|
James Flaherty, along with Julio Olalla and Rafael Echevarria, was a student of Fernando Flores and took his work and influence, merged it with their own work, and created New Ventures West in 1986 and Newfield Network in 1990 respectively.
Each played a major role in the development of ontological coaching, which involved working with clients using an integral and holistic approach focused on language, body, and emotions.
Jeff Staggs, psychologist and executive coach since the early-1990s, said that “Flaherty has the strongest intellectual understanding and grounding in the philosophical positions of those philosophers [Maturana, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein] underpinning his work.”
According to Chauncey Bell, managing partner Bell & Associatiates Business Design for Innovation, in the forward to Flaherty’s 2005 book, Flaherty’s beliefs are grounded in the following principles:
1) Human beings create themselves in language, continuously shaping and re-shaping the narratives in which they make sense of their worlds
2) Human beings are biological creatures all the way down
3) Human beings are paradoxical, at once far more creatures of habit than most of us like to think, and at the same time far more malleable”
Flaherty, in fact, saw the potential for language to take a more prominent role in the field, particularly the ontological and integral approaches to coaching. In addition to the body of Flores’ philosophical work, Flaherty used Wilber’s frameworks to organize ideas and principles and ways of understanding what was going on, and in his own words combined “the body stuff from Heckler with my background as a Rolfer…adding Zen Buddhism, which is totally practice-based…[as well as] a heightened awareness of how we live.”
According to Jim Selman, Flaherty is much more into the process and the how of coaching than the qualities one needs in order to be a coach. James co-founded New Ventures West with Stacy Flaherty in 1986 to deliver a six month coaching program.
Tweet This
Email to a friend
There are 3 Responses so far...
Nicely done.
So too were a flock of other people students of Fernando Flores. James is one who has made distinctive contributions through his studies, collaborations, and teaching.
The arictcle is accurate about my work until 5 years ago-we do much more somatic work of our own design for example
Jim Selman,with whom I have never spoken about my work is totally inaccurate-we always put the qualities , virtues, development of the coach in the central position
James – thanks for the correction to the article. The information I gathered was from about five years ago when I was interviewing people (including you) for my PhD dissertation. I apologize for the inaccuracies.
Chauncey – Would you be willing to share some of the other people who were also students of Fernando Flores? Until I began studying the history of coaching I had never heard of Fernando Flores and now I know some of the impact he has made on coaching and its early pioneers.
Vikki Brock