Fernando Flores – From political refugee to coach pioneer to senator

It is curious that Fernando Flores had his disputes with Rafael Echeverria, one of the alleged founders of Ontological Coaching. Echeverria, along with Humberto Maturana, did not recognize themselves as such.

This is the statement from Humberto Maturana to Coaching Magazine on Feb, 2006:

“I do not feel that what I do and think, has had some effect in the development and history of which I see appear in the public scope like the practice of Coaching” Humberto Maturana, “Coaching Magazine Interview” Http://www.coachingmagazine.net/index.asp/t/15/n/178/coaching-magazine.html

These reasons must motivate to us to analyze the true existing bond between coaching and the Ontological Language as was undertood by Rafael Echeverría and his teacher Fernando Flores.

This is a field of research that still virgin and very interesting.

This is what I tried to say in the first paragraph.

Curiously, as well as Fernando Flores took his dispute with Fernando Flores, Humerto Maturana (one of the alleged founders of Ontological Coaching) has not been recognized himself as founder.

Excuse!

Leonardo – thanks for the clarification. In my research I found that there were many disputes and people going their separate ways in the early days of coaching. This still happens today as people work together, discover they have different ideas and passions, and go their separate ways to create new theories and models of coaching.

Many of the early influencers on coaching would not consider themselves coaches, however in some way the first generation of coaches took the ideas from people like Humberto Maturana and transformed them into coaching.

On another subject, how long has the Coaching Magazine been published. I receive notices for it, yet my 9th grade Spanish skills don’t allow me to fully understand it.

Exactly. The point is that diversifications or separations are enriching, as long as there is an “evolution” or “expertise” in any sense. The arbitrariness is “danger” somehow for the profession. That is why I started the debate on how different is coaching in relation to other help processes. http://www.coachingcommons.org/guest-contributors/how-is-coaching-different/

Well, “Coaching Magazine” is publishing since November 2005.

¬°Thanks to Coaching Commons! by giving us the opportunity to generate a genuine open debate on the profession. This is highly necessary and beneficial.

Hi Vikki. I like how you bring excellent content about coaching roots and influences.

Flores ideas made a distinction between “speaking that describes being” and “speaking that brings forth being”, this was what attracted Werner Erhard attention to the work of Flores and influenced his EST and Landmark Forum trainings, incorporating Flores ideas about commitment generation, communication and language.

I have heard about alleged disputes but I don’t have first hand information regarding this. What I have learnt is that sometimes followers make things worse than those people directly interested or involved, as in NLP issues.

What I know from reading Echeverria´s book “La Ontología del Lenguaje” is that he, Echeverria, gives full credit and author rights to Flores and his (by the time) company BDA on chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 y 11 of his book (11 in total).

Flores frequently is identified as the key figure in the formation of the “Ontology of the Human Observer” discipline. He completed his doctoral thesis “Management and Communication in the Office of the Future”, at the Berkeley campus of the University of California.

Also, Flores was deeply influenced by the ideas of Humberto Maturana on perception, cognition, language and communication. These dialogues were the inspiration for his research, in which he focused on the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger and John Searle’s Theory of Speech Acts. Flores integrated the ideas of Maturana, Heidegger and Searle to produce a new way to understand language and communication, which some argue that after became professional coaching.

A good reading about Flores ideas and method is “The Power of Words” by Harriet Rubin, available online:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/21/flores.html

Thanks Leonardo for the information of the Coaching Magazine. As I am language challenged (English only and a bit of Spanglish), my research has been limited to English publications. Does anyone know of other coaching publications (books and magazines) that are in languages other than English?

Abiel – you are a wealth of knowledge. Rafael Echevarria and Julio Olalla were co-founders of Newfield in 1990, and later went their separate ways when their focus went in different directions. I interviewed both of them for my PhD dissertation and they shared their beginnings with Fernando Flores around the time and after he was working with Werner Erhard.

Does anyone know how and if Alan Sieler from Newfield in Australia links up with Fernando Flores? I do know that Alan tells the story of Fernando, Rafael, and Julio in his book “Coaching to the Human Soul Ontological Coaching and Deep Change, Vol. 1″ which can be ordered along with Vol. II at http://www.amazon.com.

