Coach Victor Seet’s Approach:
Integrating CliftonStrengths and Ontological Coaching for Relational Leadership
A Strengths-Based Ontological Approach to Leadership and Transformation
Most leadership development focuses on what you do. My work goes deeper towards who you are being as a leader.
Over 20 years of developing leaders, teams, and couples across Singapore and Asia, I have built an integrated approach that draws from two methodologies that are rarely combined in one coach:
CliftonStrengths - understanding your unique talent DNA and how to leverage it deliberately
Ontological Coaching - working at the level of language, emotions, and body in an embodied way to shift how you perceive and lead
Together, these two methodologies are applied to the relational reality of leadership. The integration produces what I call relational leadership - not a separate technique, but the visible result of inner work showing up in how a leader is experienced by the people around them.
The two methodologies are not separate tools. They work together. Strengths without self-awareness becomes blind confidence. Self-awareness without strengths becomes paralysis. Both, without an honest reckoning with how others experience us, stay stuck in the leader's head.
I am an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Advanced Certified Team Coach (ACTC). I am a Newfield Certified Ontological Coach, have completed the AoEC Gestalt Embodiment Foundation Programme, and am the world’s only coach to hold both the Gallup Gold and Platinum Certified CliftonStrengths Coach awards — distinctions Gallup has since retired, making this credential permanently unique. I am based in Singapore.
CliftonStrengths: Your Talent DNA
CliftonStrengths is a Gallup-developed assessment that identifies your dominant talent themes from a framework of 34 universal human talents, categorised under four leadership domains. Unlike personality tools that describe who you are in broad strokes, CliftonStrengths is precise. It reveals the specific patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that come most naturally to you, and that therefore represent your greatest potential for success.
I use CliftonStrengths as the foundation of almost all my coaching and workshop work because it gives both coach and client a shared, accurate language from the very first session. Rather than spending weeks uncovering what makes someone tick, the assessment accelerates that process and the coaching can go deeper, faster. CliftonStrengths gives us a precise language for something we have likely always sensed about ourselves but never had words for.
I have been coaching using CliftonStrengths since 2014. As the world's only coach to have held both the Gallup Gold and Platinum Certified CliftonStrengths Coach awards, distinctions Gallup has since retired. That depth of CliftonStrengths expertise means I can work with the talent themes at the level of identity, not just behaviour and help a person explore how the talents shape the leader you are becoming.
Ontological Coaching - Shifting Who You Are Being
Ontological coaching works with the observer you have become, shaped by your history, your language, your emotional habits, and the way you carry yourself. These invisible forces shape every decision, conversation, and relationship, usually without you realising it. Gestalt embodiment training informs how I bring this work into the present moment. Rather than only talking about a pattern, we work with it as it shows up in the session: the breath that shortens before a difficult topic, the “should” that arrives before a choice.
Most leaders already know what they should do differently: listen more, delegate better, have the harder conversation. Knowing is rarely the problem. The work looks at what is in the way: the mood, the story being told, the defensiveness or withdrawal that activates before the mind catches up. It rests on a counter-intuitive principle. Change comes not from trying harder to be who you think you should be, but from becoming fully aware of who you are right now. Pushing against a pattern usually strengthens it. Seeing it clearly loosens it.
With CliftonStrengths, this becomes precise. Your strengths profile shows the talents you lead from. The ontological work reveals how you embody them: with intention, or being used by them under pressure. Small in-session experiments let you feel the difference. When the observer expands, everything they see and do changes with it.
Relational Leadership - How Others Experience You
Strengths and self-awareness are necessary but not sufficient. Leadership ultimately happens in relationship — in the conversations we have, the trust we build or erode, and the way others experience us when the pressure is on. Relational leadership is the outcome of the inner work: where the strengths language and the ontological shifts actually land in the real world. A leader can have exceptional self-knowledge and still consistently close down the people around them without realising it. What determines whether the inner work translates is whether the relational field around the leader changes.
Relational Leadership is not about being likeable or popular. It is about the quality of the relational field we create - whether people feel seen, heard, and respected in our presence, whether they trust us enough to tell us the truth, and whether they are willing to bring their full effort and commitment to the work because of how we lead. Relational leadership is not dependent on personality traits. They are capacities that can be developed - through greater self-awareness, through shifts in how we see and listen, and through a willingness to look honestly at the impact we are having on the people around us.
In my work with leaders and teams across Singapore and Asia, relational breakdowns are almost always at the root of the most pressing leadership challenges. The high-performing leader whose team is quietly disengaging. The manager whose feedback is technically accurate but consistently lands badly. The team that has the talent and the strategy but not enough trust currency to execute together. These are not problems that more skill-training or goal-setting will fix. They require a different kind of work. This is the kind that begins with the willingness to examine not just the doing, but especially in how we are showing up in the eyes of the people we lead.
This is the integration I keep returning to. CliftonStrengths gives leaders the language to understand their wiring. Ontological coaching, informed by Gestalt embodiment training, shifts the observer behind the behaviour. Together, they ask the hardest question of all: is the way I am being with others actually creating what I say I want? The answer to that question is what I mean by relational leadership.
