“Peter Himmelman’s workshops helps teams unlock their full potential and become better than they would otherwise be on their own. His ability to customize his engagement based on participant/team needs consistently leads to teams pulling together, aligning, and generating extraordinary results.”
— Neil Barry Golden, Northwestern University Faculty, Independent Board Member, & Former Chief Marketing Officer for McDonald’s.
“Peter Himmelman has been an inspiration to me for many years. He consistently writes songs that come straight from the core of the human spirit.” –Mike Elizondo, producer Carrie Underwood, Eminem. Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette
“Peter Himmelman has an idiosyncratically original voice as a songwriter. His blend of humor, irony, pathos, and spirituality is distinctive, smart, and funny. Simply put, he knows what he’s doing.” –Larry Klein, world-renowned musician, producer (Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, Shawn Colvin), and Grammy award winner for Record of the Year
Develops instant trust to make your team powerfully co-creative.
We use songwriting to create an experience that will leave your people feeling more trusting of one another, more connected to the mission of your company, and more trusting in their own creative capacities.
I’m often asked, if I can help make our people more creative”? While I believe it’s entirely possible, I’ve found that particular challenge has less to do with “making people more creative” than it does with developing an environment that’s more trusting.
Intelligent people are creative by nature, all they need is an environment of trust and their creativity will burst forth. We make this happen everytime.
Push aside fear and access greater creativity
Peter’s Patented Big Muse program gives participants techniques to short circuit the brain’s native tendency towards fear, which allows them access to new creative possibilities. M.A.R.V., which stands for (Majorly Afraid of Revealing Vulnerability®, is our metaphor for your internal critic. Learn to silence him, fearlessly share your ideas, be deeply creative, and grow in your personal and professional life.
Your people will learn key tools to keep Marv at bay while they free their minds to do their best work. Employees that are overly focused on negative judgment, whether externally imposed, or from their own destructive thinking, may well be the single biggest inhibitor to your company’s success.
While other programs and speakers simply speak to the issue of overcoming fear, Big Muse programs are super-interactive. This interactivity includes having your people write original songs (whether individually or in groups) about key company concerns, new outlooks, social issues (you name it), songs that will later be performed by the Big Muse band to create a powerfully resounding culmination to the session.
Instead of being told how to act or how to feel, participants in each Big Muse session absorb information in a potent, visceral, and unforgettable manner.
Leverage tools of self-reflection to become a more effective leader
It’s axiomatic; if you can’t self-reflect, you can’t know yourself. If you can’t know yourself, you can’t lead your own growth. If you can’t lead your own growth you can’t lead others. Learn to take control of your career and your life, so both you and your teams can perform better and lead more fulfilling lives. One of the keys to being resilient in these times of unceasing flux and disruption is not only to know your values, but to examine them, to write about them, and then…to make a plan to bring those values into every part of your life.
Words like courage, loyalty, honor, and integrity have sadly fallen into disuse. They are considered by many to be things found only in old movies and on Hallmark greeting cards. At Big Muse, we think about those words very differently. We believe that core values are what’s missing in today’s mercurial business climate; a sometimes, less than humane place, where many leaders appear to be clawing their way to some mythical “top” —in spite of the consequences to stakeholders, employees, and society at large. We also believe that a deep exploration into values, ideas of purpose, and of an overall sense of contributing to mankind, is not only moral, it makes strategic business sense as well.
In this important session, (primarily geared to upper management), we create both conversation and action around what it means, not only to empower talented people to flex their creative muscles, but to empower oneself. This results in real, palpable change.
Create and maintain a more engaged and passionate workforce
87% of the global workforce is disengaged. 20% of that 87 are actively engaged in sabotaging the organizations they work for. In this hands-on session we explore the reasons for employee disengagement that are unique to your organization and implement strategies to halt it.
We feel strongly that disengagement comes about when people sense the company they are working for lacks strong values. They become dissatisfied when they think the only mission statement is: Increase the bottom line. While keeping numbers up should be a priority, if that’s all your company stands for in the minds of your employees, it’s going to be nigh on impossible to keep them around for long.
As human beings, we are motivated far more by a sense of purpose than we are by simply filling our personal coffers. Without the ability to try new things, employees become bored, and their boredom invariably leads to frustration.
Engagement isn’t a survey or a point on a graph; engagement is people coming together with passion and trust in one another to find creative solutions that make a tangible difference.
What does the structure of a workshop look like?
A Big Muse workshop typically begins with Peter introducing the session’s themes in his interactive style, often including audience engagement and an improvised song to set the tone. The workshop then moves into unique exercises from Peter’s book Let Me Out, focusing on improvisation, storytelling, and deep reflections on trust, fear, and creativity.
The highlight of most workshops is a collaborative songwriting experience, where participants, whether in teams or individually, write song lyrics based on your organization’s needs. These lyrics are then transformed into full-blown songs by Peter and the Big Muse band, spanning genres from hip-hop to country. The songs often address themes like trust, leadership, creative thinking, or vision statements.
The experience concludes with a mini rock concert, where all the songs, written by the participants, are performed live.
Example Workshop: Musical Creative Thinking/Collaboration Builder (60/90 minutes)
In this interactive session, participants are divided into teams to create a fictional company with no limits on resources or possibilities. Each team quickly crafts a company name, product/service, and a theme song. Peter provides a brief songwriting tutorial before the Big Muse band improvises songs based on the team’s lyrics, exploring various musical styles. No musical background is required, as participants focus on writing lyrics rather than composing music.
“Trust is The Foundation Of Every Endeavor.”
– Peter Himmelman
