Ontological Coaching: What It Is and How a Session Works

Ontological coaching is a coaching approach that works on the kind of observer a person is: how they interpret what happens to them, the mood they see it from and what their body does while they talk about it. When that way of observing shifts, the client starts to see actions that were in front of them all along, and different results follow.

A typical session moves from the situation the client brings to a concrete, dated action, by way of their judgments, their emotions and their body. If you're after questions to use in session, you'll find them in ontological coaching questions by domain and speech act, so I won't repeat them here.

What does ontological coaching mean?

"Ontology" is the study of being. In coaching, that means the work goes beyond the task or the goal and looks at who the person is being while they chase it. Rafael Echeverría lays this out in a 2014 article published by Newfield Consulting (in Spanish). In his account, our way of being is made of the judgments and interpretations we hold, the emotional state we act from and the way we carry our body. Language, emotion and body are, for Echeverría, the three basic components of every conversation.

The same piece explains why a coach is needed at all: we're good at observing the world, but poor observers of ourselves. The ontological coach listens for the gap between what the client tells as fact and what is their reading of the facts, names the emotion holding that reading in place and notices what the body is doing. That lets the client see themselves from the outside.

Compared with goal-focused coaching, it adds one question up front: who are you being, that this looks the way it does to you? To see how the ontological approach sits next to life, executive or team coaching, read what coaching is and the main types.

Who created ontological coaching?

The short history has three Chilean names. The first is Fernando Flores, finance minister and later secretary general of the government under Salvador Allende. He was imprisoned after the 1973 coup and later, at Berkeley, developed his work under the influence of Heidegger, Humberto Maturana and J.L. Austin. His Wikipedia biography describes how he turned Austin and John Searle's speech act theory into a set of practices. Requesting, promising and declaring became skills you could train.

The other two are Julio Olalla, a lawyer, and Rafael Echeverría, a sociologist with a PhD in philosophy. Both were students and colleagues of Flores, and in 1990 they founded The Newfield Group in California, where their training programs began (Wikipedia, in Spanish; The Coach Partnership). In 1994 Echeverría published Ontología del lenguaje, still the reference book for the approach. In 1996 Olalla set up Newfield Network to carry the training on across the Americas and Europe.

What is the observer-action-results model?

It's the core idea of the approach, and it fits in a few lines. The results you get depend on what you do. What you do depends on what you see as possible. And what you see as possible depends on the kind of observer you are.

When something isn't working, most of us change the action: a new tactic, more effort, a different method. Sometimes that's enough. When it isn't, ontological coaching looks at the observer. Echeverría adds a fourth element, the system: the relationships a person grew up in and moves through today. In his article he calls the observer and the system the two hidden constraints on a person's capacity to act. In many training programs you'll see the full scheme abbreviated as OSAR: observer, system, action, results.

If the coach jumps straight to action ("ask for the promotion this week"), the client won't do it: from where they stand, asking still feels tacky. The judgment comes first.

What gets worked on in each domain: language, emotion and body?

In language, the coach listens for speech acts: assertions that can be checked, judgments lived as truths, declarations still pending ("no", "enough", "I was wrong"), and the requests, offers and promises that coordinate action with other people. In emotion, they separate the emotion of the moment from the background mood, which usually weighs more. In the body, they watch posture, breathing and gaze while the client speaks.

With the usual posture it's hard to leave the usual mood, and from that mood the same judgments come back. That's why the coach can come in through any of the three.

How does an ontological coaching session work, step by step?

There's no official sequence: each school structures the session its own way and each coach adapts it. What follows is the path you'll see most often, with an example. Mark runs a small design agency and opens with: "My clients pay late and there's nothing I can do about it."

1. Agree on what the conversation is for

The client brings something that broke their routine; ontological schools call this a "breakdown". The coach asks for something concrete by the end of the hour: "What do you want to walk away with today?" Mark says he wants to stop bankrolling his clients.

2. Separate facts from interpretations

The coach listens to the story and sorts what can be checked from what is opinion. "Three clients paid more than 60 days late" is a fact. "There's nothing I can do" is a judgment.

3. Name the emotion

The coach asks what Mark feels when he thinks about chasing a payment. Fear of losing the client shows up, and underneath it a kind of resignation: "it's always been like this in my industry."

4. Look at the body

As he talks about chasing payments, Mark shrinks into his chair. The coach points it out without interpreting it and asks what he notices.

5. Find another way of observing

This is the heart of the session. Mark realizes that asking for payment feels to him like "being a nuisance", and that he has never put payment terms in writing. From there, "clients are like that" turns into "I never asked for what I need", and that part is up to him.

6. Turn it into a dated action

The new observer becomes a concrete speech act. Mark makes a request: written payment terms on every new quote, starting Monday. And a declaration: anyone more than 60 days overdue gets no new work.

7. Close the session

The client says in their own words what they're taking away and what they'll do before the next meeting. It gets written down, because the next session starts there.

A first session in a coaching engagement looks much like this but spends more time agreeing goals, ground rules and expectations; I cover it in what happens in a first coaching session. For length and frequency, see how long a coaching session lasts.

What exercises are used in ontological coaching?

A lot of the exercises happen between sessions, because a new way of observing needs practice outside the room. Six of the most common:

• Two columns. On the left, what happened as a camera would record it. On the right, what the client thinks about it.
• Check a judgment. The client takes a judgment that keeps coming back ("I'm disorganized") and writes down which facts support it, where it applies and which facts contradict it.
• From complaint to request. Each complaint gets rewritten as a request: to whom, for what exactly, by when, and how they'll know it was done well.
• Pending conversations inventory. A list of requests never made, promises that need renegotiating and missing declarations: a "no", an apology, an "enough".
• Mood journal. Every night for a week, the client notes the day's mood and what seemed possible from there.
• Body rehearsal. The client says the hard request sitting hunched, then standing with feet planted, and talks about what changed.

How much does an ontological coaching session cost?

I couldn't find any public fee study specific to ontological coaching. Ontological coaches charge in the same market as everyone else, so the best reference is the general one. According to the ICF's 2023 Global Coaching Study, a one-hour session averaged $244 USD worldwide in 2022, ranging from $114 USD in Latin America and the Caribbean to $277 USD in Western Europe.

Quote platforms publish scattered figures by country. Cronoshare Mexico, for instance, works out from the quotes it receives that an ontological coaching session costs between 800 and 2,500 Mexican pesos. The site itself says the prices are only indicative.

In practice you pay for the engagement: the session fee times the number of sessions. At the ICF's Latin American average, six sessions come to 6 × $114 = $684 USD (an illustration, not anyone's real price). Experience, credentials, who pays and format all move the number. The full breakdown, written for people hiring a coach, is in how much a coach costs per session and per program. If you're a coach setting your own fees, read how much to charge as a coach.

When is it the wrong approach?

Ontological coaching works with emotions and moods, which puts it close to a line worth being clear about. If depression, trauma or anxiety that disrupts daily life shows up, the right move is a referral to a mental health professional. The line is drawn in coaching vs therapy vs mentoring.

For technical advice (setting up an online store, prepping for tomorrow's interview) a mentor will help more. And since ontological coaching is a methodology rather than a session model, you can combine it with GROW or another structure; the guide to coaching models and methodologies shows how they fit together.

Frequently asked questions

Related resources: Ontological coaching questions · How much a coach costs · Coaching models and methodologies