Working with an ontological coach isn’t about doing something different. You’ll change the way you do things; that comes with the process. But it’s a result of the work, not the focus of it.
Ontology, fundamentally, is the study of being.
It’s about examining the way you observe and interpret your world, and the way that perspective informs how you move through the world. Your ontology is the whole, complete, and complex you: emotion, body, and language, from your private and public conversations, beliefs, emotions, moods, the way you sit, stand and move, along with your deeply embodied habits of all these.
Your ontology drives everything you see, everything you do, and ultimately, the results you get — both positive and negative.
Most kinds of coaching and teaching don’t lead to sustainable change because they don’t focus on who you’re being first. They center on effect, not cause.
So ontological coaching begins with expanding your awareness and introducing you to your way of being, often for the first time. That experience opens up the most important conversations you’ll ever have with yourself.
And that work can shift everything.
YOUR COACH & TEACHER
About Mark Robertson
Newfield Certified Ontological Coach and teacher Mark Robertson spent more than 25 years focused primarily on executive coaching, helping individuals and teams apply the ontological framework and tools to their organizational lives.
Over those decades, he saw extraordinary changes that extended well beyond board rooms and org charts. He saw people enter coaching with hopes of being a better leader, and leave coaching wholly empowered to design the life they really wanted.
It inspired and informed a foundational change to Mark’s own work.
The Ontological Experience is a broad relaunch, designed to bring the life-changing impact of ontological coaching and teaching to anyone who’s struggling to find focus, direction, purpose, and peace.
To bring that impact to anyone who needs it, Mark meets people where they are, in every sense of that idea.
THE ONTOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE INCLUDES:
Individual coaching • Team coaching • Workshops • Speaking engagements
Mark's Background
Mark’s career is its own ontological coaching success story. Professionally and personally restless in his early career years, he shifted from management consulting to IT system support, non-profit development, and professional golf. None of it felt aligned or meaningful.
He came across ontological coaching at an Education for Living personal growth weekend workshop in 1991. That coach dug deep, helping attendees unravel stories, process powerful emotions, and start to see and understand their way of being. Mark walked away remade, inspired, and focused on absorbing and applying everything ontological coaching and teaching could offer.
Today, Mark brings decades of ontological teaching expertise to individual and team coaching, workshops, and speaking engagements. He also leads eye-opening, ontology-based conversations on his The Ontological Experience podcast, available on YouTube and everywhere else podcasts are streamed.
CERTIFICATIONS
- Newfield Certified Ontological Coach-Program
- Coach for Newfield Network (2003-2010)
- Professional Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF) (2003-2021)
- Hogan Leadership Forecast Series, Lominger
- VOICES360 assessment tools
EDUCATION
- M.Ed. in Human Development Counseling, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
- Bachelor of Science, University of Tennessee
- Graduate, Newfield Network Graduate Coaching Program
BOARD/ADVISORY POSITIONS
- International Coach Federation, Tennessee Chapter: President, Program Chair, Treasurer
- Hands On Nashville, Board of Directors
- Davidson County UT Alumni Association, Board of Directors
I teach and coach people to become more self-aware, communicate better, and build healthy, deeply connected relationships.
OUR FRAMEWORK & TOOLS
About Ontology
Going back centuries, the concept of ontology emerged from ancient Greek philosophy, as Aristotle and his contemporaries explored the questions of how we experience reality and what it means to exist.
The study got more practical and less metaphysical around the 20th century, through the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger, biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, linguists J.L. Austin and John Searle, and others. Later, Fernando Flores, Julio Olalla, and other modern leaders took the philosophical foundations of ontology and adapted them into a coaching methodology—the framework for ontological coaching.
This framework recognizes how real change—sustainable change—doesn’t come from strategies or skills. It requires a transformation in how we view and move through the world.
The work we do during ontological coaching is intimate and interactive, and it includes questions and conversations that help you understand your way of being and its impact. A lot of those conversations extend out of a model that hits right at the heart of the human experience:
Where your Ontological Experience goes from here depends on you and the life you’re looking to design. And that’s exactly why ontological coaching and teaching is so different, and so powerful.
OUR COMMUNITY
Client & Friends
CONTACT US
Let's talk.
Whether you’re looking for a coach, a workshop facilitator, or event speaker, Mark Robertson delivers a profoundly revealing—and profoundly impactful—Ontological Experience. Reach out and tell us about what you need.