Toward the end of June I will post Werner Erhard to the Hall of Fame. I was also able to interview him for my dissertation.

Vikki, I like to dig into information and knowledge in order to reduce my own ignorance. I¬¨¬•m sick of “ignorance intolerance”

Speaking about Erhard and Flores, what about James Selman?

It is said that back in 1984 Mr. Selman co-founded Transformational Technologies with Erhard. Now “Jim Selman is a recognized leader and authority in the field of organizational transformation and culture change” (1) and now owns ParaComm.

If you visit his website, the “Distinctionary” (2) page, you¬¨¬•ll find familiar terms and vocabulary: commitments, offers, assessments, declarations, assertions, promises, requests, conversations for…. X, Y and Z, different observer, etc. etc.

If you go to the articles section of Paracomm, you¬¨¬•ll find an Alan Sieler (Director, Newfield Australia) article, ONTOLOGY (3), where he identifies Flores as a key figure in the formation of the discipline of “Ontology of the Human Observer” (a “new-field” of knowledge).

(1) http://www.paracomm.com/bio.html
(2) http://www.paracomm.com/distinctionary.html
(3) http://www.paracomm.com/articles/ontology.html

Regards,

a

Abiel, thanks for bringing up Jim Selman. He is my neighbor to the north (I am in Seattle, Washington and he is in Vancouver, British Columbia). I also interviewed him for my dissertation and he is a wealth of information.

At his website you can also find the article “Coaching and the Art of Management” which was written in 1989 and is one of the best articles on coaching and leadership I have read.

Jim is definitely one of the unsung influencers of the coaching profession. Thanks for bringing him to our attention. Vikki

I was trained as a Ontologic Coach in Cordoba, Argentina in 2001 and moved to US, Clearwater Fl.

Because of my immigration I did not pursue but I consider the ontology way as part of my life. I want to ask if there is any group of Ontologic Coaches in this area that you can provide me information about?

In addition I want to know if you were able to find the Rafael Echeverria book in English.

Thank you very much for your time.
Ernesto

Hi Ernesto,

I am curious if your training as an Ontologic Coach in Argentina was with the academic program Jim Selman developed. As for Ontologic Coaches in Clearwater FL, I am not sure. I did interview Rafael Echeverria and have an article of his in English, however was not able to find his book in English. Rafael does live in the United States, though I’m not sure where.

The coaching programs at Newfield Network in Boulder, CO and New Ventures West in San Francisco, CA are both ontological programs – you might contact them to see where their graduates are located.

Who else might have some information for Ernesto?

Do any of you know who is practicing this training in Santiago Chile?

I have the Landmark Education training. Is any of the ones you are talking about different? In which way? I am interested in expanding knowledge in what’s available.

I do appreciate any information. Thanks for all of your great input.

Hi Sandra,

What a great question. My thought is that Newfield Network might be practicing this training as one of the owners, Julio Olalla, is also from Chile and worked with Fernando in the 1980s.

If anyone could connect me to Fernando so I could conduct an interview with him for the History of Coaching book I will be publishing in Spring 2009, I would greatly appreciate it. At this point Fernando and Timothy Gallwey are the two key influencers I have not yet interviewed.

Thanks,
Vikki G. Brock
Director of History and Archive Division

Hi Vikki,

I think you can reach Fernando at:
his email: contactoflores@gmail.com
his blog: http://www.fernandoflores.cl/

Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for the information. I checked out his blog, and while I understood some of the Spanish from my 9th grade lessons, I am language challenged. However, it is a great link for those of our readers who know Spanish.

Vikki G. Brock, Ph.D., MCC
Director, History and Archive Division

Vicki, go to http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

Look for “translate a web page”. Put in http://www.fernandoflores.cl/, then choose spanish to english in the pull down menu.

It’s not elegant but it’s understandable.

Hi Elizabeth – what a great resource for those of us who are language challenged. This opens up a whole new avenue of information.

Vikki G. Brock, Ph.D., MCC
Director, History and Archive Division

Hi Vikki,

I’m doing some research on the history of coaching and I’m looking at your dissertation, which is *very* intriguing to me. Very cool stuff. Great job! I love looking at the history of discourse. I’ve always said “anthropology said it first,” since I was an undergraduate in that field. But I didn’t know that was quite literally true!

