If you’re a coach, career counselor, facilitator, helping professional, HR or L&D pro, or leader, you already know one of the biggest questions - and sources of pain - for a huge number of people: figuring out the answer to one big question…
What is the work that makes me come alive and how can I do more of it?
It is, in no small way, the question of our time especially now, when:
- Individuals, in all career stages, are rethinking what work means to them, are sitting in the question of what’s next, exploring possibilities and assessing opportunities
- Employees are finding themselves under pressure to quickly get clear about what matters to them, figure out their next move in reaction to layoffs or unanticipated organizational changes, and navigate this season with more confidence and agency
- Organizations are being called on to deliver on the demand for higher-levels of purpose, excitement, engagement, and a sense of meaning for their employees
- Leaders are working to rise to the moment, help team members navigate constant disruption, while also helping them better align their work with what makes them come alive with higher-levels of motivation, engagement and performance, and decreased burnout, and…
Safe bet, you started doing what you’re doing because you grappled with this very inquiry and, like most, still revisit it on a regular basis.
At this point, you’ve done the work you needed to do so that you can be of service to others who are sitting in these questions and trying to navigate these challenges and opportunities.
- You’re committed to helping people figure out their reason-for-being in a constructive, but not contrived or “faddish” way.
- You’ve accumulated professional certifications, spent hundreds or even thousands of practical hours working with clients, colleagues, or team members, and maybe even earned credentials or advanced degrees.
- You are passionate about helping people not only achieve their goals at the highest level but to find and create ways to flourish in their work and life.
- Your contributions make a difference.
Still, you’ve also come to learn that this giant existential question often takes not just time and experience, but a varied set of tools that allow for different paths to awakening and action. The typical process of inquiry and guided experimentation is rarely enough.
So, you turn to specialized assessments, tools, and bodies of knowledge. Things like CliftonStrengths, VIA Character Strengths, DISC®, MBTI®, or the Enneagram, to name a few. Each has its own, well-established place in your toolbox. But, as with all generalized assessments, personality tests, and tools, they tend to give broader-stroke guidance.
And, they’re never quite spot-on when it comes to figuring out this specific inquiry -
What is the underlying impulse for effort or work that gives a person that feeling of coming alive?
How do people find and do work that allows them to feel like they’re fueled by a sense of purpose, doing things that matter, can fully be themselves, energized and enthusiastic about their pursuits, and get to experience the state of getting lost in flow? Shorthanded, they’re longing for work that Sparks them and makes them come alive.
Answering this singular question - deepening this body of knowledge, building highly-specific tools, processes, and programming, providing a powerful certification, and developing other offerings that guide this life-defining quest - is our obsession at Spark Endeavors™.
It began with the development of the Sparketypes and the Sparketype® Assessment, an online tool that allows anyone to discover their Primary, Shadow, and Anti Sparketype®. If you’re here now, we’re guessing you’ve already discovered yours, found value in it, and want to not only learn more about it, but figure out a way to share this body of knowledge and powerful “pro-grade” tools with those you serve.
To date, the Sparketype® Assessment has been completed by nearly 800,000 individuals and organizations generating more than 40-million data points and a wealth of groundbreaking insights. This is a dynamic, evolving body of work, as we continue to deepen into the massive, fast-growing data set that has become one of the world’s largest ever studies on work-like fulfillment. It’s also led to a rapidly growing inventory of tools, processes, and programming informed not just by our “big data,” but also by our own in-the-field engagement with some of the largest companies in the world, along with the aggregated insights from our incredible Certified Sparketype® Advisor community. Still, we wanted more “hard data,” so we went deeper.
Our Phase II Inquiry Study showed even clearer, more granular correlations that match-up with what we’d been hearing and seeing:
The more a person’s work aligns with their Sparketype®, the more likely they are to feel energized and excited, sense that what they do matters, experience flow, and be fully themselves and able to perform at their full potential at work and in life.
And, interestingly enough, they’re also more likely to feel like their life and work has a clear sense of purpose and direction - like they’re doing the thing they’re here to do.
Working to support the tremendous volume of people completing the Sparketype® Assessment, we began to create more tools, like the groundbreaking, bestselling book - SPARKED - published by HarperCollins Leadership, the 60+ page Sparketype® Premium Profile, and the Spark Canvas™, with more in development and rolling out on a regular basis. We’ve also brought this work into organizations and groups through keynotes, learning programs, and custom experiences.
