Coaching the Creative Impulse: Psychological Dynamics and Professional Creativity

In Coaching the Creative Impulse, Thea Mikkelsen presents an accessible and engaging guide to understanding and utilizing creativity at work. This unique book will give professionals and creative individuals a set of tools to help tackle and understand more deeply the psychological obstacles that may arise when navigating their career path, allowing them to thrive in their roles and master their craft.

Based both in practice and in theory, Mikkelsen’s innovative approach is framed around Freud’s structural model of the superego, ego and id and Mikkelsen's decade worth of experience as a coach and leadership developer. She begins by clearly defining creativity and goes on to identify the psychological processes involved, considering the contribution of language, professional relationships, motivation and working as a group. Using case studies throughout, Mikkelsen also assesses the causes of creative blocks, the value of external feedback and the challenge of balancing experiences of success and failure. Featuring rewritings of real examples from her own work with professional creatives, this book provides a framework for managing inner conflicts and discovering a creative destiny.

This state-of-the-art guide will be essential reading for all people who want to use their creativity and their personality in their work, and those who coach, lead and manage them. It will be of great interest to anyone working in a creative, technological or innovation-led industry, to HR and L&D professionals and to coaches of all backgrounds.

Thea Mikkelsen, MSc, MA, is an international executive coach and freelance leadership program developer in the creative industries. Working out of Copenhagen and Milan, she has more than a decade of experience. She is also a non-executive board and advisory board member, a candidate in the Danish Psychoanalytical Association, a keynote speaker on the topics of creative leadership, innovation and professional creativity and a writer. She is based in Milan, Italy, with her husband and two daughters.