When will you publish your book? I’d like a copy. I’d love to be able to read figure 5-4, but it’s a little too small.

Thanks much!

Alison Weeks, MA

Hi Vicki, Alison and all readers,

I’m in the UK and am a big acolyte of Fernando Flores, and have trained with Julio in Ontological coaching. I also see how much of Fernando/Werner Erhard’s material has seeped into other coaching training organisations, such as CoachU (primarily because CoachU’s founder, Thomas Leonard, was Landmark’s Accountant [as we call them in the UK]).

I think that Ontological coaching does a job of sorts, though – as Erhard does – it stops at the very point that Existential thinking actually pushes things further i.e. that we are fundamentally grounded in the interpersonal, that we experience uncertainty in our brute experience of being in the world, and that this leads to anxiety, in the face of which create meaning.

Sieler – to his credit – acknowledges uncertainty as an important ‘given’ that needs to be owned, but there is so much more that Ontological coaching needs to address if it is to do justice to the name that it has appropriated for itself.

Vicki, would love to have access to your PhD dissertation and forthcoming book (?)

Best
Mo Mandic

I am in the UK as well – an ex senior programme leader at landmark and an est graduate – I’ve been coaching since the mid 80′s and I had a family therapy and clin psych background – I have skimmed your thesis – awesome work – thanks for being so generous and making it available – each time I thought to myself “oh she missed … ” up it popped … mo cohen

Hi Mo Mandic,

You can access my dissertation at http://www.foundationofcoaching.org. Click on the research respository (on the left side menu) and type in ‘Brock’. This will take you to my dissertation, which you can download in pdf format (all 693 pages of it).

The book is progressing and I am in the rewriting phase currently. My goal is to have it published by the ICF Global Conference in December 2009. When it is published I will announce it here.

Warmly, Vikki Brock

Thank you for the discussions on this site. I have followed them with interest over time.

I am a technologist with a process view rooted in Fernando Flores’ work. For twenty years I have designed information systems that support humans working together, in healthcare, supply chains and R&D. I can make this claim due to the power of the distinctions defined by Flores, and their further development at Action Technologies.

In the last few months I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with Fernando Flores and several others to test and refine a new offering focused on teams and leadership, building on his seminal work in speech acts and coordination. This four-month long educational offering heavily utilizes a massively multi-user online gaming environment as the simulation laboratory, giving two advantages: First, there is the opportunity to observe oneself in the game (with the associated dynamics) in addition to observing oneself in training action outside the game. Second, the intensity of the participants’ engagement in the game is a powerful opening for embodied learning. An important advantage of co-opting the game world as the learning environment is the possibility of having a totally globally distributed group of learners, though the current version of the course begins with a face-to-face session. Two such events are planned to kick off the course:

September 23rd-25th, 2009
San Francisco
September 30th-October 2nd, 2009
New York

Padmini Hands
phands@gmail.com

Hi Padmini,

What great information that Fernando Flores is still active and building on his past work – all while he is a senator in Chile. I’m sure many of his followers are excited to know he is planning these two events in September. Thanks for the information,

Vikki Brock
Director History and Archives
The Coaching Commons

I worked for Werner Erhard first and later for Fernando Flores. The truth about their work is that both benefited. Werner had a succesful corporation delivering his est training when Fernando Flores arrived in the US. He was supported by Werner and his knowledge was incorporated into Werner’s work under a fully developed format that was more in tune with Werner’s Communication Workshop. That is how Flores’ Action Workshop was born. As a member of Werner’s staff I witnessed this transition. Being bilingual also brought me close to Gloria Flores and their children (Fernando was too busy, but he managed to invite me to work for him) Later I worked with Julio in bringing the Action Workshop in Spanish to Mexico City but Hermenet had to close, only to transform into Logonet. Then came BDA, but by then I was back in Mexico.

Thanks for publishing Fernando’s website and I did not see the pull down menu to go from Spanish to English, could you be more specific as to where that pull down is on his site?

With gratitude,
dickey

Hi Dickey,

Elizabeth Walker provided the link and instructions to translate from Spanish to English on April 2009 (see above). I have not tried the link yet and I hope this helps. Vikki

FYI (I think this will interest you):
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/09406?pg=all

Ravier, L.