The feedback has been incredible. Still, people asked for something more…
“Is there someone I can work with who understands the Sparketype® body of knowledge and tools and can help guide me in my quest to feel more alive and make better informed, more Spark-centered decisions in my work and life?”
Simultaneously, we started to hear from leaders and organizations who wanted to learn about the Sparketypes and figure out what they could do to help their people and teams feel more connected, motivated, engaged, and effective. They also wanted to know who could help their employees to feel more Sparked in their work.
Then, similar requests began coming in, this time from helping professionals and leaders like you -
- Coaches
- Career Counselors
- HR
Professionals - LEADERS & MANAGERS
- Teachers
- Workshop Facilitators
- Learning and development execs
- Retreat Leaders
But, this time, they weren’t looking for someone to work with, they were looking to be supported in better understanding and then tapping the potential of our intellectual property, tools, assessment, programs, and body-of-work, with their clients, colleagues and more.
They wanted a way to become well-versed in “all things Sparketype,” to better understand where the basic concepts came from, how they were designed, what they tell us, how to work with them in the context of individual client work, group work, and even organizational application.
Truth is, more than a few people shared how they were already sharing the Sparketypes and using them in their work “unofficially,” and how powerful they were. But, those same people also shared how often they’d get tripped up by the many questions that come up as you move deeper into the process of working with the Sparketypes, or the Spark Your Work process outlined in the book and the on-demand, self-guided virtual workshop. And, they began to ask if we might offer some level of support to develop a deeper knowledge and training in “how” to use these ideas and resources with clients, students, colleagues, teams, and beyond.
We decided it was time to make everyone happy. The tons of people who were clamoring for someone to work with, and the many helping professionals who wanted a more official way and authorization to work with the tools.
So, we went back into our instructional-design lab to create the Certified Sparketype Advisor training for coaches, HR, L&D, leadership, and other helping professionals.
The inaugural CSA certification will happen in December 2021 (Dates & Details below)
Here’s what we’ll explore together…
CORE CERTIFICATION CURRICULUM
PRE-WORK/QUALIFICATIONS
Before you arrive, you should have:
- Completed the Sparketype Assessment
- Familiarized yourself with your unique Sparketype Profile
- Read and studied the book SPARKED in its entirety
- Completed pre-work including the Spark Your Work program in the context of your own work and life and pre-assigned instructional videos
- Be a professional in the area of coaching, career counseling, HR/HCM, L&D, teaching, workshop facilitation, org-learning or similar by an accredited organization, established certifying body or educational institution
- Have a minimum of three years of experience in the field
This will help ensure that everyone arrives at the live-training with the same fundamental knowledge-set, allowing us to dive into a more detailed exploration more quickly.
TWO-Day VIRTUAL LIVE Intensive
We will spend two full days together in this virtual intensive. For those who choose to participate in the optional Group Facilitation training (see below), you’ll be given access to additional self-guided modules with videos, audio, worksheets, and transcripts that deepen into how to apply this body-of-work in a group context.
Over the course of two intensive days together, we will explore the
following in an interactive, conversational way:
Sparketype Foundations
Develop a deeper understanding of all 10 Sparektypes, the origins, development of the assessment and underlying philosophy/model, phase II insight study research and interpretation, including:
- Sparketype origins, core philosophy, what we’re measuring, research and data analysis
- Sparketype descriptions
- Sparketype comparison insights
- Fulfillment conditions
- Triggers and danger-zones
- The myth of good and bad pairings
- Common career paths and why it's harmful to start with them.
- Type-specific questions, issues and quirks
- Distinction between Sparketype, Purpose and Passion
- Distinction between motivation and Sparketype
- Job Title Fallacy/Job-alchemy
- Distinction between “Accomplished” and “Sparked”
- Distinction between “Skills,” “Strengths”, and “Sparks”
- Individualized applications
- Can your Sparketype change?
- What if you don’t agree with or want your Sparketype?
