Innovative Thinking - Coach Certification

Coach others to think innovatively to boost their career and success

Being a VCI-Certified Innovative Thinking Coach, powered by Innovation Styles®, is an exciting and rewarding move for your career. Your coaching will enable people to transform their solutions to everyday work challenges from ordinary to innovative.

As a VCI-Certified Coach, you’ll be able to guide, support, and facilitate each person you coach to:

  • Strengthen their understanding about what it means to “think innovatively”
  • Enhance their knowledge about the Innovation Styles®
  • Master 4 Innovation Styles® questions to generate comprehensive solutions
  • Gain self-awareness and versatility using their self-assessment profile
  • Appreciate others’ style preferences, including group dynamics
  • Be confident using style-specific idea generation techniques
  • Be skillful in applying customized style questions to specific needs

Aligned with these 7 goals, you’ll learn to conduct 7 different coaching sessions, each with its own objectives, short videos, and exercises to choose from. Once you’ve completed your online study and practice, we’ll personally coach you before and after your first “live” coaching sessions, to make sure you’ll be confident and successful from the very start. And, we’re always here to support you when you need us.

The 4 Innovation Styles

To become a Certified Coach using Innovation Styles®, you’ll need to complete a VCI Innovative Thinking course, and you or your organization will need a VCI license agreement. Please contact us for more details.

The Innovation Styles® model has been used by tens of thousands of people globally to shift the question from "ARE you innovative?" to "HOW are you innovative?" With Innovation Styles® you will coach others to actualize innovative solutions that make the biggest difference for their work and their organization.

This course is specially designed for: Leaders, Talent Development Professionals, Coaches, and Consultants. Preview the course and download the course outline.

If you have multiple professionals who would like to become certified coaches, or you would like onsite certification training, please contact us!


 

This course includes:

47 Videos, 62-page Coach Workbook, Idea-Generation toolkit, downloadable videos and materials, and more!


Duration:

6 Hours of video and learning, plus practice time

What you can achieve with the Innovation Styles® is limitless!

Kim Saville
Director of Innovation Processes
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics

We use VCI’s Innovation Styles® in our creative innovation program. It is an excellent tool to build balanced teams for ideation and problem solving.
Dan Browne
Deployment Lead
Fortune 500 insurance company

My experience with Innovation Styles® has helped me to engage innovation and project teams with a different focus on change. It has had a profound impact on my clients’ work.
Belinda Block
Founder-in-Chief
Aha! to Action

What I love about Innovation Styles® is its focus on helping everyone to understand and appreciate their innate ability to be innovative.
Sai Krishna Rao
People Development
Centum Electronics

The Innovation Styles® opens up the opportunity for people to be versatile in their innovative thinking and brings in harmony amongst the team.

Your Instructors


William C. Miller

William is a co-founder and Director of Values Centered Innovation. For over 30 years, he has been an internationally-recognized expert on values centered corporate innovation – both as head of the Innovation Management program at SRI International (Stanford Research Institute, in the mid-1980’s) and as president of the Global Creativity Corporation (since 1987). He has been named numerous times by Leadership Excellence as among the top 30 thought-leaders worldwide on the subject of leadership.

Throughout his career, William has developed and applied practical innovation tools and processes that show people how to incorporate human values into their innovative work. His innovation methodologies have a proven record of breakthroughs in the field of innovation.

Debra R. Miller

Debra is a co-founder and Director of Values Centered Innovation. With 40 years of combined corporate and consulting experience, Debra is a top professional in the field of innovation.

She is the author and co-author of numerous books, articles and white papers published around the world, on subjects including business coaching, leadership, personal growth, human values in the workplace, and innovation enablement. In the early 1990s, Debra founded Masterful Mission, a business coaching organization working with executives, business owners and entrepreneurs. Through her work and public speaking she helped to pioneer the now-popular concept of business coaching and authored the book Beyond Motivation: Waking up the Knowing Within.

