Ontological Coaching: The Definitive Guide
Ontological Coaching
The Definitive Guide
How many times have you found yourself not being able to explain exactly what you are feeling or experiencing?
Or not being able to take action towards fixing what has been troubling you?
What if you could change any aspect of your life just by transforming the way you observe, feel, and react to your everyday situations?
Ontological Coaching gives you an approach to dig deeper into your emotions, language, and behavior i.e. your ‘way of being’.
So if you want to:
- Learn about an ontological approach to coaching
- Guide your clients in using it to transform their lives
- Get started on becoming an ontological coach
- Learn about the benefits of ontological coaching to not just your clients but for yourself too
Then this guide is for you!
Without further ado, let’s get started!
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Chapter 2
Key Elements of Ontological Coaching
Chapter 3
Two Models of Ontological Coaching
Chapter 4
How to be an Ontological coach?
Chapter 5
What makes Ontological coaching unique?
Chapter 6
Who benefits the most through Ontological Coaching?
Chapter 1:
The Fundamentals
Any life coach’s purpose is to help their clients find solutions to their problems and guide them to lead a happy and fulfilling life.
Amongst the different methods of achieving that, ontological coaching is certainly the one that focuses on your client’s philosophical reflection of who they are, what and how they interpret and communicate. In this chapter, you will learn the fundamentals of ontological coaching.
What is Ontological Coaching?
The ontological approach to coaching stems from the interplay of three core ways of being employed by humans and their interaction with the world around them — language, emotions, and the body.
Ontological coaching works with a methodology that helps build an engagement and ability to observe your attitudes, interactions, and perceptions more deeply and radically — making it one of the most holistic and transformational approaches to life coaching.
Ontological coaching guides people through perceptions they have created about themselves and how they communicate with their own being.
In other words, it is an approach to better the quality of life by observing behaviors of oneself when going through life’s goals, failures, losses and gains, and then acting from a sense of mental, emotional, and bodily awareness and intelligence.
History and Origin of Ontological Coaching
The origins and history of Ontological Coaching can be found when tracing the philosophical and physiological development of the word ‘ontology’ and the application of its concept into life coaching.
The term ‘ontology’ comes from Greek and basically means ‘the theory of existence or being’.
Martin Heidegger, Humberto Maturana, and John Searle, all had described language as a powerful tool for and of interpretations in their works. It was Fernando Flores who then founded the discipline of Ontological Coaching circa 1979.
The fields of philosophy, biology, and linguists shaped the thought behind, for example, how to observe oneself or how our thoughts impact people around us and our own actions.
But it was also the fields of psychology and business that proposed that we can be aware and shift our ‘way of being’.
Chapter 2:
Key Elements of Ontological Coaching
Now when you know what ontological coaching is and how its philosophical origins give this style of coaching an edge over many traditional goal or milestone based coaching practices, it is time to look at its key elements.
In this chapter, I will cover some of the key elements of ontological approach to coaching.
What is an Ontological approach to Coaching?
Alan Sieler describes Ontology as, “the study of being, and an inquiry into the nature of human existence.” He goes on exploring further the essence of an ontological approach to life – that is about becoming a deep listener and an observer of oneself.
An ontological approach to coaching aims to root out those many underlying ingrained behaviors, patterns, and web of narratives in your clients that may have been affecting their actions, communication and an inability to live a fulfilling life.
The transformational quality that ontological coaching’s approach has earned for itself, derives from the possibility of a sustainable and fruitful shift that you can help your client achieve.
Aboodi Shabi explains an ontological approach to coaching as the one where you, as a coach, support your clients in a way that they can reflect inwards, and become aware of their narratives and patterns.
What are ontological skills?
An ontological approach to coaching might not be that easy to learn or teach and that is why you need to develop certain ontological skills to support your clients the best way possible.
Let’s look at what some of those are.
Deep/Active Listening
As you know by now, language is one of the foundational aspects of an ontological approach; you need a deeper level of listening skills to understand the blind spots in your clients’ speech.
On the other hand, active listening skill is one that your client needs to learn too!
Being aware of how they listen to themselves and how others might be listening to them is key to better and effective communication.
Emotional Intelligence
As an ontological coach, you’d be expected to hold competence in emotional intelligence that patiently listens and observes your client and doesn’t jump to goal-setting for them.
Although it can be sometimes good if that is what your client wants and needs in most cases, you will let your client define their problems and solutions.
