to it that I really love. And then talking about the C suite are talking about very seasoned executives. The other element that I love is sometimes I do this work with executives all the way down to admins. And they're all in the room together and they're all doing the same thing and they are all at the exact same experience level. So all of a sudden, not only is everybody on the same level, which is which is wonderful because you and I both know that is a very rare thing in a corporate structure, but secondarily it, It humanizes everyone, it's no longer about your direct reports or your direct reports, reports or reports. It's, it's about just all being in there together and all being at the same level, which is really powerful.
Kim Meninger
If that is such a rare thing in a hierarchical system, right, and, and you said this earlier, which I think, is important to revisit about how their fear of looking foolish in front of each other, and I can only imagine that that fear ratchets up when they're looking foolish in front of the people who work for them, or the people who work for the people who work for, right. So. So I wonder, you know, you have a system and a proven way of doing this. But do you have? How do you get? Where does the psychological safety come from? I guess, right? Like, how do you how do you get them? Because you don't have months with them? Right? You have a very fixed amount of time, like how do you get people who have big egos, and perhaps a lot of resistance to, to accept that they're gonna go on this journey with you and be vulnerable with each other?
Cliff Goldmacher
Well, so other than, like I said, the first 22 seconds, where I say you're going to write a song, everything in my work is designed to put people at ease. So after I mentioned that, that's going to happen, I spend the next 15 or so minutes, playing some snippets of my songs and showing how things that work in songwriting, also work in business. And I'll give you an example. In songwriting, it's it's critical that not only do you have emotion in the song, but you have story. So songwriters come from a place of way, way, way too much emotion, I love you, I love you, I love you. That's not all that interesting, right? You need a story in there to keep people engaged. But in business, it's the opposite. It's dry information, dry information, dry information, where's the emotion in that what is going to compel people to care about what you're saying? So I use examples like that, you know, balancing the emotion in the story. And I do a little bit of that just to put people's minds at ease. And then I play an example song based on the concept. So what I didn't say is, every time I do this work, it is based on a concept that is given to me by the client. So it could be, we need to improve our ability to innovate, we need to coordinate disparate teams, we need to prepare for a future transformation, it could be any one of a number of very important, very dry business concepts, that we will then turn into a metaphor and write a verse and a chorus of a song about so immediately, people start to think differently about this concept. And I'll give you an example. I did a workshop with an airline. And the idea was they wanted to coordinate disparate teams from around the country. The song we wrote, use the metaphor of geese flying south for the winter. And it was called, if you've got my front, I've got your back. And it was all about how these geese needed to work together needed to coordinate in order to survive. So all of a sudden, you've got this much more interesting, emotional way of thinking about, having helped me coordinating disparate teams, which is, like I said, not that it's not important, but it's a very dry concept. So there's, there's joy and laughter in this, there is never a moment where anyone is singled out, or made to do something that would make them uncomfortable. I'm leading this the entire time, because it's not supposed to be uncomfortable. It's supposed to be what creativity is at its essence, which is joyful. So there is a safe environment there that I am very hands-on involved with so that nobody feels like they can't make a suggestion that will be somehow ridiculed that stuff doesn't happen. I don't allow that to happen.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, and I think creating that safe space is so important because is so such a different experience for so many people. But I love it as a team-building, exercise to write as just as you're describing have, you better appreciate the shared journey when you're doing this together.
Cliff Goldmacher
That’s it, it really does work on multiple levels. I, when I decided to write a book to sort of codify this approach, I realized that above and beyond, you know, improving your ability to collaborate and communicate, and even improving your empathy, as you begin to sort of work on putting yourself in the in the position to write, I realized that every skill that songwriting develops maps to a skill that is critical for innovation. So, for example, the metaphor we she's sort of a new way to think about an idea maps to lateral thinking, which is such an important part of the innovative process. So it works all the way in sort of the meta world of improving your ability to innovate all the way down to what I consider an important but kind of secondary benefit of a building your team. So it really does work on a variety of levels.
