Managing a team of creative professionals is a fascinating challenge, with no easy solutions.

Firstly, there’s the creative process itself - by definition, creativity must contain something new and surprising, so creative work involves a constant quest for new approaches to keep things fresh and original.

Secondly there are the creatives. Whether or not you subscribe to the view that ‘creative people’ are inherently special or different to the rest of us, if you are working with professional creatives then you are dealing with highly skilled and intelligent individuals, who require plenty of stimulation, challenge and support.

Then there are the managers themselves. To take liberties with Shakespeare, in a creative business “some are born managers, some achieve management and some have management thrust upon ‘em”. In the first category we might include professional managers - sometimes stereotyped as ’suits’ - who are quite comfortable with the language and discipline of management. In the second category are the senior creatives whose achievements mean they are singled out for promotion, and have to adapt to the new challenges of a leadership role. And in the third category we can see the creative entrepreneurs who discover that to realise their vision they need to engage other people and delegate responsibility to them.

Mix all of these elements together, and you get a very wide range of company structures and cultures, which are often loosely lumped together under the heading ‘creative industries’.

Some companies are still very close to the classic hierarchical corporate structure, with the managers or directors clearly in a position of authority over the teams. Other companies work hard to undermine the concept of hierarchy, and working relationships are more like peer-to-peer collaboration and learning.

Some office cultures are fairly comfortable with the concepts and practices of ‘management’, whereas others resist anything that sounds a bit ‘corporate’.

So it’s clearly impossible to take a one-size-fits-all approach to management and development, and in many cases, conventional approaches are unlikely to be well received.

This is why I have developed a specialist coaching service for creative businesse, which is flexible enough to take account of the needs of different types of creatives, managers and companies.

I am experienced at coaching managers in many different contexts, and have trained many of them in coaching skills to use with their teams. I have also developed a specialist training programme for managers in Coaching Creative Professionals.

My experience as a coach in large and small organisations means I appreciate the commercial pressures people are under in a creative business. And because I am also a poet with first hand experience of the creative process, I find it easy to relate to professional creatives.

If you’re curious about how my coaching and training can help your managers get the best out of their creative teams, have a look at the Direction section of my creative coaching site. You may also be interested in the sections about Imagination and creative Collaboration and teamwork.

Feel free to ask me in confidence about your situation or any aspect of coaching.