Discusses how creative thinking can improve the bottom line and the part that coaching can play in encouraging this. Includes three short case study examples
Karen Higginbottom
When coaching unleashes the creativity in employees, even the bottom line benefits. But the barriers both personal and organisational need to come down first

Creative thinking is increasingly seen as vital in business, and more and more organisations are turning to coaching to help unlock creativity in their staff. One of the first to realise that coaching tools and techniques could release the creativity in everyone – not just the gifted few – was Edward De Bono, in his seminal 1969 book The Mechanism of the Mind.

Bob Rawlinson, chief executive of the Edward De Bono Foundation in the UK, says: “If you can be more creative in business, you’ll be more effective and solve problems, and you can create opportunities both for yourself and the business.”

Gladeana McMahon, head of coaching at consultancy Fairplace, has noticed a growing emphasis on creativity in the past 10 years. Businesses are keen to help employees make creative leaps that can lead them to resolve problems or come up with imaginative products or ideas.

“It’s about freeing up the brain, which leads to people coming up with different ideas, and that has an impact on the bottom line,” says McMahon, who delivers coaching for many Fortune 500 companies.
But first there are hefty barriers to overcome. “There can be organisational blocks, such as a heavy and bureaucratic structure where there is no time for reflection,” she says.

These obstacles are also highlighted by Sara Ireland, a coach and mentoring consultant. “It can be hard to encourage creative thinking when we work in contexts that are over-legislated and controlling,” she says. “Bureaucracy, laws, protocol and procedures and fear of consequences of mistakes can develop sterile, uncreative environments. Learners can become reactive, risk-averse or turned off.”

Ireland believes coaching and mentoring have a part to play in keeping creativity at the heart of thinking and learning in organisational life. “Coaching and mentoring have a place in helping individuals to develop an understanding of the likely stages in creative thinking, and to develop mental stamina and tenacity in the application of creative ideas and change management,” she says.

However, some of the hardest barriers to overcome are self-made, according to McMahon. “Many people believe that creativity only belongs to poets or artists as opposed to seeing it as something tangible,” she says.

Developing the right internal environment is just as, or more, important than getting it right externally. An individual’s mindset plays an important part in developing creativity, agrees Jonathan Perks, managing director for the leadership and development arm of Penna, who worked with the Pensions Service on developing creativity.

“What unlocks creativity in people is their belief that they are innovative and creative and can do more of it,” he says.

Thinking hats on
One classic technique used to unlock creativity is brainstorming sessions. However, it is important to create the right environment or otherwise the brainstorming can be chaotic, warns David Harman, consultant for leadership development consultancy LDL.

“Ideas can be shot down too early in the process, but if you create an environment for brainstorming, then ideas won’t be squashed,” he says.

De Bono recognises, in his book Serious Creativity, that brainstorming has some “quick and superficial” merits, but he prefers a more structured approach of challenge, generation of alternatives and provocation. According to Ireland, De Bono’s techniques for lateral thinking help clients to focus, spot opportunities, explore and generate options.

De Bono’s “six thinking hats” technique involves six modes of thinking that have a role to play in creativity.

“De Bono characterises them as ‘thinking hats’ that steer and structure the type of thoughts encouraged at a planned but transient stage,” says Ireland. “Such an approach builds relevant thinking into a decision-making process in a conscious way. It can help to retrain us into more constructive thinking habits.”

Road blocks
One problem is that people can be limited by their environment. But Ireland says coaches and mentors can help people to see different possibilities by “taking them out of their context of operation”. The practitioner can then facilitate a plan of how to integrate the thing they want to do or enjoy into the current focus, she explains.

One block to creativity, Ireland points out, is fear of failure. She says coaches and mentors can help clients to explore previous experience of failure and its consequences, learning from it and the bigger picture. They can help the client to recognise what the early indicators of failure might look like so they can change course. They can also help them to visualise success, and to hold that feeling and state, to empower them through the difficulties they face along the way.

Some clients might have a learnt preference for instant gratification, and be reticent about anything that delays gratification. Helping the client to visualise success, and to preview the difficult journey involved, can give them the stamina to tolerate temporary discomfort before success is enjoyed, Ireland says.

It might not always be an easy ride, but the pay-off of working on creativity can be huge for both individuals and businesses. Rawlinson of the Edward De Bono Foundation, which has used techniques such as lateral thinking and “six thinking hats” to unlock creativity in organisations such as Siemens, Bosch and Motorola, cites two examples of success. DuPont used lateral thinking to increase its production, saving around £30 million a year. And JP Morgan used De Bono techniques to reduce meeting times by 75 per cent, changing its culture across Europe.

Being creative comes more naturally to some, but coaching can help everyone to live up to their potential, says McMahon: “Some people will be more creative because it’s their nature. You may never be a world-class athlete but you can be a better player, and coaching helps you be the best you can be.”

Questions to ask your client

  • When was your last highly creative idea or thought?
  • How did you come to it?
  • What was the circumstance?
  • What happened?
  • What did you draw from that?
  • What was the last question you asked that really developed someone’s thinking in a creative way?
  • Why did that question work?
  • How have you used other interventions creatively?

… and some ‘off-piste’ questions

  • What could/would you do off your own bat to make things better?
  • What would you enjoy doing that would make things better?
  • How would you change the way things are done to make them better?
  • How could you involve others who might not normally be involved to make things better?
  • How could you change the context for learning/working?
  • How could you make it happen?

