Former INXS singer Ciaran Gribbin tells MGMA great teams share six traits, starting with trust

"A band is no different from a corporate team," Ciaran Gribbin told medical practice leaders Sunday in San Antonio. "Every member plays a role."

Gribbin, a Grammy-nominated songwriter who joined INXS as its singer in 2011, gave the keynote in the second half of the opening mainstage session at the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) 2026 Annual Conference. He paired six traits of high-performing teams with bands he said model them. His Rock and Roll Team Building band played a piece of each group's music as he went.

Gribbin started playing Belfast clubs as a teenager during the Troubles. At one gig, booked as a football dinner dance, about 15 masked, armed members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, marched across the front of the stage. He said he and his best friend were the only two Catholics there. He played Tina Turner's "The Best," and the UVF filled the dance floor.

"I looked around the room, and it's all about knowing your audience," Gribbin said.

What are the six traits of a high-performing team?

Trust came first. Without it, Gribbin said, a band has nothing. INXS went from the pubs of Sydney to Wembley Stadium on a "whatever it takes" motto, he said, with members who called one another brothers. Three of them were.

Connection meant "connection with each other on stage, but more importantly, connection with your audience," he said. Oasis lost it when its feuding brothers broke up the band, and found it again on a reunion tour Gribbin saw in Sydney. "They found a way back to the connection, not just to each other, but to their audience," he said.

Gribbin called adaptability one of the most important traits and gave it to U2, which he noted had just marked 50 years as a band. "No matter what the world throws at you ... you got to keep reinventing yourself," he said. He said U2 changed its sound across decades and was the first band to play the Sphere in Las Vegas. It kept "the same team, the same crew, the same manager, the same guy that drives the bus, the same guy that sets up the gear" the whole way.

MGMA's 2026 staff compensation report, released in June, found raises for practice staff slowed this year even as hiring stayed difficult, and front-desk, clinical and billing employees still earn far more than they did five and 10 years ago.

Focus belonged to AC/DC, which Gribbin said built its audience through constant touring rather than radio play. "They did it the hard way," he said.

Authenticity went to Radiohead, which Gribbin said sets the standard for it.

"Nobody sounds like Radiohead," he said, and the band is "not trying to win everybody over." He pointed to its pay-what-you-want release of "In Rainbows" and to tours that skipped major cities for farmland, "literally going to the grassroots."

Collaboration came last, and Gribbin called it probably the most important. John Lennon and Paul McCartney could each write a hit alone, he said, but most of the Beatles' hits came from the two of them working together. The pair used to joke that the song they were writing that day would buy a Rolls-Royce and the next one would pay for a swimming pool, he said.

"That's how confident and sure they were in themselves," Gribbin said. "But they trusted each other."

A verse from the audience

Gribbin split the ballroom into three sections for a three-part "Free Fallin'." He then put lyrics on the screens for an original song his band wrote for MGMA's 100th anniversary, built around the conference theme, "From Here Forward."

For the final verse, band members carried microphones into the crowd and asked volunteers where they were from and what they did.

One directs an independent physician association in Oregon, and another works in marketing and operations.

Their answers became new lines, and Gribbin closed the session by having the full ballroom sing the finished song together.

Physicians Practice is in San Antonio at the MGMA Annual Conference, Sept 27-30, celebrating 100 years of MGMA, attending sessions and speaking with industry leaders. Follow our coverage on our MGMA conference page.