How to Unleash Equity: A Hypothesis
Tiffany Thompson speaking with the Winston-Salem, NC Rotary Club on the topic of equity. She presents a hypothesis: If you unlock the creative spirit, you unleash equity. Watch the presentation to hear her case and explore the stories.
*This transcript has been edited for readability. Speech given on March 26, 2024. Not intended to be a historical account, but a poetic reflection on community.
I started my career at the CIA as an intern and eventually became an analyst. John Brennan was the director at the time. This note is particularly playful because it represents what every young employee dreams of: a note from their director praising their work. However, the amusing part is that this note has nothing to do with my actual job at the CIA, which was writing papers. Instead, it praised the emotion and feeling I brought to the song "America the Beautiful" during an internal event honoring fallen employees.
This indicated that I wasn't a typical employee. Receiving a handwritten note from the director about something unrelated to my official duties hinted at an unusual career path ahead.
That unique career took me to Nashville, Tennessee. I resigned from the agency, moved to Nashville, and pursued the typical singer-songwriter activities, including shooting music videos on motorcycles. However, I sensed that being solely a singer-songwriter in Nashville wasn't fulfilling all my aspirations.
I eventually moved to New York City to lead an organization called Gen Next, which focused on encouraging leaders to consider future generations from the perspectives of economic development, education reform, and national security. My experience as a CIA analyst and my ability to host events and connect people landed me this role, where we undertook some fascinating projects.
One notable project involved interactions with various prominent figures. For instance, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, Fabien Cousteau discussing underwater space stations, and Larry Silverstein, who owned the World Trade Towers during 9/11, and chose to stay and rebuild rather than take the insurance money. Additionally, we held an event with Tad Smith at Sotheby's before the sale of a Basquiat piece.
These experiences taught me that everyone, regardless of their status or background, has a creative spirit. It was my creativity as an artist that allowed me to bring value to these diverse rooms, despite often feeling out of place.
When I moved to Winston-Salem in 2021, I founded Artistic Leadership with a few core beliefs:
Everyone is creative.
Creativity sparks curiosity.
Curiosity leads to connection.
Connections unlock human potential.
These beliefs, which guide my signature team-building programs both locally and nationally, are drawn from my personal experiences and extensive reading. They also reflect the analytical skills I honed at the CIA, where I learned to remain humble and curious with limited information.
For those interested in creativity and connection, I recommend the book "Your Brain on Art," which explores the neuroscience of art and its impact on our brains.
My journey and research support my hypothesis that unlocking the creative spirit unleashes equity. I have three case studies from Winston-Salem to illustrate this:
Authoring Action
… I was playing a show at the West Salem Public House randomly just my own concert. And I had sold “tables” as a way of marketing and making more money than a single ticket and sell a table. A donor would buy it, the culture of donors in Winston is really amazing. So, this one gentleman bought the table, brought six of his friends, and two of those friends were Nathan Ross Friedman and Lynn Rhodes. They didn't know who I was. They had never heard of my music. It was a patron who bought the table that brought them to this concert in the back of the West Salem Public House.
Lynn comes afterwards up to me and says, “we do this thing called the Summer Intensive of Authoring Action and we'd love to have you come and be a collaborating artist. Would you be interested?”
I was just in the process of founding Artistic Leadership and pitching a collaborative songwriting modality to companies to build their teams (Because companies have money; and I was like, how do I do something in the corporate world?) [Lynn] said, well, we would have a little stipend, but it's with kids. I was like, well, that sounds even more scary than adults at a corporation. I don't know if I can do that. And Nathan said, “You have it. You have what you need to do this work with us. You have the soul.” And I said, let's go.
So that summer I worked with this group of kids; that’s Raquel holding her hands up. They taught me that their creative spirit was as potent and powerful as mine, as Nathan's, Lynn's, as their parents, as the audience. Their willingness to have their creative spirit unlocked through the process of [Authoring Action] unleashed equity. If you have ever been to an Authoring Action engagement, you feel like you are the student as the adult and the child is the teacher. They're so tapped into who they really are still! And like Picasso says, we're all born creative; we just forget how to be artists as we grow up. The kids at Authoring Action, the grants, the donors, and everyone who has empowered [Authoring Action] for over 20 years to do this work taught me the way that I'm just one of these kids. I'm really honored that they would play with me. That they would share with me. That they would create with me.
The Dwelling
Does anybody know what The Dwelling is? A couple of people know what The Dwelling is. Alright, that's awesome. It's a collaboration with the Moravian Church and the Lutheran Church. It's over on the corner across from the auto mechanic spot over on Broad and Sixth. I had never been there. I was in town for a couple years, had never heard of it. But Authoring Action got an ARPA grant to collaborate with The Dwelling and bring the Authoring Action modality of monologue development to the congregants of The Dwelling.
A lot of the people of The Dwelling have housing insecurity as a part of their human experience. Not everybody, but quite a few of the people. And at your church, if you go to one, you probably bring some metaphorical baggage with you… maybe a metaphorical suitcase of your stuff. [At The Dwelling], we might bring a real [suitcase]. It's a real specific worship environment and people are at a lot of different places. But at the end of the day, the creative spirit is there in every single one of those people. And the Authoring Action collaboration with The Dwelling through the ARPA grant created the opportunity for us to work with these monologue writers and turn their stories into songs.