Source: Sara Ireland, Zul. Hussain and Ho Law, coach/mentoring consultants zulfi.hussain@morphgroup.net

Case study: BDO Stoy Hayward

Over the past four years, HR consultancy Right Management has worked with accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward to coach accountants earmarked for partnership.

Simon Watson, a partner in BDO Stoy Hayward’s Reading office, says: “We have some terrific people in the organisation, but often they require support to fulfil their capability. Creativity is one of the capabilities from our point of view. We see being creative as the ability to think outside the box and be proactive.”

Theresa Hall, senior consultant at Right Management, says: “These accountants have very good technical skills, but we are looking to develop their ‘softer’ skills. Creativity taps into another part of them that had previously been untapped, and maximises their communication skills and gravitas – all demonstrated by existing partners.”

Coaching sessions encourage individuals to think beyond the prescribed working practices and find alternative routes to business goals. “The challenge for them is to fuse soft and hard skills to achieve a more effective leadership stance,” says Hall.

The coaching sessions, which can last for up to six months, are followed by review meetings. Watson believes that participants benefit enormously from the programme. “For example, recently an individual has come out a more robust person, capable of putting over their point of view, and they are now seen in a different light by colleagues,” she says.

The success of the scheme is measured by participants’ ability to make it to partner level. Most have been promoted to partner within two years of the coaching programme, Hall says.

Case Study: education system

The education system has traditionally represented a sterile and uncreative environment, according to coach consultant Sara Ireland. “A history of micro-meddling, tight controls over what and how things are taught, inspections and testing produce standardised, narrow processes and outcomes for students,” she says.
Creativity then has to be put back in. “Having vacuumed out the means from the system of generating freedom to be creative, the government is then forced to inject creativity back into the mix through supplementary creative input,” she adds.
A government scheme using peer coaching in the post-16 education sector is beginning to transform traditional teaching methods into more creative approaches. The government launched its national teaching and learning change (NTLC) programme three years ago. A pivotal element is the development for this age group of subject learning coaches (SLCs) – teachers who are trained to encourage colleagues to teach imaginatively and creatively.
The NTLC programme uses peer coaching to transform teaching, training and learning for students over 16, explains Bert Buckley, programme manager for delivery of the professional training programme at the Learning and Skills Network, responsible for coaching the SLCs.

“We started to devise a programme with six modules delivered over several days focused on coaching, using the Grow model. It’s not just about helping failing teachers but about re-engaging interest in teaching,” he says.

Richard Spencer, an SLC and a biology teacher at Bede Sixth Form College, Billingham, in the Tees Valley, believes creativity is crucial in teaching. “It’s about engagement of students and how you represent information,” he says.
Spencer is convinced that his coaching has fostered a more creative and imaginative approach to teaching in colleagues. “The real benefit has been to encourage other teachers to be creative and unlock their potential. As people become more con. dent doing that, you see the students enjoying the lesson more,” he says.

For example, a maths teacher at Bede College encourages students to throw bits of paper around the classroom to demonstrate kinematics, he says. Spencer himself has created dances such as the “DNA boogie” and the “mitosis dance” to explain biological principles. Another example that has been shared through the networking groups developed by SLCs is the creation by a construction lecturer of a board game called Gutters and Ladders, for learners working in small groups. The board game has been professionally produced and learners have been adding to the question-card sets to increase the coverage of the subjects.

There are now an estimated 2,500 fully trained SLCs in the UK, with around 500-700 in training. “For the SLC, coaching is a useful addition to teaching skills. In some colleges, SLCs have set up a peer coaching model using students to coach other students, and we’ve had strong feedback from learners, who have seen a significant improvement in the quality of their learning,” Buckley says.

Case study: the Pension Service

In an attempt to encourage greater innovation and creativity, the Pension Service, a division of the Department for Work and Pensions, joined forces with coaches from Penna to design a six-month programme called “Inspire to succeed”.

As part of the programme, participants were encouraged to look at the strengths and talents of their teams through telephone master classes, one-to-one coaching and workshops, says Jo Donaldson, head of the solutions centre in the Pensions Service. There were 12 participants, ranging from middle to senior management right down to entry level.

Donaldson used a variety of tools, such as NLP and audio-visual techniques, to appeal to the different learning styles of the participants. “We were not wedded to a particular model, but we focused on things such as appreciative inquiry, the Grow model and looking at the strengths and talents of the participants,” she says.

The programme also imparted coaching skills the participants could use with their team.” Using coaching, we would get them to think about what was possible,” she says. “In coaching, we get people to think differently and challenge a mindset or belief. If people are stuck, it’s because they haven’t got enough choices. It’s about seeing how people can generate more choices by looking at a situation from different angles.”

For example, the programme used playing cards to develop creativity in participants, and challenged them to look at problems in a different light. Participants used the “creative whack pack” developed by Roger Von Oech, which comprises 64 cards representing four types of thinking: explorer, artist, judge and warrior. This creativity tool forces people out of habitual thought patterns and allows them to look at what they’re doing in a fresh way, Donaldson says.

Hugh Mullholland, a programme manager at the Pensions Service, has seen a 20 per cent improvement in how his staff rate his leadership since participating in the scheme. He embarked on the programme in September 2005, seeing it as a chance to develop as a leader.

“We learnt how to use the Grow model to unlock creativity and give my people the space to create,” he says. “Through coaching, I realised that I had a tendency to take on the problems of other staff, which left me little room to concentrate on my own work and reduced my ability to be creative.”

Mullholland believes that coaching his team has given him the time to deal with restructuring the department, and to identify where his team add value.