Kim Meninger
And I sort of, I let my emotions guide me into the start of this conversation because I, personally, I'm like, oh, writing a song, right? But I want to back up and talk about you a bit because you're, this is your career, the songwriting piece, right? But working with teams and people who are in these environments, was likely a step outside of your comfort zone at one point. So in when you get what I'm hearing, you talk about the taking their themes and incorporating them putting them to music. There's this Whose Line Is It Anyway quality to it that I think about like the draft quality, and that also kind of freaks me out. And so I wonder, did you have to work on yourself and your own confidence in making this kind of a transition? Did it come naturally to you like…
Cliff Goldmacher
So the whole thing happened kind of by accident, I was on a flight to go give a TEDx talk. And the talk was called some things I've learned about songwriting in 25 years. And so already in my head, I'm trying to sort of draw the parallels about what I've learned in songwriting, and how I can communicate that to a broader audience. That's not all songwriters. So all that's kind of brewing in my mind, and I'm on my flight. And the woman sitting next to me, I'm not a hey, how you doing kind of flyer? That's not what I do. So for the first half of the flight, we're minding our own business. And at some point, we strike up a conversation and the inevitable question comes up, what do you do for work? And so I said to her, and again, I don't know really why I was compelled, other than this was all sort of Top of Mind. I said, I'm a professional songwriter. And I've always wondered what it would be like to teach the concepts of songwriting in a business setting. So she looks at me and she says, Well, I run an organization inside of Deloitte called the greenhouse where we work with leadership teams. And I think this would be great for us. This is the seatmate of a lifetime. This is out of nowhere. And normally, you know how it is you talk to someone on a plane, you exchange information, the end. Two weeks later, I'm on a call with her team. I put the workshop together. And that was nine years ago, and I haven't looked back. So in answer to your question, while it was different for me, it basically connected to things that I had, I feel like been preparing for my entire career. I'm a performer. So I've, there wasn't an issue with getting up in front of people. I've been doing that, you know, I refer to the early part of my music career as playing brown-eyed girl for drunk people. So I've been doing this forever. And I've also been in the creative trenches for 30 years. So exploring creativity and articulating it was a fairly natural progression as well, the thing that I didn't know and my biggest challenge, and thanks to people, wonderful people like you, it's getting easier is my network is not the organizational and business world. My people are songwriters, and music producers and musicians. They're wonderful, but they're not the people that this work is now aimed towards. So, so I think leaving my comfort zone has been you want to talk about starting as a beginner, I've had to build my network, again, from scratch. And that's been I think, the biggest sort of leaving my comfort zone thing. I'm used to being known in my world. I've been at it for a very long time. And now I'm the new guy again.
Kim Meninger
Yeah, that's a really good point. And, you know, I think, as as you're saying that, right, like, I feel like you're stretching yourself in new directions while we're stretching ourselves in new directions just reinforces the idea of creativity, because that's a, there's an element of creativity to building a whole new network to write. So I wonder if that you know, there was sort of an inherent advantage that you brought to the to that effort.
Cliff Goldmacher
Well, I mean, that's very perceptive of you, and it is absolutely using my creativity to build a new business. I mean, I've been an entrepreneur my entire career, but this is a brand-new business. So, so in a way, I absolutely had to lean on my own creativity to do that. You know, one of the things I talked about in my book is that every song that I write is a micro innovation, you're trying to do something new. In a field where there's almost nothing new under the sun. Like there, how many love songs are there? rounded off, we can round it off to the nearest billion. So how do you do that in a way that is that is unique, and that will provide value to people? And this is the stuff I think about. I've been thinking about my entire career. It's just a new, a new avenue to do that.
Kim Meninger
Hmm. Well, I think the one thing that comes to mind for me as a potential benefit is that music is such a powerful force for so many people. I mean, I don't play an instrument, I don't sing. But music is incredibly important to me. And I think it just sort of has this very visceral effect on us. So it's interesting that you, you know, if you, I'm trying to think of another example of a like a viewer, want to insult anybody, but, but, you know, maybe a less interesting way of pairing activities. With business, you might not get the kind of response that I imagined you would get, because people automatically feel connection to music, right? Like, do you find that that helps you to open up a conversation?
Cliff Goldmacher
And it's amazing how powerful it is, as a matter of fact, one of the unexpected results of my work, is that because you are taking an idea and putting it to music, I can go back to teams that I've done this work with seven, eight, even nine years ago. And I can say what was your song, instant, instant. So it takes whatever it is we explored. And it makes it really memorable because it's experiential. And because it's music, I even do a little I do a little test to show people how powerful music is. And what I say is, I am now going to play you a song that was written 218 years ago. And I'm going to sing part of it and see if you can help me find the missing words. So I start Twinkle, twinkle. Right, so, so on one level, it's funny, but I don't know another level. Think about that for a second. 218 years ago, somebody wrote that lyric. And even if you don't have kids, even if you're not an aunt or uncle or grandparent, and you were just singing that song, everybody gets it right away.
Kim Meninger
That's powerful. It's so true. It just reminds me to of how I always joke that I can't remember what I had for dinner last night. But I can remember the lyrics to songs I haven't heard in three years.