- The 4 categories of work
Working with individual clients:
- Spark Your Work “Alchemy” Process: Working in a step-by-step way with the core concepts, processes and tools:
- Discovery - Identify & deepen into profile
- Extract - 7- day Spark/Stifle activity-tracking
- EXPRESS - Spark Expression
- Inventory - Mapping tasks, topics, processes, tools, projects, channels, and more, in the context of the 4-categories of work.
- Reimagine - Working with the job, role of devotion to find or create new paths to express your Sparktype
- Expand - redefining work, and applying the insights and tools to all the ways we exert effort
- Refine - Optimize aligned work + life
- Structuring clients engagements and sessions
- Creating personalized client “Spark Plans.”
- Measuring progress & tracking growth
POSTWORK
In order to build early momentum and answer questions that may come up as you begin to integrate the Sparketype processes into your work, and ensure practical experience before official certification, we’ve created a specialized “Post-Work” experience that includes the following:
-
7-day Check-in: This helps ensure immediate action-taking and integration upon returning from the 2-day intensive (2-hour Zoom Session):
-
It is important that you begin to work with the Sparketypes and relevant programming immediately, so that you become not only comfortable but also fluent with the ideas and processes on a level that gives you confidence and provides sustained value for your clients and colleagues. It is also important to us, as a certifying body, that you embrace practical experience and application as soon as possible.
Toward this end, we require that, within the first 30-days, you meet the following practical requirements in order to be eligible for certification:
- Guide a minimum of three-people, clients or colleagues through the Sparketype processes.
- Complete and submit written reflections for each person (evaluation form to be provided)
- Complete an online assessment demonstrating knowledge of the Sparketype framework, tools and resources.
- 12-months of Virtual Office Hours: Your certification program also includes 12-months of monthly Virtual Office Hours calls with a Sparketype Master Trainer, to give you regular insights, problem-solving and ideas as you build your CSA offerings.
Annual Learning Hub Membership + Global CSA Directory...
As part of your CSA certification, you will also become eligible to be publicly listed on the searchable Global CSA Directory, which will be launched upon the completion of the inaugural cohort. Your listing will remain active (barring violation of our certification terms-of-use and code-of-conduct) for a full 12-months at no additional fee.
We will continue to develop and expand our ideas, research, tools, professional resources and trainings and serve our community of CSAs with monthly video Office Hours, case-studies, and more. In order to maintain the highest standards for all CSAs, it will be important for all active CSAs to keep current with the latest developments, advances and offerings.
To this end, in order to maintain active status beyond your first-year, we will require an annual membership, continuing education, and listing renewal fee (currently $500, subject to change over time). This will entitle you to continued access to all public and private components of certification noted above.
Certification Requirements, Scope & Expectations...
Here is what to expect upon completion of the certification process:
Provisional certification.
Immediately upon completing your Pre-Work and 2-Day Virtual LIVE Intensive, you will get “provisional” CSA status that grants use of the Sparketype intellectual property, tools and offerings for a limited 30-day window, while you complete the requirements for full certification.
Official Certification
Once ALL elements are completed and turned-in, we will review and confirm satisfactory completion, send an “official” certification letter, certificate and digital imagery suitable for sharing. You will then be set up with a CSA account and login for our online portal with access to training materials, the CSA community and a private “wholesale” store to purchase resellable materials for your clients and programs.
Once you’re out of the provisional window, as a CSA, you will be credentialed and authorized to guide individuals and facilitate groups using the specific tools, resources and programming covered in this training. We also expect to develop and make available in 2022 additional, more targeted training and credentialing opportunities tailored to corporate, educational and organizational settings with a specific focus on leadership, engagement, performance, team-dynamics , and communications applications.
Tuition alone does not entitle any participant to full certification.
Please note, we care deeply about not just sharing information, but also about true proficiency and impact. Payment, completion of the pre-work and simple attendance at the 2-day event does not ensure certification. In order to “graduate” to active, full certification and be eligible for the full suite of benefits of being a CSA, you must also complete all required practical hours and post-work within the first 30-days (extensions for extenuating circumstances or hardship may be granted on a case-by-case basis). When you say yes to taking a spot in the certification, we also expect that to be a yes to doing all necessary work to become fully certified. Failure to complete these final elements will result in denial of certification and does not entitle any participant to a refund.
