Leading creatives can be difficult. In fact, I love having creatives on the teams I lead, but, honestly, they can make leading much messier.

In case you’re wondering, here’s a definition of creative: relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

Creatives’ minds are always wandering. It makes leading a team meeting harder. They get bored easily. They are never completely satisfied.

And before you creatives get too defensive… just so you know…

I’m a creative.

I’m not an artsy creative. I don’t paint, do music, etc. And that always confused me and kept me from considering myself one.

But, I’m a dreamer. I have a vivid imagination.

I’ve never met a day I didn’t have a new idea. My mind wanders quickly — randomly — often.

Wait, what were we talking about?

Oh, yeah, creatives.

But, when I began to understand these things about myself, it helped me understand the minds of other creatives on our team.

And I love creatives being on the team. They bring new ideas. They stretch others. They add energy. They challenge mediocrity.

One huge paradigm for me was realizing the quandaries of being a creative. I think that’s the word. A quandary — “a state of perplexity” — confusion.

It's some of these quandaries that might makes us creatives more difficult to lead.

See what I mean… and see if this is familiar with you... or the creatives you lead.

Here are seven quandaries of the creative:

1. We don’t like boundaries, rules, policies (and we may test them or rebel against them) — but we need them in order to be effective.

2. Sometimes our minds wander in so many directions, with no clarity, that we can’t even catch a single thought, and nothing makes sense; other times the idea is laser-focused, and we can’t write, paint, draw, or sketch it fast enough.

3. We have lots of ideas; they are endless, maybe even helpful — but sometimes we can’t get them out of our head and onto the canvas, or put them into a format that helps you understand what we are even thinking.

4. Nothing we observe is ever wasted; every new thing we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, can lead to another idea — but it also means our mind is never still, and if we are forced still long enough, we become very bored and hard to engage in conversation.

5. We don’t like deadlines, or being held to them — but deadlines are usually the only way to keep us on task, so we actually crave someone to give them to us.

6. Ideas come fast, really fast — too fast sometimes — but as fast as they arrive, they’re gone if we don’t record them quickly.

7. We are tremendously flexible in our imagination — in the things we can dream about or create — but we can often be dogmatic in protecting our original ideas, and inflexible when it comes to changing them.

Have you noticed these quandaries? Any others?

Do you see how we could be more difficult to lead?

These quandaries of creatives can actually produce the challenge in leadership — the quandary of leading creatives. Within each quandary is a decision I have to make as a leader — knowing when to place boxes around them and when to give them free reign, etc.

It can be difficult. A friend of mine said last week, “The most difficult person to lead is myself.” I agree. It’s sometimes a quandary.

But, it often begins with an understanding — of the quandary — and ultimately of the people we are attempting to lead.

Do you see ways you can help lead creatives through the quandaries?