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Fellow coach Ed Batista has published a three-question interview with me. I always think you can tell good coaches by the questions they ask, and Ed’s questions prompted me to reflect on my work and explain some things I hadn’t consciously thought about before - thanks Ed!

As well as enquiring about my work and use of technology, Ed held me to account by asking how my New Year’s Resolution is going - if you want to find out whether I’ve kept it, you’d better head over to Ed’s blog.

PS - If you were following my Twitter feed you’d have heard about this interview last week, as well as the Jill Bolte-Tayor video and free tickets for Charles Leadbeater’s talk about creativity and the internet. On the other hand, you’d also have heard about me watching football on TV and using the wrong end of my Wacom pen, so I guess it all evens out.

If you are responsible for getting the best out of a team of creative professionals, my new e-book on Creative Management for Creative Teams is for you. Feel free to download and share it (here are the terms of the Creative Commons licence).

The e-book is a compilation and revision of my blog series on business coaching.

Introduction to the E-book - Why Coaching?

As a creative director, business owner or manager of a creative team, the chances are you already coach your people to an extent - and you may be better at it than you realise. But there’s also a fair chance that you have received little support in developing your people management skills.

In the creative industries, so much attention is lavished on creative ‘talent’ and the products of creativity that vital aspects of the creative process are often overlooked. Such as the massive influence (positive and negative) managers and creative directors have on the creativity of their teams. While many individual managers are doing an excellent job of managing and developing their teams, there is little wider recognition of people management in the creative sector.

It’s hard to develop a skill that goes unrecognised. And you don’t need me to tell you that managing temperamental creatives can be one of the most challenging jobs going. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having spent most of this series outlining the What and How of coaching, it’s time to consider the Why - the key benefits to a business where coaching is an integral part of managing performance and developing people’s talents.

I’ve left this till late in this guide because until we’re clear about what coaching is and how it works, it’s hard to consider its impact on an organisation. With all complex ‘people skills’, it is hard to draw a straight line between particular skills and practices and business results. This is particularly true of coaching, as it is essentially a facilitative approach. Whether managers or consultants, coaches act as catalysts for various processes within an organisation, so it’s often hard to separate the different elements that contribute to success.

However we can identify factors that coaching seeks to influence, and consider how it does this. In each case, note how the personal benefits (to both coaches and coachees) are intimately linked to the business benefits. Ideally a company should be looking for a dynamic balance between the two, especially in the context of a creative business.

Commitment

It’s impossible to create commitment - but you can encourage it by giving people an opportunity to (a) work towards goals they find personally meaningful as well as delivering business results, and (b) use their creativity and initiative to do the job in their own way. Coaching offers a wealth of options for doing both of these. In fact, the coaching approach is founded on the assumption that the coach’s role is to act as a facilitator, while the coachee has the biggest emotional investment in the goal and the responsibility for committing to action.

Creativity

Following on from Commitment, because the coach is a facilitator, asking questions, listening and giving feedback in order to stimulate the coachee’s thinking, it is a highly creative process. Not in an abstract, fuzzy way, but in challenging people to come up with ideas that are new, useful and practical - and then to put them into action and see them through. For more on coaching and creativity see How coaching creates creative flow and my next post on Why coaching is vital to creative companies.

Read the rest of this entry »

The word ‘coaching’ conjures up an image of a one-to-one session scheduled in the diary, focusing exclusively on the coachee’s goals and how s/he can work towards them. And a lot of coaching does take place in this format, particularly when delivered by an external coach.

For a manager coach however, the picture is not quite so clear. Formal coaching sessions are a powerful way of using coaching with her team, and should never be undervalued - yet she also has the option of using coaching informally, integrating the coaching approach into her everyday conversations with her team, so that it becomes part of her basic approach to management. In their book Solution-Focused Coaching, Jane Green and Anthony Grant talk of a ‘coaching continuum’:

In-house workplace coaching lies on a continuum from the formal structured workplace coaching at one end to the informal, on-the-run workplace coaching at the other - what you might call corridor coaching: the few minutes snatched in the corridor in the midst of a busy project.

The two types of coaching are not mutually exclusive - many effective coaching managers use both styles in complementary ways.

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Formal coaching

The most obvious characteristic of formal coaching is that coaching is being used explicitly - during the coaching session both parties are clear that they are engaged in ‘coaching’ and are committed to this process as well as the outcome.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having taken a few steps into the New Year and received some great suggestions about what you’d like me to write about in 2008, I’ll pause for a moment to give you an update on some old projects and what to expect over the next few weeks.

New tagline: ‘inspiring creative professionals’

If you look at the header at the top of the page, you’ll see I’ve changed the tagline from ‘coaching creative professionals’ to ‘inspiring creative professionals’. This was partly (ahem) inspired by the beautiful folders in the photo above, which were a present from a friend in Japan. Apart from the fact that my research project revealed that some people in the creative industries are virtually allergic to the word ‘coaching’, these days coaching is only part of what I do - albeit a very important part. As well as coaching, my work now involves blogging, training, presenting and writing e-books - all of which are designed to inspire creative professionals.

And as a poet, I couldn’t resist the double-entendre of ‘inspiring creative professionals’ as ‘creative professionals who are inspiring’. That would be you, by the way.

So I’ve decided ‘inspiring creative professionals’ is much more it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by judepics: Planet Greenwich (home of Wishful Thinking)

Thank you for reading Wishful Thinking in 2007. It’s been great fun writing it and connecting with so many interesting and creative people - online and in person.

Here’s my personal selection of the best of Wishful Thinking in 2007, based partly on my own judgment, partly on the amount of visitors, comments and links they attracted.

