Later as a psychology undergrad I remember hearing about the classic 5 stage model of the creative process:

Immersion: becoming immersed and deeply curious about an issue

Incubation: Chewing over the ideas and then just letting them settle into the subconscious domain to make connections with other, until now unrelated ideas

Insight: The ‘Aha’ moment when a new creative idea comes into the mind – often unannounced. (see New Insights on the Creative Brain)

Evaluation : criticising and deciding if this really is useful (the cold light of day test)

Execution: The bit where you just have to elaborate, twist and tweak to make the idea into something workable and real. It’s the hard bit of Edison’s saying, “creativity is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”

Because it’s such a valuable state to tap into no matter what your station in life, there’s plenty of  ‘top 10 ways to get creative’ lists out there along with more gurus than you can shake a stick at! Like most areas of performance I think the creative state is just too individualised to lend itself to generic lists of tips. For some people I’ve worked with, facilitating their personal metaphor for this abstract and complex state has been very valuable to them to help understand and express themselves. (e.g. Like a Kid In a Sweetshop)

Now the best known expert on the state of ‘flow’ (as per athletes getting into the zone), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has turned his attention to flow and creativity.  He’s interviewed a large range of people known for their creativity working in the arts and humanities, the sciences and various business sectors, looking for the common thread in personality, upbringing and environments. But if you’re hoping for the secret keys to becoming more creative his opening remarks will disappoint: “There are no simple solutions…….and a few unfamiliar ideas.

Looking for the creative personality type is perhaps a lost cause as he can’t identify any personality traits that clearly define creativity and he can only say with confidence that what makes creative personalities stand out is complexity. Indeed you and I may regard these people as being full of contrasts: if you like your people to fit nice categories; cooperative and responsible then you may be surprised to find they are both cooperative and aggressive; both responsible and irresponsible. They can be both energetic and yet sleep-in a lot. They can be both introvert and extrovert. They can be both humble and proud. They can both fantasize and be rooted in reality (creative people are original without being bizarre).

One thing that struck me was none of these highly successful creative inventors, scientists, artists and business people were in it for the money. Just as Csikszentmihalyi’s other work on flow-states shows, these people enjoy the creative task as its own reward, regardless of any extrinsic result or incentive.

So is there anything here to help you get into your own creative zone more often? Well there is a list of sorts but not of the ‘top 10 secrets’ type; more of a set of suggested experiments, which at the very least will help broaden your experience of life. The idea is that we can all step out of a one-dimensional existence of who we think we are and try on some of the contrasting viewpoints to add some complexity.

• Try to be surprised every day: e.g. stop and look for the unusual
• Try to surprise one other person every day: e.g. ask the question you wouldn’t normally dare to
• Wake up a with a clear goal to look forward to: find something meaningful to achieve every day
• Make time for reflection and relaxation:  typical activities to stimulate subconscious processing are tasks that are enjoyable and distract your attention e.g. walking, showering, driving etc

Finally, Csikszentmihalyi uses a metaphor I like when he encourages us to try on new ways of thinking such as always entertaining the opposite conclusion – instead of “I got the sack because the boss doesn’t like me”, what if  “I got the sack because I don’t like the boss?” – he says “breaking habits is a little like breaking your own bones” …….I leave you to think how!

6 . If it isn’t helping, say so!
7. Communicate, communicate & communicate

6 . If it isn’t helping, say so!
This may seem so obvious but it is easy to leave a coaching meeting not feeling as though you’ve made progress, perhaps hoping that something will happen later. Maybe it will, but if not, then raise this with your coach because the way you have been approaching the subject together simply hasn’t helped.

The coach needs to know as its only feedback and good coaching should not be wedded to a particular technique so flexibility is required.

This is the essence of ‘making your coach work for you’ – if it isn’t working bring this to the coaching meetings and with enough commitment and flexibility you can still make progress together.

7. Communicate, communicate & communicate
Finally, to make your coach work for you communicate with them as regularly as you can. The whole essence of the coaching relationship is communication and so it’s hard to see how you could have too much of this.

When I work with professional sports clients they are used to reflecting on their performance and progress and sharing this with me as coach. This is less true of clients from other walks of life, especially business clients.

