Co-writer of one of Madonna’s greatest dancefloor hits shares how songwriting can help any team learn to collaborate better.

Ciaran Gribbin is the creative director and co-founder of Rock ‘n Roll Team Building. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s the transformative power of music and how it can be used for conferences, team offsites, executive meetings or incentive program rewards.

Prior to kick-starting the business, Ciaran spent time as front man of INXS, wowing crowds across the globe. He also had a had in writing several songs over the course of his career, the best known of which is Madonna’s Grammy nominated dancefloor filling hit Celebration.

We asked Ciaran to walk us through how writing a hit song for Madonna can help teams learn to collaborate better.

“I’ve many written songs by myself,” says Ciaran, “but I enjoy songwriting far more when I’m bouncing ideas off someone else. That’s why I believe that any team that brainstorms ideas in the workplace will get better at collaborating through a songwriting workshop.”

With what became Celebration, Ciaran originally worked with his friend Ian Green in his London studio.

“Each of us would throw out lyric ideas,” says Ciaran, “and every now and again one would spark an idea for another line or rhyming couplet. Before you know it you have the basis of a song.”

Now that all sounds pretty simple, and fun of course, but not everyone in an organisation is a comfortable collaborator.

“In our songwriting workshops,” says Ciaran, “our aim is to build trust between the participants, because trust allows people to contribute ideas without fear of being judged.”

Trust between team members is becoming harder to build in the modern office, with so many employees choosing to work from home for a day or two a week. We asked Ciaran for his thoughts on this.

“Again it all comes down to trust, and real trust comes when people really listen to each other and communicate well. In fact I eventually became a remote collaborator on Celebration, after Ian and I handed over our initial draft of the song to producer Paul Oakenfold.”

Oakenfold played Gribbin & Green’s early version of the song to Madonna, who loved it. Ian Green then flew to New York, where he and Oakenfold then collaborated in the studio with Madonna on fleshing out the song.?

To become a good collaborator you need to be able to put your ego aside and trust in the process. And by doing just that, Ciaran saw the song he created with Ian Green go on to become a huge hit for Madonna.

“Even though the song was initially created by Ian and myself,” said Ciaran, “it developed into something far far bigger with input from Oaky and Madonna.”

Now we can’t promise that any of your employees will end up contributing to a Grammy Award contender, but if you want them to become better at collaboration, and have a whole lot of fun doing it, then you need to lock in a session with Rock ‘n Roll Team Building.

If you’re keen to get your workplace or next business event humming, drop a comment or send us a DM. We’d love to help enhance your organization through the transformative power of music.