Business Coaching

Intrinsic motivation
One of the key findings of the research on creativity is that creativity is highly correlated with intrinsic motivation - i.e. when we are working for the joy of the task itself, we are likely to be more creative than if we are working in order to achieve something else (extrinsic motivation). For example, the poet Anne Sexton told her agent that although she would love to make a lot of money by writing poems, she had to ‘forget all about that’ in order to actually write them.
Coaching facilitates intrinsic motivation by asking questions and delivering observational feedback in a way that helps coachees focus on the task in hand. In The Inner Game of Tennis, coach Timothy Gallwey says he noticed that it didn’t seem to matter whether he praised or critiqued tennis players, as both had a negative effect on their performance. Even his well-intentioned praise had the effect of making them take their eye off the ball, since they started judging themselves and hoping their next shot would be as good as the last one. So he stopped praising them and instead asked them to notice whether the ball was spinning clockwise or anticlockwise as it flew towards them - in order to answer this, they had to focus on the ball itself, and they were much more likely to return the ball over the net.
Creative flow
At its most intense, intrinsic motivation and absorption in creative work can lead to creative flow, described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as ‘An almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness’. Creative flow is the state of mind in which peak creative performance is achieved - see How Coaching Creates Creative Flow.
Individuality
Creative people are famously idiosyncratic, and there is no ‘right way’ or ‘best practice’ in creative work. Coaching typically takes place in one-to-one discussion and demands that the coach adapts her approach to the coachee’s personality, learning style and situation - so it is ideally suited to working with all the kinks and nuances of an individual creative talent.