Tips to manage employees in the creative industries?

Managing your creative employees can be a challenge, but doing it well is crucial to your business. Managing the creative enterprise is as much art as science. Creative people are driven by exciting work more than by a paycheck, and they need to express themselves through their work--a mind-set foreign to many employers. It's a recipe for competitive disaster to manage creative people like they're industrial workers. I have a friend, manager of Web Designer Company is learning how to manage a staff of 15 that includes nine Web designers. He told me point-blank criticism of projects doesn't work with creatives, no artist wants to hear that you didn't like his painting."
he is learning to offer freedom within structure. He acts as the intermediary between client and designer, then he lets the designers create. He praises each designer's work as he critiques it. he said, "I love it, but we need to make changes because this client is really picky.' It's telling them it's wrong [without] making them feel bad," he said. "If you do that, I don't think you'll go wrong." Gentle feedback is important, because creative employees are more emotionally involved with their work