Although I always tell people I’m available anytime on the phone to keep in touch and share what I call ‘hot off the press stuff’ as soon as it happens, in the early days of a coaching relationship I rarely get calls between meetings. Yet constant feedback on what’s happening – situations, thoughts, reactions, behaviours and outcomes – allow me to both help there and then and to prepare for the next meeting.

If nothing else it helps save on catch-up time in the meetings!

5. Be prepared to focus your thoughts on yourself

Thinking back to what one client of mine said about the right focus (it was as though my job was to make him think about him, whilst back at work everyone else’s job was to make him think about them – his boss, his team, his customers etc); the job of the coach is to focus the conversation back on the client and keep all the other people (and issues they bring) where they belong i.e. as simply the context within which the client has to perform at their best.

This is really important so please keep this in mind when you talk with your coach. It is so easy to start by talking about the situation you find yourself in right now; maybe your colleagues are being difficult, or maybe your boss or customers are not playing ball or maybe the economy is causing you problems.

Starting in this way is fine as you both need to explore and understand the details of the circumstances in which you need to perform. However, if you notice that you are well into the conversation and your coach has not moved the focus back to YOU then something is wrong. The conversation is in danger of staying on a consultancy level, where you’ll be waiting for a solution to an external situation to be suggested at some point.

At this stage your coach will probably be asking something such as “given all that, how do you need to be thinking, feeling and behaving to achieve your goal under these conditions?” In other words, the focus should now revert to you in order for you to have the opportunity to consider how to perform/respond to your situation.

Sometimes clients who are not used to making their coach work for them are surprised to have to constantly reflect on themselves and wonder what they are paying for if the coach isn’t going to give them any answers! Sometimes people are simply uncomfortable with self-reflection; if so this could be just what they need!

This is vital if you want to keep control of the coaching process. Although you may enjoy every meeting and come away feeling ‘better’, inspired or energised it is easy to suddenly realise after a lot of time spent with your coach that you haven’t actually moved any closer to what you wanted at the outset.

Even if you did your thinking early on about why you want to work with a coach and decided you didn’t want an advisor or a trainer to teach you something, or a consultant to answer a business issue, or a therapist to help fix a personal issue, make sure you spend as much time as necessary early on in the coaching to set a clear goal.

As we discussed before, it may be that you’re very clear about what you don’t want or what you haven’t achieved yet but you’re not so clear about the positive goal you do want to achieve. That’s fine so long as you ensure your coach stays focused on this early goal clarification step before you move on.

There is good evidence that simply being able to imagine and visualise yourself achieving a goal puts you well on the way to making this future imagined scenario happen. In one of the most well-known studies on Creative Visualization in sports, Russian scientists compared four groups of Olympic athletes in terms of their training schedules:

• Group 1 = 100% physical training;
• Group 2 – 75% physical training with 25% mental training;
• Group 3 – 50% physical training with 50% mental training;
• Group 4 – 25% physical training with 75% mental training.

Group 4, with 75% of their time devoted to mental training, performed the best. “The Soviets had discovered that mental images can act as a prelude to muscular impulses.”

See e.g.:

Robert Scaglione, William Cummins, Karate of Okinawa: Building Warrior Spirit, Tuttle Publishing, 1993, ISBN 0-9626484-0-X.

Martin, K.A., Hall, C. R. (1995). “Using Mental Imagery to Enhance Intrinsic Motivation.” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17(1), 54-69.

One method I use to help me (and my clients) stay focused is by writing a clear goal statement in one sentence and having this pasted on the office wall at all times in the meeting. The rule is that at any time in a discussion either of us can ask the question, “how is this item related to moving closer to this goal?” If it isn’t then we can either discuss if we need a separate goal or if we can drop the topic and move back to the original goal.

Once you’ve decided you really do want to work with a coach then to make sure that coach works for you, take responsibility for that work. It’s like most things in life; the more you put in the more you get out. This is true of coaching.

