1. In my coaching work with individuals, small groups and
organizations, I’ve found a number of processes which make
an immediate, significant difference in how people feel,
perform, and interact. They are inner skills of thinking which
bring out the best capabilities of individuals and organizations.
They help to activate our dreams and energize our lives.
I’ve listed these processes on the pages that follow, each of
which I can present in a 90-minute workshop or individual
coaching process. My workshop format normally has most of
the eight elements below. The one-on-one coaching format is
more customized, tailored and private for an individual.
• The Learning Community—We'll become a learning
community . . . a kind of village for enhancing leadership,
communication and organizational life in an enjoyable way. As
the community spirit develops, learning accelerates.
• Group Conversations—Participants engage in open and honest group
conversations. During this process, participants contribute insights for applying what
they are learning. Subjects for these group conversations include how to improve
products, services, organizational culture, relationships, innovation, creativity, fairness,
market share, revenues, and many other topics.
• Live Skill Demonstrations—I demonstrate, on the spot, powerful and effective skills,
and how to use them in everyday situations.
• Structured Mental Exercises—Through structured mental exercises you'll expand
your thinking and develop the demonstrated leadership capabilities and transfer them
into your day-to-day work situations.
• Structured Story-telling—Participants tell stories about what they value and do not
value, what is important and what is not important. Through this process, participants
learn what they value and do not value in common; what they find to be healthy and
unhealthy, and what kind of future they do not want and what kind they do want.
• Guided Inner Journeys—Much like a daydream with a purpose, in these guided
inner journey exercises, you explore your own inner world and pinpoint opportunities to
activate and develop your own leadership capabilities.
• Interactional Simulations—To prepare for actual leadership situations that you'll
encounter, you will engage in realistic simulations so you can rehearse your inner and
outer leadership skills. That way, in the real world, your new skills can emerge naturally
and appropriately.
• Graphical Facilitation—I use graphical facilitation to create images of the ideas and
ideals of organizations so his client organizations and their teams can chart paths to
bring about new futures for themselves.
Kelly Gerling Coaching Processes
1.

2. process for accessing the deepest state of being is useful in a number of ways. The
experience is warm, moving and inspiring. The state of being itself is the underlying
foundation of most of the important goals, values and dreams a person has. And because it is
often not accessed, is forgotten or is ignored, accessing it and connecting it to problems and
goals, situations and activities, enriches a person’s goals, values and dreams with the best,
deep, and emotionally significant part of a person. Come and learn this powerful, inspiring,
spiritual process.
Accessing the Deepest State of Being—Part 2—90 Minutes
In Part 1, we explore how an iterative series of questions may help to access a deep state of
being within yourself, or within your client. In this follow-up presentation, Part 2, we explore
some variations on how to use the deepest state of being questions. These variations may
include the initial framing of their use; how to use them in stories; how to use them informally
in conversation; and how to use your accessing of your own deepest state of being to help
colleagues and clients to access their own such states.
Benefits for Individuals and Your Organization
The benefits of the Deepest State of Being process for individuals are many-fold: one’s
deepest state of being is both an emotional identity and a deep goal. As such, it can
energize a person’s goals and long-term visions with meaning, power, and charisma.
The benefits of this process for organizations are also many-fold: when an organization
or team participates together in accessing their deepest states of being, and those
experiences are shared, the members present get to know one another at that deep
level. And this knowing helps the organization cooperate better, visualize new futures
better, practice their common values better, and more easily resolve their conflicts.
Accessing Your
Deepest State of Being
Question:
How can I access my deepest state of
being, in order to energize my goals, and
my actions towards them with my
deepest values and my deepest sense of
being?
Accessing the Deepest State of Being—Part
1—90 Minutes
Both for yourself, and for your clients, having a
2.

3. threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. She was inspired by civil rights leader Malcolm X.
Countless billions of people have been inspired by religious leaders such as Jesus
of Nazareth, the Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu. Certainly you have been
inspired by various people—people you know and people you never met. Real
people and fictional people. Even non-people. Animals. Images. Whatever.
This capacity of being inspired by others is a mental process that we can harness
deliberately. In this process, Kelly Gerling guides groups and individuals to use his
Inner Mentor Process to prepare for particular situations, thus helping to bring out
our most powerful inner capacities—a process that has to be felt to be appreciated.
Benefits for Individuals and Your Organization
For individuals, the Inner Mentor Process creates a powerful, instantly available,
nearly instantaneous means of activating a powerful, tailored state of mind—one
that is customized for the situation you are in, or are about to enter.
For organizations, the primary benefit consists of the following:
• During the process participants get to know one another much better through the
mentors they select, as well as the process of using those mentors to bring out ones
best inner states of mind.
• When participants learn to master the Inner Mentor Process, they are more
consistent in bringing their best intellectual and emotional capacities into the
meetings and interactions within the organization in which they participate
• Mastering this process prevents conflicts, enhances cooperation, and builds a
strong relationship foundation for trust and respect, innovation and invention.
