Business Coaching

Which style should I use?
Neither style is better or worse than the other, and many managers use both. Which one you use will depend on a range of factors:
The manager's preference
Some managers are comfortable with scheduling formal coaching sessions and having a clearly structured coaching programme - others' toes curl up at the very thought. When working with people, it's vitally important to be yourself and use or adapt an approach that you feel comfortable with. So make sure you are honest with yourself and your team about your own preferences and work with, not against them. On the other hand there's nothing wrong with a bit of creative experiment - I've seen some managers achieve great results by starting the first coaching session by saying ‘Well this is a new approach for me and to be honest I'm not sure whether it's my style, but let's try it out and see how it goes...’.
The coachee's preference
It goes without saying that this is at least as important as the manager's preference. Some coachees love the idea of having dedicated time for their own coaching and development work, as well as clearly defined goals and a structure for achieving them. Others, particularly in creative agencies, are deeply suspicious of any kind of formal structure for this kind of work, and much prefer to do things in a more informal, casual way. Ignore this at your peril!
Company culture
Just as individuals have preferences, so do organisations. Approaches that are well-received in a large broadcaster or newspaper may be unworkable or inflammatory in a small
agency or studio. This doesn't mean you can't try something new, but you may have to be creative about how you sell it to people within the company.
The kind of task
It's difficult to generalise about this, as I've seen both formal and informal coaching used successfully with a wide range of tasks and goals. However for 'big picture' goals such as a large new project, a person's career or annual goals, a formal coaching session can be a powerful way of setting the scene and getting people focused. There are also many instances in which a smaller or ongoing issue may not merit a formal meeting, but a brief chat by the proverbial water cooler is just the job to tease out a problem and get things moving again.

11. 
    How Coaching Creates Creative Flow
    

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist who has devoted his career to researching happiness and fulfilment. His research has shown that although people enjoy indulging in pleasure, such as eating and drinking, sex and shopping, this eventually wears off, leaving us feeling unsatisfied.
True happiness comes from learning and developing our skills to overcome meaningful challenges. When we are fully absorbed in doing this, we experience what Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’:
Flow – ‘An almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness.’ (from Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
When we are in flow, we are fully absorbed in whatever we are doing and find it easy to achieve peak performance. The experience is accompanied by intense feelings of pleasure and satisfaction.
Flow can occur in many spheres of human activity, physical and mental. Athletes call it being in the ‘the zone’, but we don’t have to run a marathon or win an Olympic medal do experience flow - we have all experienced the enjoyment of becoming absorbed in doing a task well.
Flow is particularly common in artistic and creative spheres, during those times when ideas, images, feelings and/or words seem to flow easily and the work takes on a momentum of its own. Many artists make big sacrifices in other areas of their lives so that they can pursue creative flow. Professional creatives have typically had powerful experiences of flow, and can relate to the intense feeling of satisfaction when they enter flow – and equally intense feelings of frustration when they are unable to get into flow in their work.
Creative flow is intensely satisfying for the individuals who experience it. From a business perspective, this is more than just a ‘nice experience’ however - as Csikszentmihalyi points out, flow occurs during periods of peak performance - so if you want your creative team to perform better, one of the most important things you can do is to help them achieve creative flow more often. Not only will this raise their creative performance, it will also increase their motivation to work - which in turn raises performance, in a virtuous circle.
Csikszentmihalyi identifies the following nine characteristics of flow:

1.