To draw on the world of elite sports for a moment, the British Cycling team performance director, David Brailsford,    interviewed after a world-beating performance by the team at the Beijing Olympics, told how he had to change the attitude of both coaches and cyclists to coaching. He pointed out that no coach ever won a medal – only the cyclist on the track could do that and at that moment the cyclist is totally responsible for their performance. Also during training the cyclist has to be in charge of their own development. It’s not the coach’s agenda that drives the process.

I know it may be stating the obvious but it is true that when you work with a coach you will be responsible for any change in your performance. The least useful thing you could do for yourself would be to sit back and relax in front of your coach waiting for them to give you the magic injection!

This means that to make your coach work for you please be prepared to make it work by:

• Knowing the overall goals you want to achieve from the work; if you’re not absolutely clear then take control by asking your coach to help you get clear.

•  Setting your own outcomes for your conversations: what do you want from this meeting or call that will move you at least one step closer to your goal? If your coach prefers to take over and set the agenda be prepared to challenge this and suggest your own ways of using your time together.

• Agreeing at the end of each session a plan of action – who will do what to keep you moving towards your goal between now and the next session.

• When you’ve agreed the action, keep this as a focus for yourself i.e. find a way of preventing everyday events from taking over. One client of mine put it well when he said it was my job was to make him think about him, whilst back at work everyone else’s job was to make him think about them – his boss, his team, his customers etc.

Remember, the session isn’t an opportunity for the coach to demonstrate how effective they are – it’s an opportunity for them to demonstrate how effective you are!

Once you’ve decided you really do want to work with a coach then to make sure that coach works for you, take responsibility for that work. It’s like most things in life; the more you put in the more you get out. This is very true of coaching.

To draw on the world of elite sports for a moment, the British Cycling team performance director, David Brailsford,    interviewed after a world beating performance byat the Beijing Olympics, told how he had to change the attitude of both coaches and cyclists to coaching. He pointed out that no coach ever won a medal – only the cyclist on the track could do that and at that moment the cyclist is totally responsible for their performance. Also during training the cyclist has to be in charge of their own development. It’s not the coach’s agenda that drives the process.

I know it may be stating the obvious but it is true that when you work with a coach you will be responsible for any change in your performance. The least useful thing you could do for yourself would be to sit back and relax in front of your coach waiting for them to give you the magic injection!

This means that to make your coach work for you please be prepared to make it work by:

• Knowing the overall goals you want to achieve from the work; if you’re not absolutely clear then take control by asking your coach to help you get clear.

•  Setting your own outcomes for your conversations: what do you want from this meeting or call that will move you at least one step closer to your goal? If your coach prefers to take over and set the agenda be prepared to challenge this and suggest your own ways of using your time together.

• Agreeing at the end of each session a plan of action – who will do what to keep you moving towards your goal between now and the next session.

• When you’ve agreed the action, keep this as a focus for yourself i.e. find a way of preventing everyday events from taking over. One client of mine put it well when he said it was my job was to make him think about him, whilst back at work everyone else’s job was to make him think about them – his boss, his team, his customers etc.

Remember, the session isn’t an opportunity for the coach to demonstrate how effective they are – it’s an opportunity for them to demonstrate how effective you are!

• Be clear why you want a coach
• Take Responsibility – for everything that happens!
• Have a goal for the whole process
• Have a goal for each session
• Be prepared to focus your thoughts on yourself
• If it isn’t helping say so
• Communicate, communicate & communicate

1.  Be Clear Why You Want a Coach

Bearing in mind all the career routes your coach could have taken to get into into coaching (via ‘therapist’, consultant, trainer, teacher, guru and psychologist) and the possible style bias, to make sure you choose the right coach it’s important you know why you want to work with one.

Got a Goal?

Of course if you have a goal – something you’d like to achieve or succeed at – then get yourself a coach who will start there and keep you focused on that end point. You may well address issues and problems along the way but that will be done in the context of this goal-focus.

Got a problem?

However, if for example, your end point is to resolve a personal issue then you may be better off turning to a therapist or counsellor. Indeed if your problem is as serious as say, depression then a coach should in fact refer you to therapy. After the issue is resolved you can then hire a coach to set some goals you can work towards.

Want advice?

Perhaps your issue or problem is a business one that you want advice on, in which case you would be wise to choose a consultant or even a guru with expertise in this business area.