Using an Inner Mentor Process
to Activate Your Inner Resources
Question:
How can I use an inner mentor to tailor my state
of mind in a future situation?
Other people inspire us. Other people teach us.
Other people provide a way for us to access that
which is best within us. Rosa Parks was inspired
not to give up her seat on that bus in 1955 by the
memory of her grandfather standing in the
doorway with a shotgun when their family was
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4. Identifying Our Tendencies to
Behave Badly Under Stress
Question:
How can people learn to prevent engaging in destructive behaviors that emerge under
stress?
When we get hurt, physically, emotionally or spiritually, we have a tendency to
automatically begin healing our pain. We only need to look at the natural responses of
any young child to stress, to understand the universal patterns of blaming, avoiding,
whining, labeling negatively and sarcasm.
These patterns give each of us the opportunity to make an important choice: instead
of choosing to behave destructively and make victims of others, and ultimately, ones
self, present and future, we can choose another path. We can choose to pause, heal
and expand our thinking. Then we can plan our strategies for leading in such a way as
to fulfill healthy values. There is no single more important quality of effective
leadership. It is the lesson of Jesus, of Gandhi, and of Dr. King. It is consistent with
leading by example. And this strategy of healing instead of hurting is what allows us to
practice the golden rule.
While there are other specialized antidotes to victim behavior and subsequent victim
cycles, these natural methods will often be enough to prevent us from doing harm,
violating values and perpetuating pain. Here is a list:
Benefits for Individuals and Your Organization
The benefit for individuals and organizations of learning to refrain from engaging in
destructive behaviors, and healing instead is simply conflict prevention. Then, any group or
team can pursue their cooperative work, creativity, and innovation more
easily and more consistently because of the emotional intelligence which people
learn to exercise and master through practicing these ideas.
Destructive Victim Behaviors and their Related Natural Healing
Processes
Victim Behaviors Natural Healing Methods
Blaming Venting
Avoiding Reflecting
Whining Crying or Feeling Sad
Labeling Negatively Labeling Positively
Sarcasm Healthy Humor
!
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5. self-image to blend with the self-image that has been operating in the re-
occurring situation.
This enables a person to choose a new self-image to blend with the default self-
image with some judgment and good sense. Then a new self, a new state-of-
mind, with a corresponding new set of emotions and subtle behaviors can
emerge in the re-occurring situation.
Benefits for Individuals and Your Organization
The benefit for individuals of this Self Image Blending Strategy is to provide a
process for choosing and designing his or her moods, emotions, mindsets for any
situation. It is a process that enables to participants to go back to work and break
un-productive habits, and replace them with desired states of mind. This will build
trust and earn respect in situations.
The benefit for organizations is two-fold. When participants experience this
process together, they get to know one another at a deeper level; they get to
understand the other person’s inner world better; and they then engage in better
teamwork. That in turn increases the productivity and leadership intelligence of
the group.
Question:
How can I use a process of self-imagery to decide
upon and bring forth helpful emotions and useful
subtle behaviors in a key conversation?
People have self-images. And we can use them to
represent our many, various moods and states-of-
mind, behaviors, mindsets and roles.
When anyone wants to change their mood or
emotions or behavior in some re-occurring situation,
he or she can use a process of recruiting a new
Self-image Blending Strategy
for Choosing Emotions
and Subtle Behaviors
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6. Morale is the general feeling of camaraderie between members of the organization. It is the
spirit of the body of the group, or in French, “esprit de corps.” The feeling of loyalty; devotion
to the group, and its mission and vision and values; and group enthusiasm, are all
manifestations of morale.
This presentation explores how hierarchy, equality and moral interact as-things-are—and as
they could be—in your organization.
Benefits for Individuals and Your Organization
This presentation demonstrates how the organization experiences the day-to-day
reality of hierarchy and the relationships it structures. The benefit of this is to revisit the
hierarchical structures in the organization; how these structures affect the state of
equality between people; and how morale has been affected by the structures, and
could possibly be improved.
This process is often led in conjunction with the highest ranking person present, who
helps to seek to find ways of preserving the benefits of hierarchy, while creating
opportunities for real equality and enhancing morale.
Hierarchy, Equality and Morale
Question: How do hierarchical structures in
organizations relate to the equality most people like
to experience and the positive morale needed for a
high level of organizational performance?
Hierarchy is the organizational structure where
some people work “over” others and “under”
others. This is shown in a typical organizational
chart with the higher-ranking people towards the
top.
The structure and dynamics of a hierarchy in an
organization has significant positive advantages
and effects. And there may be disadvantages as
well.
Equality is the condition of people in a group being
equal in terms of rights, status, and importance. It
is a deep value of democratic societies, egalitarian
communities and healthy cultures.
6.

7. Discovering and Practicing
Your Organization’s Values
Question: How do people in an organization
discover, practice and design an organizational
culture that is most important to them?
There are lots of levels of what is important within
any person. In my work when I ask people about
their goals and desires, hopes and dreams, they’ll tell
me something. Then I usually ask something to the
effect, “What else do you want, through having that
goal, that is even more important?” Usually the
individual can envision and feel an even deeper,
more important, more profound goal then the first
one they mentioned. I continue ask that question,
and for up to about seven questions, they continue to
describe deeper goals, which they experience as feelings of great importance.
The Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman described how our brains accomplish
such a feat as intense valuing. The heart of our system of valuing, he said, is located in a
deep, older part of every human brain in an area in and around what is called the locus
coeruleus. According to Edelman, in this part of the brain “neural value systems” engage in
“signaling to neurons and synapses all over the brain . . . producing a sudden burst of firing
whenever something important or salient occurs.” The neurons in this area of the brain “give
rise to a vast meshwork of axons that blanket the cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia,
cerebellum, and spinal cord, potentially influencing transmission of billions of synapses over all
levels of the central nervous system.” Edelman goes on to say that “Value and emotions,
pleasant and unpleasant, are obviously coupled and are central to conscious
experience.” (See Gerald Edelman’s book “A Universe of Consciousness,” p. 88-91.)
In coaching teams, such as executive teams, I often help to activate such experiences of deep
valuing through a process of storytelling. Then as stories of what is values and what is not
valued, common values emerge naturally. People get to know one another better as well.
People who engage in such a process find they value communication processes such as
open-communication and honesty, trust and respect. And they also value qualities that show
up in goods and services such as professionalism and reliability, effectiveness and innovation,
and more.
As organizations make important changes, being conscious of what is valued and not valued
helps them to design their organizational or team values, which reflect the common values
they share as individuals. These then become the standards by which present actions and
future plans are judged, guided, and created. This process lays out a strategy for your
organization to discover your values as an organization or a team, or for you as an individual
to discover what is deeply most important to you.
7.

8. Introducing Kelly Gerling
Kelly’s professional work consists of three different and complementary roles.
He practices as a professional coach for visionary individuals, teams and whole organizations to help
them envision inspiring accomplishments, and do what it takes to make them come true.
Kelly also works as an NLP and coaching trainer—using methods, skills and knowledge grounded in
coaching, NLP, and several fields of cognitive science.
In addition, Kelly works as a writer. He writes stories of transformation, designed to help bring about
transformative changes—from the lives of individuals and small groups; to organizations, national
institutions and international institutions. The focus of his stories is on transformation towards the
happiness and joy that comes from solving the problems in our daily lives and organizations, as well as
solving our global crisis, and bringing about a sustainable world. These three roles overlap in Kelly’s
quest to assist visionary leaders to make important large-scale changes in our world.
In his work, Kelly combines a fun, playful approach to accelerated learning, with a love of the rigors of
science, and an intense interest in solving real problems in the world.
Kelly’s mentors and colleagues include Virginia Satir, one of the co-founders of the field of family therapy;
Noam Chomsky, founder of modern linguistics and leading public intellectual; Ramon Corrales, a family
therapist and author in Kansas City; NLP co-founders Steve and Connirae Andreas, John Grinder, and
several other pioneers in the fields of NLP, therapy and change in relationship systems including family
therapists Jay Haley, Cloe Madanes, and Carl Whitaker.
Kelly has authored or co-authored many articles, books and recordings on how to bring about changes in
the lives of his readers and listeners, and appears on local television as a mental health professional.
He’s trained all over the U.S., and in Mexico, Argentina, and Bali, Indonesia. He’s worked with several
major NLP training organizations, including NLP Comprehensive; Grinder, Delozier and Associates; and
NLP of California.
Kelly began his work as a trainer with NLP Comprehensive in 1983. As a member of the NLP
Comprehensive trainer team, he co-authored the top-selling book and audio recording set titled NLP: The
New Technology of Achievement.
Kelly earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Resources in Agriculture from Arizona State
University; a Master’s in Human Relations and Counseling from Governor’s State University; and a
doctorate in clinical psychology from American Commonwealth University. He is a certified mediator in the
state of Kansas; gained a certification in Collaborative Law in Oregon as a mental health coach; and
recently completed his certification as a Certified NLP Coach with the Academy of Coaching and NLP.
Kelly’s doctoral dissertation, titled Universals of Negotiation, created a coherent, comprehensive, dynamic
model of how professionals can help people in conflict to design enduring, win-win agreements and
enhance relationships.
In his coaching practice, he’s coached many organizations and their leaders, including: the Bayer
Corporation, Sprint, the Southern Platte Fire Protection District; Hickman Mills Missouri School District;
Risk International; the New Zealand health care system; National Steel Service Centers; the Missouri
Physicians Health Program; and Heart-to-Heart International.
Kelly is a former president of the United Nations Association of the USA in Kansas City. He makes his
home in Seattle, and enjoys hiking, biking, doing yoga hot tubs, and elk hunting.
His websites coachingforvisionaries.com and kellygerling.com provide access to his methods, articles
and models of visionary coaching and values-based leadership.
Kelly Patrick Gerling Ph.D.
P.O. Box 25731
Seattle, WA 98165
206-618-2888
kelly@kellygerling.com
http://kellygerling.org
http://coachingforvisionaries.com
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