VTS@Work® Program

Learn an accessible, rigorous methodology for leading and participating in your most important professional interactions.

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a powerful, research-based approach to facilitating discussions about complex, ambiguous materials. It is designed to deepen critical thinking, attentiveness, curiosity, self-awareness, mutual understanding within a group, and more. This program focuses on helping you learn these skills and strategies and apply them within your professional setting.

The VTS@Work® Program is your journey to becoming a VTS@Work® Facilitator. Challenging and transformative, the program includes sustained facilitation practice, personalized coaching & feedback, deep reflection, a safe learning community, and ongoing application directly within your workflow.

We connect VTS research and theory with cutting-edge topics from organizational behavior, metacognition, leadership and team development, strategic thinking, inclusion and equity, patient care and/or user experience, innovation, and more.

We meet you where you are and help you grow.

VTS@Work® Facilitator Program Outcomes

  • COMMUNICATE & FACILITATE MORE EFFECTIVELY
    You will achieve proficiency in all VTS techniques: active listening, paraphrasing, suspending judgment, asking good questions, sustaining inquiry, creating psychological safety, generating multiple perspectives, and more. You will learn to choose productive materials and moments for VTS applications within your workflow.

  • TRANSFORM YOUR WORK
    As the program progresses, you will practice what you learn in small doses back at work for immediate impact on projects and processes, teams and colleagues, clients/users or patients, and yourself. Results include more accurate diagnosis (problem-finding and -solving), actionable feedback, inclusive communication, igniting others to learn and grow, and more.

  • GAIN SELF-AWARENESS & EMPATHY
    You will develop heightened awareness of your own observational and thinking habits, gaps, assumptions, and biases. At the same time, you will deepen your understanding of and appreciation for the thinking patterns and experiences of others. You will have tools to help yourself and others be more attentive, empathic, curious, and open.

  • VTS@WORK® CERTIFICATION
    Upon completion of the Basics + Advanced sequence, you have the choice to apply for certification. Certification is awarded if you demonstrate 1) proficiency in all VTS techniques, 2) understanding of the method and its impact in your context, and 3) the ability to discern the “what, when, with whom and why” of VTS discussions/techniques in your field, which includes how to set up and follow up—or smoothly integrate—such discussions in the flow of your work.

This program is designed to help you reach certification as a VTS@Work® Facilitator. The journey can continue with on a custom basis with VTS@Work® Coach training and VTS@Work® Trainer Training. Reach out for more information.

VTS@Work® Facilitator Program Sequence

1. BASICS SHORT COURSE

You’ll experience and learn the fundamentals of Visual Thinking Strategies and their potential relevance within your work.

  • 8 hours total of live session time

  • Four 2-hour classes via Zoom weekly for one month

  • Upcoming: Oct ’25 & Jan ’26

2. ADVANCED COURSE

After Basics (or the equivalent), join this deep-dive course to gain proficiency as a VTS facilitator and its applications in your work context.

  • 24 hours total of live session time

  • Eight 3-hour classes via Zoom over several months

  • Begins again in Feb ’26

3. VTS@WORK® CERTIFICATION

After completing Advanced, submit an application and recordings to seek certification. We evaluate applications using a research-based rubric.

  • Submit two recordings with written reflections.

DETAILS & REGISTRATION ARE BELOW

VTS@Work® Basics

Experience the power of Visual Thinking Strategies. In this short course, we introduce you to VTS fundamentals, focusing on workplace applications. You will learn how the method promotes critical thinking, psychological safety, respect for diverse perspectives, and meta-cognitive awareness of one’s own thought patterns and biases.

You will practice facilitating VTS twice, first with art and later using a stimulus from your own work. Each practice will include personalized coaching by experts as well as peer feedback. Throughout, you and the other professionals in your small cohort will build community, reflect, and bridge VTS skills and concepts to your professional lives.

Comprising four, 2-hour weekly Zoom sessions, this is an experiential, compelling, and highly personalized short course to help you understand VTS as well as decide whether you’d like to continue training.

Faculty-student ratio averages 1:5.

Format: Zoom

Fee: $800

UPCOMING BASICS COURSES

OCTOBER 2025

Thursdays in October, 11 am - 1 pm EST

  • Session 1: October 2

  • Session 2: October 9

  • Session 3: October 16

  • Session 4: October 23


JANUARY 2026

Thursdays in January, 11 am - 1 pm EST

  • Session 1: January 8

  • Session 2: January 15

  • Session 3: January 22

  • Session 4: January 29

VTS@Work® Advanced

Rigorously develop your VTS facilitation skills and by extension, your behaviors, mindsets, expectations, and outcomes in the workplace.

This interactive course—the first of its kind to focus on developing professionals beyond basic VTS training—is rooted in research and trains you to become highly proficient at facilitating VTS discussions and seeding the techniques throughout your interactions. You will deeply understand the method’s design, applications, and impact on teams, leaders, innovation, your own field, and yourself.

The bulk of the course time is used for active practice and coaching with an emphasis on individual growth and proficiency. You will practice at least 4-5 times, receiving personalized feedback every time. In an additional practice opportunity, faculty observe you lead a discussion within your workplace.

Each session connects VTS to frameworks and research from larger, workplace themes, including the following:

  • Thinking and metacognition

  • Empathic communication

  • Psychological safety and teams

  • Inclusion and conversations across differences

  • Facilitative leadership

  • Wellness and self-compassion

The faculty-student ratio averages 1:5. Occasional guest speakers are professionals who apply VTS within their work and may include executives and leaders, healthcare clinicians and educators, designers, researchers, and more.