You may well choose a coach to help you clarify your business goals and then develop your performance to achieve them but, unlike a consultancy conversation which will be about the business, your coaching conversations will be about you, albeit in the context of the business but still focused on you and your performance.

Whilst thinking about gurus or expert advisors, an interesting (almost perverse) reason I have encountered for requesting coaching is to be in control. On a few occasions I have been invited to have a coaching conversation only to realise the client doesn’t want to take responsibility for the agenda and wants to solicit advice – only to be able to argue and reject that advice! If you suspect your motive is something similar, perhaps to ‘have some ideas to push against’, then my recommendation is still to hire a guru or expert advisor as they are more likely to regard their job as done once the advice is given regardless of whether you take it or not.

Don’t know what you want?

I have worked with many clients who don’t have a personal problem they want to address nor a business issue they want advice on, and they certainly haven’t wanted me to teach them anything. They simply didn’t know what they wanted!

Sound familiar? Most of us at times experience the vague feeling that things aren’t right but we haven’t yet clarified what would be. This could be because there is a notion that a basic survival motivation is one to ‘move away from’ danger and this is more fundamental to survival than the motivation to ‘move towards’ desired goals. When the building is on fire the important thing is to run away; you can think about where to later!

You can work on this with a coach because although coaching is goal-focused, in this case your goal is “to know what your goal is” and sometimes a useful start point is to clarify exactly what you don’t want or what isn’t right in your life then work from here towards what you do want or how things would have to be for you to feel happier about them.

At last a program that uses the power of television positively! The show took 8 young people who had lost their way or never had one – from public school & graduate James; “I haven’t got a definitive direction of where I want to go” to Ashley; “opportunities like this don’t happen for kids like me from my estate in Leeds” – and offered them the opportunity to compete for two apprenticeships, one as sommelier and one as maitre-d.

At first I thought was this was going to be yet another reality program that set people competing against each other simply in order to film the sad drama of how each ‘loser’ was kicked out and how they coped (hopefully badly); the winner just providing a brief contrast.

The producer’s blurb cut little ice with me: “….. this isn’t just about transforming these young people into great waiters. Good service involves discipline, care for others and self-confidence so, for Michel, learning to serve others will mean developing essential life skills.” Oh yeh? – this is TV and I’ll believe that when I see it!

How wrong I was! Michel actually meant what he said, even to the extent that the only booting off was done with genuine reluctance and with the other’s morale in mind. The show wasn’t even about Michel, although he and his staff became excellent supporting cast.

This is how this extremely powerful medium (TV) should be used.

Soon after the first dreadful ‘reality’ shows appeared (Big Brother, Castaway etc) I discussed the new genre with a client of mine who is a TV presenter. We both agreed, what a waste of a format! What a missed opportunity to do something useful with the tremendous reach of modern TV. We just didn’t agree that viewing figures could only come from watching attention seekers being manipulated and focusing on their weaknesses.

We even tried to interest production companies in the alternative, where participants were given real opportunities with the focus on how, with the right support, they can come back from failure and achieve against the odds. About achievement, not beating others. Of course no one was interested so we’ve had to wait until viewers seem to be tiring of the negative norm before a production company has stuck its neck out. Well done them and BBC 3.

Throughout the series Michel has shown genuine concern (along with much frustration) for his trainees. So much so that right at the end when he’s trying to decide who to award the single once-in-a-lifetime maitre-d apprenticeship to, in order not to have to choose between excellent candidates, he creates another apprenticeship and immediately offers another trainee a job at Le Gavroche! Can you imagine that happening on X Factor……..

I already have feelers out to talk to Michel – if anyone knows him please put him in touch!!!!!

That’s effectively what you do when you text or email the message. Unless you at least speak to your recipient how can you know a) if they even got it and b) that they understood your meaning? Of course texting and emailing can serve a useful purpose, but as media for important communication take care! We seem to be loosening our rules to allow the same use of grammar and punctuation we use in texts to creep into emails. Apart from the obvious issue that you are restricting yourself to the barest minimum way of expressing yourself, because it is seen as swift you might mistake it for being efficient.