What we are hoping to do here is raise the bar. To convey our commitment to curating and growing a powerful, inclusive, whole-hearted, action-oriented and motivated team of individuals who will come together to form a true impact-driven community. A group of leaders known for a rare devotion to service, intentionality and intelligence, kindness and connection and the ability to access and apply highly-differentiated concepts, tools, and resources that deliver real, measurable, life-changing outcomes.
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
- Maya Angelou
Put another way, we’re looking for people who will raise their hands to help us shake the world.
Maybe, that’s you!
This program might be a fit if YOU:
- Embrace the ideals of inclusivity, equality, service, kindness, elevation and impact
- Are already certified as a professional in the area of coaching, career counseling, HR/HCM, L&D, therapist, teacher, workshop facilitators, org-learning or similar by an accredited or established certifying body or educational institution.
- Have a minimum of three years of coaching/mentoring/consulting experience, so that you’ll be able to bring seasoned coaching skills and experiences to this specific set of offerings, and the conversation during the certification process can remain focused on the specific application of the Sparketypes and not on the fundamentals of coaching.
- See the world (and people) with a deeply-curious lens, are open to learning, feedback and enjoy participating in interactive, collaborative learning environments.
- Are willing to share, give as much as you get and come from a place of openness, inclusivity and kindness.
- Love the idea of becoming a leader in helping to share the impact of an evolving body-of-work that is moving quickly and looking to help people reclaim a sense of meaning, joy and expression through work.
- Would love the ongoing support of a well-aligned community as you develop your offerings and business.
Investment + How you will apply
We understand that the coaching, consulting and training market is tremendously competitive these days. Your ability to offer a set of next-generation concepts, tools and processes with a rapidly-growing public profile can be a real differentiator, both in terms of enabling faster, better outcomes, but also in your positioning in the marketplace.
As a CSA, you will become one of a select number of people who are officially trained, authorized and certified to offer our core programming and be discovered by the large volume (as of this writing, more than 1,000 people/day) of Sparketype Assessment takers in the searchable Global CSA Directory.
We wish we could accept all who apply, but because we are committed to fiercely-intentional growth and impact, fit is critically important. That means, admission is application-only, enrollment will be strictly-limited and each certification cohort will be filled on a qualified first-come/first-accepted basis (meaning, once qualified, we’ll extend invitations on a first-come, first-accepted basis) until capacity is reached and we close admission.
Should we be a fit, your investment will be $3,500.
This Includes
- All materials required for certification
- Access to our private online CSA resource portal
- Attendance at the 2-day virtual LIVE intensive
- All post-work, check-ins, written reflections, assessment, and certification
- Monthly virtual office hours calls for the first 12-months following certification
- Access to the online CSA community for the first 12-months following certification
- Listing on the searchable Global CSA Directory for the first 12-months following certification
How you’ll secure your place...
It’s all about fit, we never sell. You’ll complete a short application that will let us get a better sense for whether we’re right for each other. Then, we’ll schedule a 20-minute phone convo to trade questions, so we can get to know you a bit better and you have time to ask us whatever is on your mind.
If it feels like a great fit, we will offer you a space in the program on what we call a first-response basis. That means we will keep interviewing people and extending offers to well-qualified applicants and the first to confirm registration will be in the program. Once we hit our cap, the group will officially close. At that point, even accepted applicants will have to wait until the next available dates to participate.
If this sounds like something you would love to be a part of,
we invite you to apply below:
Jonathan Fields
Jonathan Fields is a dad, husband, award-winning author, executive producer, and host of one of the top-ranked podcasts in the world, Good Life Project®. He is also the founder of a series of companies focused on human potential, currently helming Spark Endeavors, where he developed the groundbreaking Sparketype® Assessment. This tool has been tapped by over 500,000 individuals and organizations to identify, embrace, and cultivate work that makes people come alive, and help leaders unlock purpose, engagement, and potential. His latest book, SPARKED: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work That Makes You Come Alive (HarperCollins Leadership 2021), is both a rally cry and a field guide to reclaiming work as a source of meaning, joy, and possibility. Jonathan also speaks and facilitates globally for groups and organizations of all sizes, both virtually and in person. His work has been featured widely in the media, including The New York Times, FastCompany, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Entrepreneur, Forbes, Oprah Magazine, Elle, Allure, The Guardian, and many more.