To round off my Introduction to Business Coaching series I’ve added a page to the sidebar on Recommended Business Coaching Books. These are the books I regularly recommend to managers looking to develop their coaching skills. Although I’ve not yet discovered a book on coaching creative teams, I’ve chosen the books that I think are most relevant to managers and directors in creative businesses.

Next week I’ll make the whole series available as a free e-book. Till then, enjoy browsing through the books.

It’s that time of year again, when I interrupt our regular schedule with an advert for the latest issue of Magma Poetry.

Magma 40 has been guest-edited for us by Roddy Lumsden, one of the leading lights of the UK poetry scene. Roddy is well-known for mentoring younger poets and has taken the opportunity to showcase the work of writers in their teens and early twenties alongside more established poets. Many of the poets have responded to Roddy’s invitation to write on the theme of ‘passions and obsessions’ - you can read a selection of the poems and articles on the Magma website, with plenty more in the print edition, which is available to buy online.

The launch reading will be on Monday 3rd March, at the Troubadour in Earls Court. The headline poets are Matthew Caley and Martina Evans. I reviewed Matthew’s latest collection The Scene of My Former Triumph - it’s a stunning book so I’m really looking forward to hearing him read from it. Hope to see you there.

If you’d like to know more about Roddy Lumsden’s poetry, you could do worse than read my review of his selected poems from Magma 31.

Disclosure: I’m on the editorial board of Magma Poetry.

Social media enthusiast and all round good egg Antonio Gould recently interviewed me for one of Channel 4’s New Media 4Casts. I talk about the difference blogging has made to my own business, particularly in terms of making new friends and attracting new clients without having to interrupt them with a cold call. I also offer some suggestions on planning and writing a blog to promote your creative business.

The blogs I mention in the podcast are Copyblogger (excellent advice on writing blog posts), Gapingvoid (weird and wonderful uses of a blog - i.e. using rude cartoons to sell South African wine, Saville Row suits, Scottish feature films and Microsoft), and David Airey (great example of using a blog to growing your business as a creative freelancer).

If you’re considering starting a blog you should also have a good look at Problogger (start with his series on Blogging for Beginners) and read every single post on Skelliewag (there aren’t that many, but she’s achieved phenomenal success in a few short months - and tells you how she did it.).

The programme also features Emily Martin talking about how she makes a living as an artist from her beautiful Black Apple blog and Etsy shop - well worth checking these out if you want to use the internet to sell your artwork or other products.

Another contributor, Nick Booth, offers some excellent practical tips on podcasting and videocasting, and how letting go of copyright control can benefit you as a creative professional.

My bit starts at 7.50 but I recommend you listen to the whole thing, particularly if you’re relatively new to the whole social media/blogging scene. Antonio has done a terrific job of assembling the interviews to give an engaging overview of the possibilities for artists and other creative types.

As they say in all the best cheesy commercials - it worked for me, it could work for you too.

Bonus links: my pages on Blogging for Creative Professionals and why A Blog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas.

Photo by Lex in the City

Interruptions are one of the pet hates of creative people. There are few things more frustrating than having your attention scrambled by an intrusion just as you are becoming pleasantly absorbed in creative flow. Whether the interruption comes in the form of a phone call, e-mail, or someone hovering over your desk and saying ‘Can I have a quick word?’ the result is annoyingly similar - your concentration is broken, your time is taken up by someone else’s needs, and it’s hard to pick up the thread of your work afterwards.

I’ve previously written about the creative problems caused by interruptions in Why you need to be organised to be creative (the first chapter of my e-book on Time Management for Creative People) and offered some tips on minimising their impact in Ring-fence your most creative time.

I was also interested to come across scientific evidence (via 43 Folders and the New York Times) that ‘Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information’. For example:

in a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites. (NYT)

So there it is. Focused creative work and interruptions just don’t mix. QED.

Or so I thought until I stumbled upon a new kind of interruption, while trying to solve a different problem…

How interruptions cured my backache

I’ve written before about the difficulty I’ve had with back pain caused by too many hours hunched over the laptop. Now, as a trained Reverse Therapist I’m fully aware that the back pain is a not-so-subtle message from my body, prompting me not to spend so many hours hunched over the computer. But I’ve never been one for taking this kind of hint gracefully: ‘It’s all very well for my back to wimp out, but how else am I going to get my work done?’

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Having looked at The Business Impact of Coaching, I’m now going to focus specifically on companies in the creative industries - such as advertising agencies, design studios, TV broadcasters, computer games developers - and explain why I believe coaching is vitally important to their success.

In this context I should really refer to coaching as ‘coaching’ or even coaching - creative people are often suspicious of ‘management speak’ and my research showed me that many of them put the word ‘coaching’ in that category. No problem. I’m not a huge fan of the word myself. I’m more interested in what people do than in what label we use for it.

And what I’ve noticed are lots of managers, creative directors and other leaders of creative teams using skills that are very similar to classic coaching behaviours - i.e. lots of listening, asking questions, observational feedback, defining the goal/brief and then stepping back and allowing people to find their own way of achieving it. It’s as if these managers, many of whom have never read a book on coaching, using a coaching-style approach intuitively, because they find it the most effective way to get the best out of creative people.

So why are these coaching behaviours effective at facilitating high-level creative work?

Questions

We have already seen, in Key Coaching Skills, that questions are one of the hallmarks of the coaching style of management. They are also key drivers of creative endeavour. Many great creative discoveries and inventions have begun with questions - What if we did things differently? What if we could travel to the moon? What happens if we start connecting up all these computers?

Looking and listening

In his classic book on creative thinking, A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech quoted Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who said: ‘Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different’. We all spend a lot of time looking at each other - yet it is surprising how little we often see. Much of the time we are too preoccupied with our own ideas and needs to really focus on the other person. Coaches spend a lot of time looking at people and listening to them carefully - and noticing little clues in the way they speak or act. These clues can be the difference between success and failure in a working relationship - particularly when dealing with notoriously complex and sensitive creative types.

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Photo by Mami

I ruffled a few feathers over on Business of Design Online when I wrote about Why You Need to Be Organised to Be Creative. In the comments I was accused of writing ‘LIES!!! ALL LIES!!’ and ‘rubbish!’ because ‘Organisation and routine destroy creativity’ and ‘if you are organized you are probably not very creative’. It’s true that organisation and discipline are probably not the first thing that spring to mind when we think of creativity, but if you look at the actual working habits of highly creative people you’ll usually find these qualities in abundance. Hugh MacLeod puts it more pithily (and poetically) than I can:

Like making a fire from rubbing sticks together, creativity’s heat comes from work. Work requires dedication.

So I wrote that post (which became the first chapter of my e-book on Time Management for Creative People) to highlight the often-overlooked factor of organisation in the creative process - and I stand by it. But now I’m going to follow Roger von Oech’s advice to look at things in reverse and argue the opposite point of view.

Inspiration - the magic 1%

It’s all very well being organised and disciplined, but there comes a point where you have to let go of your carefully crafted structures. Creativity may be 99% perspiration, but without the magic 1% of inspiration, all your hard work will count for nothing. Just ask Salieri. And by definition it comes as a surprise, even a shock - we’re working away on a project or problem, and something unexpected pops into our minds: a line of poetry; a vivid image; a new idea; a catchy riff or rhythm.

Creativity is difficult, unpredictable and often frustrating - but once you’ve experience that ‘Eureka!’ moment of inspiration, it’s hard to imagine why you would devote yourself to anything else. That 1% makes the other 99% a worthwhile investment of effort.

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