Yet I’m surprised how often people tell me they arrived at an appointment only to be told, “Oh but I sent you an email 30 minutes ago to cancel”. (Maybe the assumption is that we all have Blackberrys).  And don’t think that an urgent text would have been better; because the mobile networks always allow voice calls to take precedence so it could take up to 72 hours for your text to be received! Isn’t it up to you to make the effort to ensure your audience has received and understood your message the way you intended?

Even for social communication email is a dangerous medium unless you give as much thought  to composition as you would have done to a hand crafted letter or memo. Be particularly wary of the use of humour – research regularly shows that the tone you literally had in mind when writing is not heard by the recipient in that way. See ‘Oops; How Sarcastic Emails Fall Flat’ for example.

Whilst talking of efficiency, am I alone or does anyone else with a fast changing diary get frustrated by the insistence on using email to arrange an appointment? Whilst it may seem efficient to take a few seconds to send an email with two alternative dates, by the time it has been received, attended to and replied to with alternative dates a day or two can pass before you hit on a mutually convenient date, especially if your diary changes faster than the email traffic. One ‘phone call can have that appointment agreed in 5 minutes instead of 2 days.

So here is my recommendation for a hierarchy of communication media in descending order of value and ascending order of danger!

1. Meeting
2. Speaking - via ‘phone/skype/conference call etc.
3. Writing
4. Emailing
5. Texting

Simply sending a message is not communicating, any more than throwing a message in a bottle into the sea is!

And by the way, whilst we’re talking about the value of talking, I admit there are problems with this medium of communication – when you’re in a train carriage or a cafe! For your unintended audience this has been called the ‘halfalogue’ – hearing just one side of a conversation.

A team of psychologists at Cornell University have been looking at why overheard mobile conversations are so annoying. (See: Overheard Cell-Phone Conversations). Students were asked to perform a task demanding attention whilst listening to either a) a conversation in which both people could be heard or b) one where only one person could be overheard. Only the ‘halfalogue’ interfered with their performance on the task. Because the conversation is more difficult to predict we find it harder to ignore.

In fact they conclude that paying attention to an overheard mobile ‘phone conversation is a reflex. So although when we’re talking on a mobile in public we tend to have a sense of privacy, beware – others will be listening and being distracted because they can’t help it!

My first thought, which turned out to be the same as everyone else’s that I asked, was “what do you mean by performance culture”. At first pass it seems obvious: turning a culture that didn’t perform into one that did. I’m a coach focused on high performance so surely I know what he means!

Well maybe that’s my get out clause – I’m a coach and I work with individuals, not whole cultures. Maybe the ones put on the spot would be culture change consultants and gurus.

However, stepping out of my role as a personal coach for a moment, the reason he’d asked me was because I’ve been in industry as an employee, leading teams and attempting change. So my client and I had a conversation aimed at clarifying my search criteria if I was to help him, which threw up some interesting thoughts. I was trying to run a vision in my mind of some people doing something in a way that clearly identified a performance culture, versus a vision of some people doing something in a way that clearly indicated a non-performance culture.

Surely after 23 years in the pharmaceutical industry and attendance at so many industry conferences on ‘leadership’; ‘performance turnaround’; ‘sales force excellence’ etc. I’d know someone who’d actually done it and not just talked a good game? Someone I could call and ask to simply come and tell the stories to my client’s global management team.

It seemed to us that we both knew people who had demonstrated behaviours we might include in defining a performance culture – inspirational leadership, focus on results etc. But one person who demonstrated all this?

We both also had thoughts about performance; is it defined purely by the measurements you choose, so that it is just another word for ‘result’? Or is performance, as I would claim in a coaching context, something vitally separate from the results gained from that performance?

We both had thoughts about the word ‘culture’; does it include everyone i.e. would everyone have to be performing at some pre-set level or could you still have a performance culture if some people / groups weren’t performing to pre-set levels but others were? Would a focus on the culture side of the equation take you into studies of values & rules. Indeed the IDeA report Making performance management work, defines culture as ‘. . . the sum total of an organisation’s ways of operating and working together . . . the shared beliefs and the written and unwritten policies and procedures that determine the ways in which the organisation and its people behave and solve problems.’

