Ontological coaching

Domain VI · Brief, integrative, trauma, hypnosis & coaching · Rafael Echeverría, Fernando Flores, Julio Olalla · 1987 · Chile

What it is

Ontological coaching is a coaching discipline, not a psychotherapy and not a single technique set. It grew out of Chile from the late 1980s (pioneers Flores, Echeverría and Olalla; spread across Latin America from 1990) and rests on the biology of cognition (Maturana), philosophy of language…

Format

• Session structure (single coaching conversation). Opening (setting the context), exploration–understanding–interpretation, expansion (new possibilities), closing. Echeverría likens the conversation to a dance where the coachee sets the pace.
• For the psychotherapist. The model's authors frame the coachee as a healthy person seeking transformational learning, not treatment. If you use it, use it as coaching under a coaching contract, or borrow its distinctions inside therapy and label that clearly as your own integration.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Core map: observer – (system) – action – results. Coaching works mainly in the domain of being (the observer), not doing (actions) or having (results). Echeverría adds that the coach explores two largely hidden conditions, the observer and the social systems the person belongs to, to find the obstacle; a Spanish-language management article likewise says coaching works in "dos ámbitos, el observador y el sistema".…
• Session count and format. Not specified in the published sources. University training requires 10 practice conversations as coach and 5 as coachee for certification. Practical default: individual sessions of 60–90 minutes, every one to three weeks, reviewed after about six sessions. Ontological coaching is also delivered to teams and organisations.
• Version followed: Rafael Echeverría's ontology-of-language school of ontological coaching as taught by Newfield Consulting (Santiago de Chile; pedagogical model of Echeverría and Alicia Pizarro, who directs ECORE, the school Echeverría founded), supplemented by Alan Sieler (Newfield Australia) for mood and body work and by Fernando Flores' conversation-for-action cycle (as reported by Reilly in Walden 1997) for…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Repeated non-completion (see section 5).
• Reframing clinical symptoms as 'moods' or 'quiebres' to keep coaching going.
• Lecturing. Working when the coachee uses the distinction in their own words later.
• Validation that becomes collusion. Working when the coachee can hold two versions side by side.
• Turning this into a logic lesson. Working when the coachee separates facts from assessments without prompting.

Problems the guide addresses

• The coaching–psychotherapy boundary as published
• Concrete signs that a coachee needs referral to clinical care
• Stuck coachee (same breakdown, no movement)
• Resistance and defensiveness
• Overwhelm and strong emotion in session
• Non-adherence (agreed actions not done)
• Ruptures in the coaching relationship
• Modality-specific difficulties

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.