Formats. Classes are taught in live sessions via Zoom. Materials, recordings, discussion threads, and optional readings are distributed via the course platform, Canvas.

Duration. Eight 3-hour sessions over five months. Research on VTS demonstrates that facilitation skills are most effectively learned through short bursts spread over months, with time between for gestation, practice, and application.

Outside work. In-class sessions are supported by a variety of homework activities, including practicing VTS outside the course and (optional) readings/videos and reflective writing. Each participant will also receive 1 hour of 1:1 coaching or consulting from faculty outside of class.

Certification. The course fee includes the opportunity to apply for certification as a VTS@Work® Facilitator (after the course completion). Certification demonstrates high proficiency in all VTS techniques, understanding of its design, and the ability to apply the skills in your work setting.

Fee: $2800

UPCOMING ADVANCED COURSE

WINTER 2026

The VTS@Work® Advanced course will begin again in February 2026. Dates will be posted here in fall 2025.

If you’re interested, please email us at info@haileygroup.com or submit your application by clicking the button below.

If you’re a healthcare professional, you might consider taking the CME course, Training Our Eyes, Minds, and Hearts: Visual Thinking Strategies for Healthcare Professionals, offered through Harvard Medical School and co-directed by Corinne Zimmermann, Dr. Joel Katz, and Dabney Hailey. This course begins again in October 2025 and is based on the VTS@Work® Program.

Custom VTS@Work® Courses

Hailey Group has designed and run custom Basics and Advanced VTS@Work® courses for particular audiences, from C-level executives to specific teams within an organization. Advantages include:

  • You choose the schedule. We can accommodate most time international time zones.

  • We focus on work processes, problems, materials, and moments particular to your group/organization/roles.

  • You develop a skilled, resilient, mutually supportive community of practice and application inside your culture.

  • You gain a shared language of facilitation, discussion, and inquiry everyone can take forward together.

Fees vary by customization. A minimum of 8 people are required to run a custom course. For more information, please reach out: aneta@haileygroup.com.

FAQs

How do I pay? We take credit cards, or we can invoice your organization. 

Nonprofit discounts? Nonprofits and higher education receive a 20% discount. Be sure to list your qualified organization in your contact form. If cost is a barrier, please reach out to us and we’ll be delighted to try to help you find a way to take this course.

I want my whole team to take this course. We can meet this goal. If the scheduled times don't work for you and your team and you have at least eight people, we can set up a separate, custom course scheduled at the group’s convenience; see above for more information and contact aneta@haileygroup.com.

I want a workshop/workshops for my organization rather than courses. Sure! Please look through our offerings for organizations.

I'm a healthcare professional; can I earn CME credits? Not through this course, but you may want to consider our sister course, co-founded and co-directed by Dabney Hailey, Corinne Zimmermann, and Joel Katz, Training Our Eyes, Minds, and Hearts: Visual Thinking Strategies for Health Care Professionals and run through Harvard Medical School. The course is now open for registration and begins anew on October 8, 2025.

Do you offer Trainer Training? Yes, the journey can continue with on a custom basis with VTS@Work® Coach training and VTS@Work® Trainer Training. Reach out for more information: aneta@haileygroup.com.

Other questions? Please contact us.

A Little History

The VTS@Work® Program was co-founded by Philip Yenawine, Corinne Zimmermann, and Dabney Hailey during 2019-2020. We’re grateful to the extraordinary participants who joined our first prototype in January 2020 and the online, longer course we ran later that year. Through experimentation and their dedication, creativity, and applications of the method and its techniques—and most of all because of their brilliant questions throughout—many of those brave souls helped us design this course for maximum impact in the workplace. Most of our early students came from Hailey Group’s client base or Corinne Zimmermann’s work within healthcare. Many have gone on to become certified VTS@Work® Facilitators and Hailey Group coaches.

In 2024, Corinne Zimmermann, Dabney Hailey, and Dr. Joel Katz co-founded a healthcare-focused version of the VTS@Work® Program for continuing medical education (CME) credit at Harvard Medical School. Training Our Eyes, Minds, and Hearts: Visual Thinking Strategies for Health Care Professionals is now open for registration and begins anew on October 8, 2025.

Testimonials

  • “Excellent tools and methods to achieve breakthrough results in understanding and empathy when looking at building teams that span functions or disciplines. Good for getting unstuck.”

    — HEALTHSUITE LABS LEADER, PHILIPS

  • “To observe a VTS facilitator is to observe what the future of leadership should look like. Let’s think of a leader as a facilitator, as someone who is listening to understand and to restate for comprehension and synthesis, and as someone who is quietly encouraging their team, all of them, to feel comfortable making observations grounded in evidence.”

    — SVP, Fidelity INVESTMENTS

  • “Knowledgeable and compassionate facilitators. Engaging group of participants across several industries. Great opportunity to develop skills and stretch the imagination of how VTS can be used at work.”

    — HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR, BRIGHAM & WOMEN’S HOSPITAL

  • “Where a new way of seeing things is needed, where a team or organization needs to dig beyond the first big idea that comes to them—this is a method which can open new possibilities and ensure all voices and ideas may be heard.”

    — TEAMS INTELLIGENCE MANAGER, CISCO

  • “In the role of facilitator, I learned to listen with intense attention, paraphrase to capture the speaker’s key points, and guide discussions to reveal the underlying concepts of a particular idea. In a very short amount of time, my group surfaced numerous deep and broad connections, and unexpected relationships and insights in discussing a trademark sample from my work.”

    — ATTORNEY AT LAW

  • “Through VTS, understanding “what more can I find” has been very enlightening. I recognize the important role of looking for more and being very curious with an open mindset, one that helps me question my preconceptions.”

    — PHYSICIAN