Prof. Dr. John G. Geier (1934-2009)

In 1972 Prof. Dr. John G. Geier founded the company Performax Inc. and was Carlson-Learning Company's first president. He is the founder of international advisor networks and with Geier Learning Systems persolog's licensor. He has been involved in researching competences in the area of work behavior for over 40 years. Prof. Dr. Geier is the author and founder of the persolog Personality Factor Model, which was first developed in its initial form in 1958. In his extraordinary career he held the following influential positions: head of behavioral sciences at the University of Minnesota; guest professor at the University of Wisconsin; University of Arizona; extra-official assistant professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he taught thousands of managers in the internationally recognized "Manager of Managers" seminars. He is the author of numerous scientific works, amongst others the books "Energetics of Personality", "Career Fulfillment" and "Behavior Personality Analysis".

Prof. Dr. Geier drew on the behavioral dimensions Dominant (D), Influencing (I), Steady (S) and Cautious (C) of the persolog Personality Factor Model to explain the human personality and takes inter-personal, intra-personal and social aspects into account. His original work built on the work of William Moulten Marston (1893-1947). Prof. Dr. Geier's intensive research proved Marsten's theory with reliable facts. Prof. Dr. Geier acquired the copyright to Dr. Marsten's collected works. As a scientist, educator and manager, Prof. Dr. Geier has established the persolog Personality Factor Model as the flagship of his numerous evaluation instruments. He founded Performax Inc. as a learning company for publishing evaluation instruments and the development of training concepts from which over 40 million people world-wide have have already benefited. In the late 1970s, Performax Inc. was taken over by the Carlson Company and became the centre-point of the newly founded Carlson Learning Center, which Prof. Dr. Geier led as its first president and CEO.

His long-standing dissatisfaction with the limited usability of the existing instruments with the behavioral dimensions of the Personality Factor Model and their specific suitability only for the workplace caused Prof. Dr. Geier to found Geier Learning Systems in 1990 – another big step forward. Since then he has developed a whole range of evaluation instruments based on the behavioral dimensions of the Model.

Prof. Dr. Geier was a pioneer in the world of personality models, and also the creative source for advanced further development in this area of research. He worked continuously at improving his model and has also incorporated descriptive, prescriptive and predicative factors in the model. persolog GmbH will continue his life work in this sense.