John Behr, Ph.D.

Dr. John Behr is an industrial/organizational psychologist and the founder of John Behr Group, LLC a consulting firm that offers specialized executive coaching and assessment services.

EXEC Lifetime combines life coaching techniques with executive coaching services for executives, leaders and future leaders.

CompetenceVISION, 2009 Nominee of the Chicago Innovation Award, offers a highly reliable, time tested assessment process for evaluating talent in the context of development and/or selection.

Across 22 years of consulting, Dr. John Behr has refined his expertise in executive coaching and assessment. In the business domain, Dr. Behr has led many large scale leadership development initiatives and conducted over a thousand assessments for the selection, promotion and development of individuals at all professional levels. He has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies and his clients range from major airlines and manufacturing corporations to family businesses and biotechnology startups.

In the government domain, Dr. Behr has consulted with the US State Department. He has conducted hundreds of psychological evaluations for the screening of American police leaders as candidates to serve as leaders in rebuilding the law enforcement infrastructure in post war-torn environments such as Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor and Qatar.

When the Federal Government took on the challenge of restructuring the Chicago Housing Authority, Dr. Behr redesigned their leadership development initiative, building numerous programs for the progressive development of senior management. He also developed a preventive system to assist CHA leaders in proactively addressing issues of violence in the workplace.

Representative coaching assignments include:

      Dr. Behr coached a Regional Plant Manager of a multibillion dollar manufacturing company as his expertise was needed for a major change in company practice; however, the Regional Manager demonstrated significant problems with alienating himself from everyone he managed. Through a 360° intervention and regular coaching engagements with Dr. John Behr, he dramatically improved his powers of introspection, enabling him to gain a better perspective on his tendency to control and to express his anger more constructively. He has since been promoted to an SVP role in the corporate office.

            In a large national nonprofit organization, Dr. Behr coached the Senior VP of HR and the Director of HR, two women of differing races, both of whom were being considered for termination. After six months of aggressive coaching with Dr. Behr, both women were able to remain in their positions and have ultimately become professional confidantes.

            At the request of the Board of Directors, Dr. Behr coached the two founding partners of a startup technology vendor to improve communication and capitalize on their strengths, resulting in improved personal and professional interaction and the company's direct financial profit.

Dr. Behr obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology and philosophy from Marquette University and his master and doctoral degrees in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is active with the American Psychological Association, the Illinois Psychological Association, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He served for three years on the Board of Examiners for the Lincoln Award for Business Excellence (Malcolm Baldrige-Illinois). He teaches Industrial and Organizational Psychology courses at Loyola University of Chicago.