What Shifts for Clients
The shifts vary by person and context, but some patterns appear consistently. Leaders stop leading from their most dominant theme by default and start choosing how to show up. Teams start to have the conversations that actually matter. Individuals stuck in the same career or relationship loop for years identify certain recurring patterns and interrupt them. Managers who were technically strong also develop the relational presence their teams needed. Some clients simply find language for what they already sensed about themselves. That alone can be just enough to change everything.
What This Looks Like in Practice
My work typically begins with understanding you and your needs - who you are, how you operate, and what is getting in the way. From there, sessions move between reflection and action, always anchored in your real leadership context.
For individuals, this might mean uncovering how a dominant CliftonStrengths talent is overused under pressure, or noticing how a particular way of speaking is closing down conversations that need to stay open.
For teams, it often starts with mapping the collective strengths profile. The strengths data gives insights into what the team naturally gravitates toward, what it tends to avoid, and where the gaps are. From there, the work becomes practical: how do we use what we have, develop what we need, and relate to each other in ways that build rather than drain trust?
This is not a programme with a fixed curriculum. It is designed around you.
Who Victor Works With
I work with two broad groups - individuals seeking 1-1 coaching, and teams seeking workshops or team coaching.
For 1-1 coaching, clients come for a wide range of reasons. Some are navigating career transitions and need clarity on their next move. Others feel stuck in relationships, at work or at home, and want to shift long-standing patterns. And there are others looking to grow their leadership capacity, whether they are stepping into a new role, managing a growing team, or simply wanting to lead with greater confidence and self-awareness.
For workshops and team coaching, the requests typically come from team leaders and HR professionals. Common asks include helping teams collaborate more effectively, building individual self-awareness and mutual appreciation among team members, improving team performance, and working through tension or conflict. Some workshop engagements are specifically for leaders who want to learn strengths-based coaching skills or apply strengths-based leadership principles with their own teams.
My clients come from corporate organisations, government agencies, schools, start-ups, non-profits, and churches across Singapore and Asia. Some engage for a single workshop. Others work with me over months or years. What they share is a willingness to look honestly at themselves, and do something about what they find.
To get in touch, visit the contact page or enquire directly through the workshop, 1-1 Coaching or Team Coaching pages.
Frequently Asked Questions on Victor’s Approach
Q: Why doesn’t knowing what to do differently change how a leader behaves?
A: Most leaders already know what they should do differently: listen more, delegate better, have the harder conversation. Knowing is rarely the problem. What gets in the way operates below conscious intention: a mood that colours every interaction, a story about what will happen if they change, or a reaction of defensiveness or withdrawal that activates in the body before the mind catches up. Advice and insight work at the level of thinking. Lasting change needs work at the level of who the leader is being, which is where Victor’s ontological coaching focuses.
Q: What does ontological coaching work on in practice?
Ontological coaching works with three interconnected domains: language, emotions and body. Language shapes what a person can see and what remains invisible to them. Moods and emotional habits quietly filter every conversation and decision. The body, meaning how a person holds tension, breathes and occupies space, is never separate from how they think and lead. Developed by Chilean philosopher Rafael Echeverría and brought to coaching through the Newfield Network, the approach treats a shift in any one domain as a lever for the other two. Victor is a Newfield Certified Ontological Coach.
Q: How does Gestalt embodiment training inform Victor’s ontological coaching?
In 2026, Victor completed the Academy of Executive Coaching’s Gestalt Embodiment Foundation Programme. It informs how he brings ontological work into the present moment. Rather than only discussing a pattern, he works with it as it shows up in the session: the breath that shortens before a difficult topic, or the “should” that arrives before a choice. It also brings a Gestalt principle often called the paradoxical theory of change: change comes less from trying harder to be different and more from becoming fully aware of who you are right now. Pushing against a pattern tends to strengthen it. Seeing it clearly loosens it.
Q: How does Victor use CliftonStrengths at the level of identity rather than behaviour?
A: The CliftonStrengths report names a person’s dominant talent themes. Victor’s work goes further by exploring how those talents are embodied, especially under pressure. The same talent can serve a leader or run them. Command can harden into control, Harmony can slide into avoidance, and Responsibility can make it impossible to say no. The question is not only “What are my strengths?” but “Am I using them with intention, or being used by them?” Victor has coached with CliftonStrengths since 2014 and is the world’s only coach to have held both the Gallup Gold and Platinum Certified CliftonStrengths Coach awards.
Q: What happens in a session when CliftonStrengths and ontological coaching are combined?
A: The strengths profile gives coach and client a precise, shared language from the first session, so the coaching moves quickly past discovery. The ontological work then looks at how a specific talent shows up in a real situation: the language the person uses, the mood they are in, and what their body does. Small in-session experiments let the client feel the difference between leading from a talent with intention and reacting from it by reflex, such as saying the sentence they have been avoiding, holding a position a beat longer, or asking instead of solving. Insight becomes something lived, not just understood.
Q: What does Victor mean by relational leadership?
A: Relational leadership is Victor’s term for the outcome of the inner work: how a leader is actually experienced by the people around them. It is not about being likeable. It is about the quality of the relational field a leader creates: whether people feel seen, heard and respected, whether they trust the leader enough to tell the truth, and whether they bring their full commitment to the work. Victor treats it as a capacity that can be developed, not a personality trait. The test is one question: is the way I am being with others actually creating what I say I want?