I have been involved in the world of ontological coaching since 1994. This potted history speaks to my understanding of how it generally evolved.
Ontological coaching blossomed as a discipline in the 1990s. It predominantly stems from the work of Fernando Flores who brought together ideas from Martin Heidegger, J. L. Austin, John Searle and Humberto Maturana to develop a new way of looking at the human condition.
Julio Olalla and Rafael Echeverria were associates of Fernando Flores but became dissatisfied with some aspects of his approach. They formed The Newfield Group in the early 90s with the aim of training coaches in the art of ontological coaching. In 1994, Rafael Echeverria penned a series of essays known as ‘The Ontology of Language’ for the training program known as ‘Mastering the Art of Professional Coaching (MAPC)’.
Towards the end of 1996, Olalla and Echeverria parted company. Julio formed Newfield Network in the USA and Rafael formed Newfield Consulting. Both of these organisations have continued to provided ontological coach training programs in many countries to this day.
With the demise of The Newfield Group, one of the MAPC graduates, Australian Alan Sieler decided to create and offer a new program to train ontological coaches in Australia. Originally as Newfield Australia, now Newfield Institute, the Diploma of Ontological Coaching (DOC) was first offered in 1999 with the assistance of two other MAPC graduates, Graeme Schache and Peter Thorneycroft. Drawing from MAPC, Alan Sieler wrote an 18 month program that he based on what he coined the Ontology of the Human Observer. Newfield Institute are currently running ontological coaching courses in Australia, Asia and South Africa. Alan has been a prolific writer on the subject of ontological coaching having published four books on the subject.
My introduction to ontological coaching came in 1994, when my good friend Graeme Schache invited me to be part of his audience sessions when he was doing MAPC. I became enamoured of this work and did what I guess would be called an internship these days with Graeme in his company Gaia Consulting Group. I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the writings of Rafael Echevarria, Fernando Flores and others during that time. In 1999, I undertook the DOC and shortly after starting that program, I went to work with Gaia Consulting Group full time with Graeme as my mentor.
With some humility, I will also include a short section on my contribution to the ontological world. On completing DOC, I was struck by a challenge I found in making sense of how to fit the distinctions together. There were some models but I struggled to make them coherent. I also saw gaps in the theory underpinning the work. My efforts to resolve those gaps and create a stronger coherence can be found on this web site.