Course Curriculum


  Welcome to your Coach Certification course
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  Let's start with your background learning - Part 1
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  Let's continue with your background learning - Part 2
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  Your coaching workbook
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  Coaching Session 1: Ways to reinforce and recognize the styles
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  Session 1: Optional exercises
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  Coaching Session 2: Ways to bring the 2 underlying dimensions to life
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  Coaching Session 3: Develop versatility with all 4 styles
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  Session 3: Optional exercises
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  Coaching Session 4: Demonstrate how the styles think differently
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  Session 4: Optional exercise
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  Coaching Session 5: Build self-awareness and group awareness
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  Session 5: Optional exercises
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  Coaching Session 6: Use style-specific idea-generation techniques
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  Session 6: Optional exercise
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  Coaching Session 7: Skillfully apply customized Compass questions
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  Session 7 Customized topics: Business growth - Career - Change management - Customer service
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  Session 7 Customized topics: Future thinking - Marketing - New initiatives - New products
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  Session 7 Customized topics: Organizational change - Problem solving - Proposals - Quality
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  Session 7 Customized topics: Risk taking - Strategy - Team building - Vacation
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  Things to have in your hip pocket
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  Completing your Coach certification!
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  Please give us your valuable feedback about the course!
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Frequently Asked Questions



+ What does an Innovative Thinking Coach do?

As an Innovative Thinking Coach, you will most often work with people who have already had training in the Innovation Styles® methodology. Your role as a coach is to guide, support and facilitate those people to deepen their learning and apply it to their everyday work.

+ How is the VCI Coach Certification different from the Trainer Certification?

The Coach Certification is designed for those who want to coach people who have taken a workshop or online course about the Innovation Styles®. The Trainer Certification is designed for those who want to deliver workshop sessions to people who have not yet been trained in the styles. If you wish to conduct workshops, you will need the Trainer Certification. If you need flexibility to both train and coach others, we recommend obtaining both certifications.

+ Who is qualified to become a VCI-Certified Innovative Thinking Coach?

You can either be: (a) an employee coaching your company’s employees; or (b) a member of an external consulting/training firm, coaching your company’s clients. To qualify to be a VCI Innovative Thinking Coach, you must have at least 10 years of professional experience in positions involving talent development, general management/leadership, and/or project leadership. A graduate degree in any field related to the above can count as 1 year of professional experience.

+ Are there any prerequisites for becoming an Innovative Thinking Coach?

Before or simultaneous to taking this course, you should complete either: (a) a 1 or 2-day workshop on the Innovation Styles®; OR an Innovating with Style™ online course. Either of these 2 alternatives will give you a foundational understanding of the Innovation Styles® methodology as well as the opportunity to apply the styles to your own work.

+ What is the VCI License Agreement all about?

Prior to enrolling in the Innovative Thinking Coach program, your company will need to sign a License Agreement with VCI:

  • This agreement provides the terms and conditions for you to use a large repository of intellectual property in your coaching sessions. This repository includes a wealth of short videos, a 62-page Coach Workbook with exercise materials, an Idea-Generation Toolkit, posters and more.
  • If you’re an employee coaching your company’s employees, the License Agreement provides the fees and terms for your company to enroll employees in the Innovating with Style™ online courses and onsite workshops.
  • If you’re a member of an external consulting/training firm, the License Agreement provides the fees and terms for your company to sell the online courses and onsite workshops to your clients.

+ How long does my certification last?

Under the License Agreement, you will personally be identified as a VCI-Certified Innovative Thinking Coach. Each year, your company must renew the certification for you to maintain your ability to access the coaching videos and materials and your permission to use them in your coaching sessions.

+ When does the course start and finish?

This is a completely self-paced online course with 6 hours of videos and learning, plus practice time. After enrolling, you will have 12 months of unlimited access to this course and the repository of resources you can use in your coaching sessions.

These resources are always available to you across all your devices, so consider them to be a “just-in-time-inventory” to use anytime you need to inspire and guide innovative thinking.

With each annual renewal of your Coach certification, you can extend your access and permission to use these resources for another 12 months.

+ What if we have a group who wants to get certified as an Innovative Thinking coach?

We love groups! Together, we’ll design the best approach to get each member of your group certified, which could include blended learning and practice using the online courses and onsite training.

+ How do I access other courses that you offer?

We’re glad you asked! We have a fully-integrated set of modules to enable you to innovate to your highest capacity. With our core modules you can get certified as a coach or trainer.

Any time you want to view our full range of courses, just click on the "Public Courses" tab at the top of this page. This will take you to our course home page where you can find everything that's available, including free mini-courses. If you need a customized course, just let us know and we'll design one for you!

To learn more about our full range of modules, analytics and services, download our Innovation Program Guide.

 

Do you need to
coach others to think
innovatively and
boost their success?

Then this certification
course is perfect for you!

See why you can feel confident with the Innovation Styles®!

This course requires a license agreement with Values Centered Innovation.

Contact us for enrollment.