Xay was my first collaborator. [Video plays] That was the first moment that we ever sang together; just a seed. We end up taking it to the main stage. This is one of the groups (pointing to photo). This was the first we're in round three of the ARPA grant. It was a two-year engagement and each one of these people has had the chance to have their creative spirit unleashed. They are the teachers; People who you might pass by on the street corner. They are the teacher. They are the artists. They are the creative illumination of the city because they're given the opportunity to have their creative spirit unleashed, and then shared with people. All it takes is just the unlocking … we are not having conversations about DEI. There we are just being creative spirits, and it levels the entire room. It's unbelievable.
CMPND
The CMPND (over on West Fourth Street across from that new park) is the brainchild of three people. Alec is the finance guy. Monty is a marketing creative. And Spencer is a poet. And the three of them have different dreams that are all sort of happening around the same thing. What would it look like if we had a space in the city where creatives got to come together, tell their stories, have all the resources that the big agencies have, but they could do it for like 70 bucks a month? You get a MAC, you get a green screen, you get a whole recording studio. You have a place where you can bring people together, and then maybe you can even have companies come in there.
The CMPND exists, this is around the corner. You can walk there today and check it out and go through its halls and learn about the creative spirit getting unleashed.
They have some sort of a program every Thursday that is literally one of the most diverse rooms you will ever experience in this city. It is so fascinating. Does anybody have a record player? They do a thing called “Dig and Sip” where you dig into crates and you pick out a vinyl and you take it home. You can learn about that later.
All of three of these case studies show how people are unleashing their creative spirit. At Artistic Leadership, these are the three levels that I guide teams through. Whether it's a kid in Authoring Action; a team doing a corporate team building at CMPND or The Dwelling. We believe that it all starts at the individual level.
If you have the time and the space to allow your inner self to reflect and say, “I have something to contribute here.” Just me, just little me in this room of all these big CEOs; I have something to contribute. You have to start there.
Then you get the chance to move out from there. I need to do that in community, in a small group, in a communal environment that's warm and safe and has trust and has experimentation and has play.
And then the third level, which is often we want to jump to because that's where the ROI seems to be on the metrics and the reports, is the collective. We want to prove it to everybody else that put it on a stage. Now that's really important. That's why all these different things that I talked about have public engagements as a part of what they do because the collective level where you really experience risk and reward. But, you can't get there unless you unleash the creative spirit at these other two levels.
Individual: Encouraging personal reflection and contribution.
Community: Fostering trust and experimentation in small groups.
Collective: Publicly sharing creative outcomes to experience risk and reward.
Two specific modalities I use are:
Harmony Hubs: I use the process of collective songwriting to unleash creativity and foster equity at companies through writing a song together. If we had another two hours, we could do it right now, and we would write a song about why you're a member of the Rotary Club. We would start with personal reflection. You'd work with your table to come up with some verses and share your stories and then we'd ladder it up, and I would sing you the song with a brand new melody that's based on your words. Let me just tell you, it takes you to flow. Alright? It is a high, when you create like that with a bunch of people you kind of know—all of a sudden they feel like best friends.
Kintsugi: This is the Japanese art of mending broken tea ware with gold. The process that I do is a contemporary approach that sort of uses the general arc as a metaphor. So with a company, we start with a tile, we break it, it shatters like the top picture over there, and then everybody puts it back together, and it becomes an artifact of resilience and your own story of leadership through the broken fissures of your life. And this is also a coaster that's kind of fun.
I only have a couple of stories that are local. I only have a couple of ways of doing it. I'm not sure it could be disproven over time. But I believe this to be true. And I think that the case studies ,and the books, and the life lived show me that it is something that's actually possible. And if Picasso does say that every child is an artist and the problem is how to remain one? Then the question is, where are the leaders? Where are the leaders helping us unleash the creative spirit instead of only optimizing and making sure things run smoothly all the time? Let's get a little messy with unleashing the creative spirit.
David White, an amazing poet, wrote a book called "The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America." And he says, “For all their emphasis, these corporations on the bottom line, they are adrift from the very engine at the center of a person's creative application to work. They cultivate a workforce unable to respond with personal artistry to the confusion of global market change.”
We've neutered the ability to actually unleash the creative spirit of work because it's a little messy. It's a little artsy, it's a little bit untamed, one might say. But what if that's actually what the leaders have always shown us:
· Winston Churchill was a painter.
· The gold medalist from Great Britain, Tom Daley, he's a knitter.
· We've got Einstein who was a great violin player.
· Condi Rice is an amazing concert pianist.
· Warren Buffett, he's a great ukulele player.
I end with a provocation:
What resources can you allocate to unlock the creative spirit in your community, team, or company, and unleash equity?
Artistic Leadership offers resources and expertise to help you in this journey. Visit https://www.artisticleadership.com/ for more information.
Thank you so much.