I hope you (re)discover something to inspire you. Have a great New Year, see you on the other side…

January

How to Maintain Your Enthusiasm When Things Get Tough

7 Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure

February

7 Ways to Tap into Enthusiasm

Interview with David Amor, Creative Director, Relentless Software

March

David Armano on Management

An Introduction to Business Coaching

April

Chris Ritke Interviews Me at 49Sparks.com

The Manager as Coach

May

A Blog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas - British Library Talk

Getting in Touch with Creativity - Roger von Oech’s Ball of Whacks

Brian Eno - 77 Million Paintings Read the rest of this entry »

My last post looked at How Not to Give Feedback on Creative Work, with an example of breathtaking clumsiness from the Emperor in Amadeus. To recap, this is how the Emperor made a pig’s ear of critiquing Mozart’s opera Il Seraglio:

1. He offered a second-hand opinion
2. He pretended to be an expert when he wasn’t
3. He failed to provide any meaningful criteria for judgment
4. He was tactless
5. He was patronising

Let’s see what we can learn by reversing the Emperor’s mistakes.

1. Give your own opinion

The only person on this planet who sees things your way is you. Even if you are a novice surrounded by experts, there is still the possibility that you will have spotted something ‘obvious’ that no-one else has noticed. Don’t try to second-guess others’ opinions or be something you’re not.

If you’re not sure how your view will be received you could start with “This may sound silly but…” - it’s amazing how many times I’ve said that and found people nodding and agreeing.

2. Make your own role clear

If you are an expert in the medium, you are in a position to give a different kind of feedback than if you are not. Not necessarily better, just different. You will only irritate a professional if you try to intrude on their territory. But even if you are ‘only’ the manager, you are perfectly entitled to give feedback based on your knowledge of the client, the audience, the market and so on - as long as you make it clear in what capacity you are speaking.

I mentioned in my previous post that I know very little about graphic design, but am happy to give a ‘layman’s view’ of how a piece of design strikes me. If I’m asked to give my opinion on a poem however, it’s a completely different matter. This is a task I approach with relish and a completely different perspective - one of the reasons I enjoy writing poetry reviews. But this doesn’t guarantee that in any given situation my views on poetry will be more helpful than my views on design.

3. Be explicit about your criteria

Your criteria may be subjective, but at least you are providing a reference point for your judgment. Others are then free to challenge your judgment on its own terms or propose alternative criteria.

In his book Purple Cow Seth Godin tells the story of the adult focus groups who hated South Park because they found it offensive. In terms of their criterion (offensiveness) they were absolutely right - but fortunately the broadcasters realised that offensiveness was a key part of the programme’s appeal to its target audience - teenage boys.

Valid criteria can include: your own knowledge as a practitioner; the audience’s response; the client’s response; the brief; the market; the competition; money; time; practical issues.

4. Be honest, but not brutally honest

There’s no point fudging the issue if you really don’t like a piece of work or think it doesn’t meet the brief. But you don’t need to be brutally honest, especially if you will be working with them again and want them to do better next time.

Unless you’re a sadist, of course.

5. Support the person even if you can’t approve the work

Creativity is risky, so no-one can churn out a masterpiece every time. Wordsworth wrote reams of turgid poetry, Dylan and Bowie have made plenty of duff albums - but we forgive them because of the good stuff.

Remember, creative people identify very strongly with their work, so they are liable to take criticism personally. One of the most valuable things you can do for them is to give them your support and encouragement at a time of ‘failure’ - they will (usually) remember and try to repay your faith.

Well, there it is. I’ll write another post shortly on how to receive feedback on creative work.

Over to you…

What tips would you add to this list?

Giving feedback on creative work is a tricky challenge, for two main reasons:

1. Artists and creatives identify very closely with their work
   When a creative worker puts a piece of work in front of you, it is as though they were putting a piece of themselves there to be judged - because of this, it is almost inevitable that they take criticism personally.
2. The value of creative work is largely subjective
   We all know this from arguments with friends about music and films - one person’s masterpiece is utter rubbish to someone else. Shakespeare, Welles and Picasso are only ‘great’ because there is a current consensus of opinion that makes them so, and fashions can change. So it’s very difficult to make a final judgement with absolute certainty, no matter how strongly you feel about it.

But feedback is vital to producing outstanding work. Without some sense of how one’s work appears to others, it’s very hard to decide how to develop it. For Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, feedback is an essential ingredient in the experience of creative flow - when we sense that we are creating something valuable, it increases our pleasure and absorption in the work.

So feedback is essential, but how should we approach it? Specifically:

• How can we give genuinely constructive feedback on a piece of creative work, even if we aren’t experts in the medium?
• When we’re on the receiving end, how can we make the most of the feedback we receive from others - or at least develop a thicker skin?

‘Too many notes’ - the Emperor from ‘Amadeus’ shows us how not to do it

My favourite example of how not to give feedback on creative work is the Emperor Josef II of Austria, as he appears in Amadeus - a film I’ve previously written about as a parable of creativity.

The Emperor is not stupid, nor is he a philistine. He comes across as an intelligent and honest man trying to do his best for his subjects. And he aspires to culture, as an amateur musician and a lover and patron of music. The ‘musical King’ surrounds himself with composers and music scholars, patronises the opera, concert halls and music schools, and commissions exciting new works from established composers and rising stars.

And yet, as Salieri points out, “actually the man had no ear at all”. This is partly a deficiency of talent - regardless of the approach he took to musical studies, the Emperor would never be in danger of rivaling Mozart or Salieri. But it is also a deficiency of circumstance. Because of his position, the assembled musical experts around him are afraid to tell him where he’s going wrong, or even how bad his playing is. Read the rest of this entry »