Magic is any situation experienced by an observer that challenges the coherences of their own experience and finds themselves unable to explain it. When this happens, we are fascinated because, in some way, the lived experience partly questions our current way of looking at the world.

When we see this, often this fascination leads us to the curiosity to want to understand, how did it happen?, how did they do it?. Sometimes we also want to learn to do it ourselves, to become magicians too.

We have had the opportunity to live those moments, to be able to see authentic magic, observing great coaches. Their way of approaching others, generating contexts where possibilities emerge, emotionally touching the coachee, where changes are generated in them with the simple instrument of conversation, that interweaving of emotion and language. That always left us fascinated, and from them, we were able to learn many things.

What we live as magic, in the coach's mind often has a structure, although he or she sometimes is not very aware of it. This does not mean, in any way, that intuition does not play a role in their doing, but we also know that what we distinguish as intuition is that which we know, but we do not know how to explain how we know it.

Therefore, what we intend with this article is to share with the students of the Certification in Professional Coaching course at CEC, what is the structure that we have identified in our doing, reflecting on the doing, when we do Coaching. Of course, this does not mean that this is THE STRUCTURE to follow. We understand that there will be many ways of doing Coaching and that ours is, simply, one more. It is the one we learned from our teachers, from our experience, and from our constant reflection on our experience.

Our only intention, then, is to provide a foothold for those who begin to navigate that sea, sometimes stormy, sometimes calm, but always deep and exciting of Ontological Coaching conversations.

 The scheme

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This could be our roadmap, very simplified, where we only include the main steps.

From this point on, we will develop in greater detail each of these phases to show you what we judge important in our way of doing Coaching. We will not tire of repeating that this is simply our way, and it may well be that it is improvable. In fact, we hope so, as we want to continue being learners.

The conversation:

1)      The Context

Things happen in one way or another depending, to a greater extent than one might think, on the context in which they occur. In a Coaching conversation, this is, in our opinion, an essential starting point that we must take care of, pamper, allocating space to create an intimate atmosphere in which confidentiality, respect will help generate the necessary trust for the coachee's opening. If this is lacking, we will hardly achieve the emotional connection necessary to achieve results.

2)      The Breakdown

Identifying the breakdown clearly and checking it with the coachee is the best way to ensure that the conversation will have a direction. During it, as the coachee narrates their experiences, we will see that doors are opening to us that seem to lead us to a thousand different places. If we have not clearly identified and checked with them the breakdown they want to work on, the conversation can become a labyrinth from which we will hardly be able to