So it was getting quite complicated and not helping either of us identify that one real person we knew who had ‘done it’.

We then began to focus back on individuals to ask the related question, did we know anyone who had the secret recipe for success? We could easily think of numerous success gurus of the “3 Key Steps to Business Success” or “The 11 Behaviours of Successful People” genre. We could even think of specific people who had their own story to tell of their route to a personal success. Indeed what about all the experts on programs such as Dragon’s Den?

Here we came up against my personal belief, (formed I must add from personal experience of working with some very successful people) i.e. I don’t believe there is a secret recipe for success.

I recently heard a public talk given by Mike Clare, the highly successful founder of Dreams, the bed company. His talk was truly both entertaining and enlightening. He was able to describe a number of key steps he took and the underlying beliefs and values that led him to make a great success of a company that sold beds. However, much to his credit what he was also happy to do was tell the story of his failure in the clock business, having tried to replicate his success recipe.

Also, some years ago my wife went into partnership with a high-profile business person who had made all his money in a commodity business that took him to Hong Kong regularly. There he became interested in high quality oriental furniture and he and my wife set up an import business. It went nowhere fast for many reasons.

I have many more similar examples from personal experience and my point is that these people don’t have a success recipe, which if followed unlocks success after success. If someone tries to sell you one then don’t buy it! Success is more complex than that and is always an interplay between personal characteristics and contexts (including timing).

So there we are; back to coaching individuals to create their own personal recipe of thoughts, reactions and behaviours in specific contexts that will be more useful than any sold by the snake oil salesmen.

In both scenarios can you entertain the idea that you are 100% responsible?

If not, is it because you’ve automatically substituted ‘fault’ or ‘blame’ for ‘responsibility’?

In a court of law of course the judge would look for who’s to blame/at fault and probably point the finger at the car behind. (With Elf & Safety regulations in mind he might even allow you to point the bleeding finger at the manufacturers of a dangerous peeling implement).

However you’re not in a court of law; you’re staying firmly in your own mind and trying to find the most useful view to take of these situations – useful for you that is. Will Schutz would certainly have encouraged you to seek out responsibility and ignore the issue of fault or blame. The concepts are very different and lead to different frames of mind; the blame frame being much less useful for you, and your relationships with others.

Remember all the situations where you’ve felt other people were wholly to blame: the company that made you redundant, through no fault of your own; the boss who held you wholly accountable (corporate term for blame) for the mess you made. Go on – blame them hard now. How’s that feel – helpful? Blame yourself hard now; after all you DID make a mess. How helpful is that – will your performance improve now?

In You don’t have to Look On The Bright Side to be Optimistic we talked about staying optimistic, partly through looking beyond yourself for factors that led to a poor result. This was not meant to imply there was no responsiblity on your part, just that whilst needing to work on your optimism it is worth recognizing all the external factors involved. Schutz suggested 2 very useful principles:

1. In ANY situation all parties to the situation are 100% responsible
2. In ANY situation each person could have done something different that would have led to a more positive outcome

This includes you.

No one made you drive that day, certainly not the person who shunted you; you chose to. You are 100% responsible for being there at the light  knowing there is always a risk of being shunted.

What other choices did you have that could have led to a better outcome than whiplash? Kept watching the rear view mirror ready to move forward that vital inch? You could have used public transport or not gone at all; choices you had no matter how unattractive at the time. (I know someone who chooses to live in central London mainly because public transport is good and they believe it is safer than driving themselves around).

Seek out your responsibility for the situation and now notice how you feel about the future. Learnt anything? Feel in more control over similar situations in future?

The paradox is that taking responsibility is liberating, whereas apportioning blame to others is tiring.  As Marti Seligman highlighted in his work on Learned Helplessness, believing you have no control over your situation is depressing and not useful for future performance.

Think of that redundancy – where was your 100% responsibility? What could you have done that could have led to a more positive outcome? Learnt anything – even if simply to never again believe it can’t happen to you and to make provision?

By the way – don’t forget the person who shunted you is also 100% responsible – but that’s their lookout!