Bio

Mark Brenner, PhD

Chairman

For nearly 20 years, tGCP’s Chairman led a boutique consultancy (1981-1999) that focused on advancing the performance of leaders and organizations. During that time he conducted over 30,000 hours of consulting assignments with Fortune 1000 companies, international consulting firms, and entrepreneurial businesses. His firm used a powerful motivational and performance enhancement methodology to harness and then maximize the untapped potential of a company’s people value chain. His firm was recognized for its leading-edge methodologies and tools:

• His firm was a pioneer in developing and implementing Derailment Prevention Coaching in 1982.
• At the same time, the firm also pioneered the use of Coaching in professional service firms—professionals have highly specialized needs and are often the most demanding consumers of coaching and individual development solutions.
• As early as 1985, the firm was using computerized instruments to measure and develop leadership competencies and leadership styles.
• His firm began using 360° (multi-rater) instruments in 1987 and then implemented computerized 360° technology in 1989.
• Mark’s original firm was known for the psychometric rigor of its assessment tools. Even its organizational survey tools were psychometrically derived and validated, which allowed the firm to prescribe highly targeted action strategies. (Very few organizational surveys use psychometric techniques for either item development or for scale development.)
• The firm also developed a Help Desk Model of Executive Coaching, allowing an executive, manager, or professional to access coaching services on a just-in-time basis.
• Our Chairman’s former firm also designed an Organizational Study method-ology that used a combination of confidential interviewing techniques and a proprietary organizational survey. Combined, these two methods generate rich, motivationally powerful, and actionable findings.
• The firm’s approach to Succession Planning was conceived as a talent management assessment process and as a developmental process, with an eye to the long-term and to succession readiness.
• The firm was an early adopter of expert, computerized testing systems that were web-based for Pre-Employment Selection, for all coaching work, and for organizational assessment.

Each of these innovations is still fundamental to current tGCP methodologies—only today they exist in their continually refined form.

The commitment to innovation has continued since Mark’s founding of tGCP in 2000:

• All of the firm’s instructional designs for group-based development purposes were built on a platform of fast-follower design methods, compressed action learning, and the Adult Learning Model which together maximize motivation, customizability, and organizational impact and minimize cost.
• The firm uses a sophisticated IT platform for the delivery of competency modeling solutions, which is further linked to and integrated with the building of selection and development assessment tools. As well, the firm uses a powerful but practical IT platform for guiding, tracking, and enhancing talent management.
• tGCP’s strategy work is known for its emphasis on execution and follow-through, pulling together many of our consultancy’s core competencies—change management, culture design, leadership development, and team performance.
• tGCP has also assembled a videoconferencing solution (internet protocol-based) that enables the delivery of the firm’s coaching solutions around the world.

In 1998, Mark spent the year building the Career Transformation System ToolBox™, a distillation of his 20 years of work in the field of Leadership Development and Organizational Transformation. The ToolBox (thirteen volumes and 2,500 pages) is a breakthrough professional development system that shows advanced degree psychologists how to rapidly convert their high-level clinical skills to 20-plus performance consulting applications.

The ToolBox provides doctoral-level professionals with a self-tutorial apprenticeship that guides them through a step-by-step process of competency conversion. The instructional design allows specialists in performance enhancement to leverage their tens of thousands of hours of graduate education, professional training, and field experience so they can readily transfer their competencies to the business arena. As a result of his monumental work in building the ToolBox, Mark then launched the Global Consulting Partnership, which is built on the foundation created by the CTS ToolBox and which was the first consulting firm of its kind. tGCP has 45 consultants throughout the United States.

Mark took his undergraduate training in history at Northwestern University, where he also received a Masters in Developmental and Molecular Biology. His doctorate in Psychology and Human Development is from the University of Illinois. He did a clinical internship at the University of Maryland Medical School and then a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Devereaux Foundation in Philadelphia. Mark speaks nationally and internationally on an assortment of topics related to organizational performance and leadership development.

Mark is an avid consumer of crossword puzzles, comedy, World Music (especially Celtic and African), movies, and plays (and, yes, certain TV time slots). His wife, Amy, ministers to the Animal Kingdom (i.e. she’s a veterinarian). Their son, Jesse, founded a World Music production company (www.modiba.net), during his senior year at Wesleyan University/’05. Their daughter, Sarah, graduated from Ithaca College/’07 and will seek her muse in the nonprofit world. Mark and his family are involved in a variety of Jewish, African, and political causes.