Cliff Goldmacher
That's, that's exactly it.
Kim Meninger
Do you have any you mentioned being able to go back to people years later? And they still remember their? Their song? Do you? Do they share with you? How their business changes as a result of this? Like do you get do you get follow-ups on their creative process? As you know that do you do?
Cliff Goldmacher
I do, I do a survey at the end of the, the time that I spend with the teams. And I asked a couple of questions. And one of them is how would you rate your creative confidence before the workshop. And after, and I had a sense that it would be better. On average, after doing over the course of 15 workshops, and countless participants 51% increase in creative confidence. So people all of a sudden are finding a way into creativity that they then apply to everything they do in their work. So there really is a lasting benefit to this.
Kim Meninger
That is really powerful. And I wonder because in an ideal world, everyone would be able to hire you and experience your process. Is there anything that they can do before they work with you? Like is there anything that people listening more thinking, oh, gosh, I wish I were more creative I could start to think about doing on their own?
Cliff Goldmacher
Absolutely. And this is something that I've thought about a lot because creativity writ large is very daunting. So I have put together a list. I call it my list of five daily micro-creativity exercises. And I have a link to that, that if you for your show notes. And it's free. And it's just five things that you can think about tiny, tiny little things that you can do just to remind yourself that you're a creative person. So I'll give you an example one of the things that I do still, and remember, boys and girls, I'm a professional. I still wake up every morning and write a haiku every morning. It's just this tiny little thing that I do. That makes me feel like okay, no matter what goes down today, and there's always something that goes down, I will have done something that makes me feel creative. And I'll give you an example of one that I wrote for people to think about. And just for those who don't know what a haiku is, it is a three-line poem, five-syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables. That's it. And it doesn't have to rhyme. So here's one that I wrote early on, for people scared to write your thoughts. What's the worst that could happen? You're already done.
Kim Meninger
Oh, I love it. That is so great.
Cliff Goldmacher
So, so there's a lot that you can do before you bring me in to just sort of, I like to describe it as keeping the pilot light lit under your creativity. And, and that's just one of the tips that I mentioned in this sheet.
Kim Meninger
And when you say to like, I was wondering about that, when you say before you bring me it? Is there? A I'm trying to think of the right way to frame this question because I don't want it to sound negative. But I'm wondering like, are there organizations that aren't ready for you?
Cliff Goldmacher
The short answer is no. Okay. There are so many different ways to approach the work that is beneficial if it's, if we're not ready to explore our strategy via songwriting. That doesn't mean we're not ready to improve our team collaboration by songwriting. Right? So, so or maybe our teams collaborate beautifully, but we really need to cement our work around strategy. In other words, there are lots of different ways to do the work that will make it valuable.
Kim Meninger
So that's really great to know, too. And you mentioned working with executives, but you work with people across all of the levels. Right. It's not excusable. Yeah. Wow. This is just it's always so much fun. Cliff you and I've talked before, and then I follow you on social media, just to expand my own thinking about creativity. And I love having you in my world to remind me that I'm more creative than I think, like, I really do, I really appreciate it. And I just think it's so important, I come back to what you were talking about, of being a beginner again, and just how much we write certain things off, or, you know, we think we don't have time for this, or we're, you know, we're this kind of a person and not that kind of a person. And fundamentally, we're all creating, maybe not in the traditional Artistics. And but we're all creating all the time, right? And I just think that's so important for us to remind ourselves that we can learn, we can grow, we can challenge ourselves, it's not the end of the world, to not have the answer to something or not have perfectly mastered something yet. And I think that that's a sticking point for so many of us as high achievers who feel like I'm not doing it unless I can do it perfectly.
Cliff Goldmacher
I also feel like part of my mission. And all kidding aside, is to remind people that that growth can actually be joyful. Growth doesn't have to be brutal. You know, this work is joyful work. And it is exhilarating. And it is motivating. And it is if you're willing to suspend your disbelief for just a moment. I got you from there.
Kim Meninger
That's so inspiring. And so for, for people who are listening who want more of you, Cliff, where can they find you?
Cliff Goldmacher
My website, thereasonfortherhymes.com or the easiest way to find it. T-R-number four-T-R dot com is my website. And of course for your show notes. I'll have the some micro-creativity exercises and even a little bit of information about the work that I do with teams.
Kim Meninger
Well, I so appreciate you're having this conversation with me. I really hope that others are feeling inspired to think differently about their own creativity and to you to connect with you as well. This you're such an amazing resource.
Cliff Goldmacher
Thank you, Kim. I was really touched that you said you like having me in your world. I am honored to be in your world. This is a real treat for me.